Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| for him and the country if he abandons public life.” |
| ON LABOR (from the President’s Labor Day speech at Syracuse, 1903): “No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” |
| “We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. It is an infamous thing in our American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the distinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class, as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment of locality, |