Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| that has nothing to conceal,—dear me, no!—yet most strenuously objects to the public knowing about its business; the corporation with franchises paying big dividends but no taxes; the labor leader who has stared himself blind upon the dividends, and to whom the pearly gates shall not swing unless they have the union label on them; or the every-day dolt who must have the railroad track between himself and his brother of darker skin, of different faith or tongue or birthplace; who, like the woman of the Four Hundred in Philadelphia, “must be buried in St. Peter’s churchyard because, really, on resurrection day she must rise with her own set”—whichever his own particular folly in this land of no privilege and of an equal chance, and wherever found, he will be against Roosevelt, instinctively and always. He will fight him at the polls and in the convention; he will bet his money against him, and pour it out like water across every party line that held him before, and by the measure of his success we can grade our own grip on the ideal of the Republic. That was what the professor I spoke of meant, and he was right. And so are they, according to their |