control legislation so as to increase the profits of monopolies or “trusts,” and that to prevent such control it is necessary to extend the powers of the federal government. In carrying out this policy of government regulation and supervision of corporations he became involved in a great struggle with the powerful financial interests whose profits were threatened, and with those legislators who sincerely believed that government should solely concern itself with protecting life and property, and should leave questions of individual and social relations in trade and finance to be settled by the operation of so-called natural economic laws. In the struggle, although he was bitterly accused of violating the written constitution, of arresting and destroying business prosperity and of attempting a radical departure from the accepted social system of the country, he was remarkably successful. By his speeches and messages, and by his frank use of one of the greatest of modern social engines—the newspaper press—he created a public opinion which heartily supported him. Under his effective influence laws were framed which were not merely in themselves measures of stringent regulation of business and the accumulation of wealth, but which established precedents, that as time goes on will inevitably make the doctrine of federal control permanent and of wider application. The struggle against some of the most powerful financial and political influences of the time not unnaturally gave rise to the idea that his work as president was destructive—perhaps the necessarily destructive work of the reformer—but not essentially constructive. Even those friendly to him sometimes felt it necessary to defend his political course by saying that he was compelled to raze the old buildings and prepare the ground on which his successors might build new and better structures. A brief consideration of some of the constructive achievements of his administration will show that the “destructive” theory of his political activities is not sustained by the facts.
Civil Service Reform.—Some reference has already been made to the fact that in every office which Mr Roosevelt held he constantly dwelt upon the truism, often forgotten or ignored, that no government can accomplish any permanent good unless its administrative and legislative officers are chosen and maintained for merit only. As assemblyman, as police commissioner, as naval secretary and as president, he advocated this fundamental doctrine. When Federal Civil Service commissioner he did more than any other single public man in the United States has had either the ability or the opportunity to do, to promote the doctrine of service for merit only out of the realm of theory into the realm of governmental practice. While he was criticized by the friends of Civil Service Reform for not going far enough during his presidency to protect the encroachments of those who desire to have the offices distributed as political rewards or for partisan ends, such specific acts as his transference to the classified service of all fourth-class postmasters east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers, his insistence upon a thorough investigation of the scandals in the Post Office department, and his order forbidding federal employés use their offices for political purposes in the campaign of 1908 are typical of his vigorous support of the merit system.
Conservation of National Resources.—If Mr Roosevelt did not invent this term he literally created as well as led the movement which made Conservation in 1910 the foremost political and social question in the United States. The old theory was that the general prosperity of the country depends upon the development of its natural resources—a development which can best be achieved by private capital, acting under the natural incentive of financial profits. Upon this theory public land was either given away or sold for a trifle by the nation to individual holders. While it is true that the building of railways, the opening of mines, the growth of the lumber industry and the settlement of frontier lands by hardy pioneers was rapidly promoted by this policy, it also resulted naturally in the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of a comparatively few men who were controlling lumber, coal, oil and railway transportation in a way that was believed to be a menace to the public welfare. Nor was the concentration of wealth the only danger of this policy; it led to the destruction of forests, the exhaustion of farming soils and the wasteful mining of coal and minerals, since the desire for quick profits, even when they entail risk to permanency of capital, is always a powerful human motive. Mr Roosevelt not only framed legislation to regulate this concentration of wealth and to preserve forests, water power, mines and arable soil, but organized departments in his administration for carrying his legislation into effect (see Irrigation: United States). His official acts and the influence of his speeches and messages led to the adoption by both citizens and government of a new theory regarding natural resources. It is that the government acting for the people, who are the real owners of all public property, shall permanently retain the fee in public lands, leaving their products to be developed by private capital under leases which are limited in their duration and which give the government complete power to regulate the industrial operations of the lessees.
Government Regulation of Corporations.—The growth of the corporation as an industrial machine had in recent years been very rapid in the United States. The industrial and financial corporations had grown so powerful as to venture to contend for the first place with the authority of the government itself. As Mr Roosevelt often pointed out, no nation will live long in which the authority of government—especially in a democracy—is supplanted by the private interest of a real money power. Early in his political career, Mr Roosevelt foresaw this conflict, and as president he aroused public opinion so that the people understood it, and threw his effective influence into the framing of legislation under which the Federal government is now successfully combating the illegal acts of the powerful trusts. He established the Federal Department of Commerce and Labor, the secretary of which has a seat in the cabinet, and in which there exists a bureau of corporations possessing the specific function of inspecting and supervising interstate corporations an entirely new feature in American government. He strengthened the interstate commission for the regulation of railroads, inaugurated successful suits against monopolies—notably the Standard Oil Company and the so-called Sugar Trust,—and achieved distinct practical results in favour of a system of “industrial democracy” where all men shall have equal rights under the law and where there shall be no privileged interests exempt from the operation of the law. Both his friends and his enemies agree that he did more than any other public man to effect these changed relations of government and industry. There is, however, a violent disagreement regarding the desirability and the results of his course. His critics assert that he simply interrupted the orderly course of business, inspired panic and dangerously arrested prosperity. Mr Roosevelt and his supporters were convinced that his policy was necessary to save the country from the social and political dangers of plutocracy, and that in establishing a definite system of government regulation not only were popular rights preserved and justice promoted but industrialism and finance were placed upon a basis of regularity and honesty that paved the way for an era of general prosperity in the United States, unhampered by feverish speculation and shrewd scheming, such as the country had so far in its history been unable to enjoy.
The Army and Navy.—Mr Roosevelt was a pronounced advocate of international peace but also an advocate of law and order. He believed that international controversies would ultimately be settled by judicial procedure, and in the Russo-Japanese War and the establishment of the Hague Court he took an active part in promoting the judicial settlement of disputes between nations. For his efforts leading to the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War he received the Nobel Peace Prize, and in May 1910 he delivered an address on “International Peace” before the Nobel committee in Christiania. But, with this advocacy of international peace, he also advocated the maintenance by the United States of an efficient and thoroughly equipped army and navy. To some of his critics these two positions seem inconsistent. Mr Roosevelt argued not only that they were consistent but that the one logically followed the other. In his Nobel address he said: “In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual potential force; on the existence of a police or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect;” and he expressed the opinion that until a recognized international supreme court was firmly established, every nation must be prepared to defend itself, and when it was established all the nations must be prepared to maintain its decrees against any recalcitrant nation. On this ground during his presidential administration Mr Roosevelt was deeply concerned in many measures for improving the administrative side of the War Department and educating, training and strengthening the army. Although he himself served in the army during the Spanish War his special interest was in the navy, springing probably from his relationship with the navy during his brief term as assistant secretary. The successful and dramatic voyage of the American fleet around the world, undertaken in spite of predictions of disaster made by naval experts in Europe and the United States, was conceived and inspired by him, and this single feat would alone justify the statement that no American public man had done so much since the Civil War as he to strengthen the physical power and the moral character of the United States navy.
The Panama Canal.—The greatest single material achievement of Mr Roosevelt's presidency was the taking over by the United States of the project to build a Panama Canal. The project itself is nearly four centuries old; for a century Great Britain and the United States had been sometimes in friendly, sometimes in acrimonious dispute as to how this was to be accomplished; the French undertook the work and failed. Mr Roosevelt recognized the new republic of Panama, and obtained from it for
