APUSH Ch 28-29 Quotes
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913
"American Enterprise is not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder and harder to get into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. why? because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak."
Lincoln Steffens, 1904 in his muckraking classic The Shame of the Cities; decried great threat posed by Tammany machine
"Bribery is no ordinary felony, but treason; . . . 'corruption which breaks out here and there and now and then, is not an occasional offense, but a common practice, and . . . the effect of it is literally to change the form of our government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy, representative of special interests."
Roosevelt, 1913 political message on phonograph to Boys' Progressive League ; preached doctrine of "strenuous life"
"Don't flinch, don't foul, and hit the line hard."
William Allen White, 1897 first meeting with TR
"He sounded in my heart the first trumpet call of the new time that was to be.... I had never known such a man as he, and never shall again. He overcame me, And in the hour or two we spent that day at lunch, and in a walk down F Street, he poured into my heart such visions, such ideals, such hopes, such a new attitude toward life and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had.... After that I was his man."
Gifford Pinchot, leading conservationist in Roosevelt administration
"The object of our forest policy is not to preserve the forests because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness, but the making of prosperous homes. Every other consideration comes as secondary... the test of utility.... implies that no lands will be permanently reserves which can serve the people better in any other way."
The Fatherland, the chief German-American propaganda newspaper in the United States
"We [Americans] prattle about humanity while we manufacture poisoned shrapnel and picric acid for profit. Ten thousand German widows, ten thousand orphans, then thousand graves bear the legend 'Made in America'"
Roosevelt's prophetic annual message to Congress 1907
"We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it to-day means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would."
Marie Jenny Howe, 1914 mass meeting of new generation "feminists" in New York
"We intend simply to be ourselves, not just our little female selves, but our whole big human selves."
Wilson's response to JA O'Leary in 1916 campaign (head of pro-German and pro-Irish organization, sent telegram to Wilson condemning him for having been pro-British in approving war loans and ammunition traffic)
"Your telegram received. I would feel deeply mortified to have you or anybody like you vote for me. Since you have access to many disloyal Americans and I have not, I will ask you to convey this message to them."
a republican congressman voiced complaints against Woodrow Wilson's Mexican policy in 1916
"it is characterized by weakness, uncertainty, vacillation, and uncontrollable desire to intermeddle in Mexican affairs, He has not had the courage to go into Mexico nor the courage to stay out.... I would either go into Mexico and pacify the country or I would keep my hands entirely out of Mexico, if we are too proud to fight, we should be too proud to quarrel. I would not choose between murderers."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1906 in muckraker speech
"now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. there is filth on the floor and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. but the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil."
Theodore Roosevelt, 1905
"when I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean . . . to give very man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he was not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing."
