Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| light. Roosevelt is their enemy, the enemy forever of all for which they stand. |
| Because he stands for fair play; for an even chance to all who would use it for their own and for their country’s good; for a broad Americanism that cares nothing for color, creed, or the wherefrom of the citizen, so that, now he is here, he be an American in heart and soul; an Americanism that reaches down to hard-pan. “Ultimately,” he said at Grant’s Tomb, when Governor of New York,—“ultimately, no nation can be great unless its greatness is laid on foundations of righteousness and decency.” And at Syracuse on Labor Day I saw ten thousand stirred by his words: “If alive to their true interests, rich and poor alike will set their faces like flint against the spirit which seeks personal advantage by over-riding the laws, whether that spirit shows itself in the form of bodily violence by one set of men or in the form of vulpine cunning by another set of men.” These are his professions. I know how they square with his practice, for I have seen the test put to him a hundred times in little things and in great, and never once did he fail to ask the question, if |