The Theodore Roosevelt Centennial CD-ROM

meaning of the Constitution. We are for human rights

and we intend to work for them in efficient fashion.

Where they can be best obtained by the application of

the doctrines of States rights, then we are for States'

rights. Where, in order to obtain them, it is necessary to

invoke the power of the nation, then we shall invoke to

its uttermost limits that mighty power. (At Madison

Square Garden, New York City, October 30, 1912.)

Mem. Ed. XIX, 458; Nat. Ed. XVII, 336.

GOVERNMENTAL POLICY. Our whole

governmental policy should be shaped to secure a more

even justice as between man and man, and better

conditions such as will permit each man to do the best

there is in him. In other words, our governmental ideal

is to secure as far as possible the even distribution of

justice. (At Pacific Theological Seminary, Spring 1911)

Mem. Ed. XV, 627; Nat. Ed. XIII, 661.

____________. To sum up, then, our position is, after

all, simple. We believe that the government should

concern itself chiefly with the matters that are of most

importance to the average man and average woman,

and that it should be its special province to aid in

making the conditions of life easier for these ordinary

men and ordinary women, who compose the great bulk

of our people. To this end we believe that the people

should have direct control over their own governmental

agencies; and that when this control has been secured, it

should be used with resolution, but with sanity and self-

restraint, in the effort to make conditions of life and

labor a little easier, a little fairer and better for the men

and women of the nation. (Century, October 1913.)

Mem. Ed. XIX, 553; Nat. Ed. XVII, 409.

GOVERNMENTAL POWER-CONCENTRATION

OF. Governmental power should be concentrated in the

hands of a very few men, who would be so conspicuous

that no citizen could help knowing all about them; and

the elections should not come too frequently. Not one

decent voter in ten will take the trouble annually to

inform himself as to the character of the host of petty

candidates to be balloted for, but he will be sure to

know all about the mayor, comptroller, etc. It is not to

his credit that we can only rely, and that without much

certainty, upon his taking a spasmodic interest in the

government that affects his own well-being: but such is

the case, and accordingly we ought, as far as possible,

to have a system requiring on his part intermittent and

not sustained action. (Century, November 1886.) Mem.

Ed. XV, 139; Nat. Ed. XIII, 98.

GOVERNMENTAL POWER — EXTENSION OF.

So long as governmental power existed exclusively for

the king and not at all for the people, then the history of

liberty was a history of the limitation of governmental

power. But now the governmental power rests in the

people, and the kings who enjoy privilege are the kings

of the financial and industrial world; and what they

clamor for is the limitation of governmental power, and

what the people sorely need is the extension of

governmental power. . . . The only way in which our

people can increase their power over the big

corporation that does wrong, the only way in which

they can protect the working man in his conditions of

work and life, the only way in which the people can

prevent children working in industry or secure women

an eight-hour day in industry, or secure compensation

for men killed or crippled in industry, is by extending,

instead of limiting, the powers of government.

There is no analogy whatever from the standpoint

of real liberty, and of real popular need, between the

limitations imposed by-the people on the power of an

irresponsible monarch or a dominant aristocracy, and

the limitations sought to. be imposed by big financiers,

by big corporation lawyers, and by well-meaning

students of a dead-and-gone system of political

economy on the power of the people to right social

wrongs and limit social abuses, and to secure for file

humble what, unless there is an extension of the powers

of government, the arrogant and the powerful will

certainly take from the humble. (At San Francisco,

September 14, 1912.) Mem. Ed. XIX, 420, 423; Nat.

Ed. XVII, 307, 309.

GOVERNMENTAL POWER-LIMITATION OF.

There once was a time in history when the limitation of

governmental power meant increasing liberty for the

people. In the present day the limitation of

governmental power, of governmental action, means

the enslavement of the people by the great corporations

who can only be held in check through the extension of

governmental power. (At San Francisco, September 14,

912.) Mem. Ed. XIX, 427; Nat. Ed. XVII, 313.

GOVERNMENTAL POWER. See also CONGRESS;

CONSTITUTION; COURTS; DIVISION OF POWERS;

EXECUTIVE; JUDICIARY; PRESIDENT .

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