Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| Employment Bureau was organized, which did so much toward absorbing into the population again the vast army of men who were in danger of becoming dependent, and helped them preserve their self-respect. |
| That issue was not so easily met, however. The heritage of a great war was upon the land. The community was being rapidly pauperized. Vast sums of money were wasted on ill-considered charity. Fraud was rampant. Mr. Roosevelt set about weeding it out by organizing the city’s charities. We find him laboring as a member of a “committee of nine,” with Protestants, Jews, and roman Catholics, to ferret out and arraign the institutions “existing only to furnish lazy managers with a living.” He became the Vice-President of the State Charities’ Aid Association, a member of the Board of United Charities, and finally the head of the State Board of Charities, for the creation of which he had long striven. Wherever there was a break to be repaired, a leak to be stopped, there he was. He founded a hospital and dispensary for the treatment of hopeless spine and hip diseases. He pleaded, even on his death-bed, for rational treatment of the |