Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| we have to work together as we can. There is a point, of course, where a man must take the isolated peak and break with it all for clear principle, but until it comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let him work with that for the best that can be got.” |
| One can hardly turn a page of his writings even to this day without coming upon evidence that he has never forgotten the lesson of the isolated peak. |
| The real things of life were getting their grip on him more and more. The old laissez faire doctrine that would let bad enough alone because it was the easiest way still pervaded the teaching of his college days, as applied to social questions. The day of the Settlement had not yet come; but his father had been a whole social settlement and a charity organization society combined in his own person, and the son was not content with the bookish view of affairs that so intimately concerned the welfare of the republic to which he led back all things. The bitter cry of the virtually enslaved tenement cigarmakers had reached Albany, |