Roosevelt, Theodore (Administration)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858–1919) was the 26th president of the United States and served from 1901 to 1909. He has something of a larger-than-life reputation and made his mark in many different fields, being a naturalist, historian, and writer in addition to a statesman. During his presidency, he was concerned with expanding the power of the state to take effective action against abusive corporations and with the United States' increasing involvement in world politics, taking a full part in the imperial system.

There was a correlation between Roosevelt's support for legislation that improved quality of life, such as new food and drug standards and conservation measures that included the creation of a national park system, and his interest in ensuring that businesses could fairly compete and that workers would be compensated fairly for their labor. Although the improvements in the average American's standard of living would be very gradual, Roosevelt's stance on business trusts and labor unions would set the stage for the eventual rise of organized labor in the 1930s and 1940s and for the merging of the working class into the middle class in the 1950s and the 1960s. His Square Deal for American workers would eventually be expanded through Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal into a safety net for poor Americans and through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society into an attempt to eliminate poverty outright.

Roosevelt was born into a noted Anglo-Dutch family and, as a boy, suffered from ill health, especially [Page 927]asthma. As a consequence, he developed an extensive regime of physical exercise—the “strenuous life”—that subsequently served him well, as his life was one of relentless energy and achievement. He was elected at the age of 23 to the New York Assembly and began to establish a reputation in battling corruption within the local political scene.

When the Spanish-American War broke out, he commanded the Rough Riders volunteer cavalry force that was dispatched to Cuba, and performed with such spectacular success that Roosevelt became a national hero. He was so popular that he was encouraged by the Republican Party power brokers to run for governor of New York. He did so, was successful, and spent the next two years persecuting the corrupt, as well as developing the capacity of government agencies to enforce regulatory regimes.

Alarmed by this apparent lack of loyalty, Republican leaders managed to shunt Roosevelt off into the vice presidency, believing that he would be unable to wield any meaningful influence in a post that is customarily only ceremonial. This plan was initially successful, and Roosevelt fretted impotently for a while, until President William McKinley was murdered and Roosevelt gained the presidency.

As president, Roosevelt designated some 230 million acres of land as federal reserves of one sort or another, which is emblematic of the nature of his entire administration. He recognized that the flora and fauna of nature were an important public good, that is, everyone in the country benefited from their presence and no individual or organization should be permitted either to own or to damage what should be part of the birthright of all Americans.

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