Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The August Day Plutocracy Would Love Us to Forget
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the most ‘radical speech’ an American ex-President has ever delivered.
Ex-Presidents almost always follow a small number of well-worn scripts. Some rush to cash in on their celebrity. Some do charitable good deeds. Some just lie low.
Exactly one century ago, on August 31, 1910, we had an ex-President who took a brash and bold leap that took him far beyond these narrowly circumscribed roles. On that day, in the middle of Middle America, a former President — Theodore Roosevelt — essentially called on his fellow citizens to smash the nation’s rich down to democratic size.
We need, Roosevelt told a massive assembly of 30,000 listeners, to “destroy privilege.” Ruin for our democracy, he warned, will be “inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few.”
Those listeners — in Osawatomie, Kansas — roared their approval. Back East, apologists for grand fortune would be aghast. Editorial writers would label Roosevelt “frankly socialistic,” even “anarchistic.” A later historian, George Mowry, would call TR’s talk, soon to be known as his “New Nationalism” address, ”the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President.”
Time hasn’t dimmed that radicalism. Indeed, TR’s speech speaks powerfully to us today, mainly because we confront, a hundred years after he spoke in Osawatomie, the same concentrated wealth and power that TR so feared.
As President, between 1901 and early 1909, Roosevelt had taken on a plutocracy just as entrenched as ours today. He won some battles and ducked many others. But he left the White House feeling the nation, under his successor William Howard Taft, would be headed in the right direction.
But Taft disappointed Roosevelt and outraged the progressive wing of Roosevelt’s Republican Party. TR saw a burning need to spell out a clearer vision for his nation’s future, and he jumped at the invitation from Osawatomie to help dedicate the historic small city’s John Brown Memorial Park.
The event quickly figured to be the biggest in Kansas political history. Roosevelt had just finished a triumphal global tour. He ranked, observers agreed, as the “world’s most popular citizen.”
Kansans would pull out all the stops to set the stage for a memorable speech. By the appointed day, Osawatomie had never looked better. Bands and dignitaries would be everywhere.
“We are ready for plutocrat and peasant,” wrote one local editor, “to honor the ground where John Brown made his decisive stand for freedom.”
Plutocrats never did show. But average Kansans did. They started coming the day before TR’s scheduled appearance, in a driving rain, via “foot, bicycles, motors, buggies, wagons, trains.”
The rain, fortunately, would stop before the mud became too deep. Roosevelt would have open skies when he stepped up onto his podium, a kitchen table, to begin his address. The “surging throng,” says historian Robert La Forte, “continually cheered” for the next hour and a half.
Most Americans today would cheer, too. Are you outraged by the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? Our national resources, Roosevelt pronounced, “must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few.”
Think corporations wield too much clout?
“The Constitution guarantees protections to property, and we must make that promise good,” Roosevelt noted. “But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.”
We must “prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes,” TR enunciated, and hold corporate officials “personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”
Again and again, Roosevelt urged his listeners to demand state “and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting.” The absence of that restraint, he noted, “has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”
But TR didn’t stop there. Restraining fortunes based on “unfair money-getting” had to be only a first step. A fortune “gained without doing damage to the community,” he added, deserves no praise. Americans needed to set a higher standard. We should permit fortunes “to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”
And even those fortunes, Roosevelt added, needed to be checked, because the “really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities” that “differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means,” qualities that help ensure the “political domination of money.”
To check the growth and limit the power of these fortunes, Roosevelt called for a progressive income tax and an “inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the sizes of the estate.”
Three years after TR’s Osawatomie speech, we would have an income tax in the United States. Six years later after Osawatomie, we would have an estate tax. By the middle of the 20th century, many of the corporate regulatory reforms that Roosevelt demanded on that August day a century ago would be the law of the land.
By that mid century, the plutocracy that Roosevelt decried had essentially disappeared. The United States had become a middle class nation where average workers, as TR envisioned in 1910, had “a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough” to leave them “time and energy” to bear their “share in the management of the community.”
Now that mid 20th century middle class has disappeared. We live amid plutocracy once again. In fact, 2010 marks the first year since 1916 that we don’t even have an estate tax on the books. The heirs of the super rich can this year inherit billions in inheritance totally tax-free.
A hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt refused to accept these sorts of concentrations of enormous wealth. At Osawatomie, he helped inspire a generation-long struggle to break up these concentrations. That struggle succeeded.
Our struggle has only just begun. We can succeed, too.
- Posted in
60 Comments so far
Show AllWho will be our Teddy Roosevelt?
Alan Grayson.
Nope. Generally, Grayson is a decent fellow but politically he's too beholden to AIPAC to be able to address sufficiently the root causes of our problems.
q
Our Teddy Roosevelt has been on the ballot of the past 4 presidential elections, however, Ralph Nader has not gotten more than 3% of the vote in any of those elections.
Our problems are not the result of not having a Teddy Roosevelt, they are the result of letting pop culture and mainstream media control our minds, resulting in us ignoring our Teddy Roosevelt.
Checking the websites for the City of Owasatomie and the John Brown Park there are no special events scheduled to celebrate the centennial of Roosevelt's speech...how ungrateful can we get?
I concur on the Nader angle. Now who?
The issue of no celebration of the centennial just goes to prove it's possible for things to be forgotten. Like Glen Beck really not knowing it was MLK's speech anniversary. The difference is that GB has no class.
Reading this has proven to me that in the past a President didn't hesitate to talk HONESTLY about the economy and its potential pitfalls.
Unfortunately, what Teddy Roosevelt feared has come to pass "in spades" and NO ONE in our government, from the President on down, makes the slightest mention of it. In fact, our Supreme Court has made it even easier for "money to "talk" in Congress.
Our President ought to WAKE UP and read a posting like this!!! He never mentions the disasterous condition the corporatocracy has plunged America into!!! Nor does he have any solution to it!
It's way past time that our President stand up, refuse to accept the ongoing, rapacious concentrations of enormous wealth, and "help inspire a generation-long struggle to break up these concentrations."
THE PLUTOCRACY MUST DIE!!!!
that would be an "ex"-President speaking honestly; it does make a difference...
Yes, Eisenhower wasn't quite out the door yet, but damn close when he warned of the military-industrial complex.
TR was absolutely right, and my estimation of him has just gone up several notches.
Profound thanks to Chuck Collins.
Jim Shea
Editorial writers would label Roosevelt “frankly socialistic,” even “anarchistic.”
Pres. TR was neither of these. He was an imperialist and a capitalist. The true socialist in the race that year was Eugene Debbs.
President Roosevelt called for a progressive income tax and an “inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the sizes of the estate.”
Roosevelt was an opportunist. You'll find that these ideas"progressive income tax...", had their their roots somewhere else.
Roosevelt's predictions of ruin for democracy in; and the U.S. itself had a hidden deeper meaning. That message was that capitalism and exploitation of the lower classes which he was not a member of would cease. Those were his true interests in promoting the limited reactionary reforms.
Great ideas often come from "somewhere else". I think you're getting your years mixed up here as 1910 was NOT a presidential election year. Yes, Debs was the socialist and he certainly had the progressive ideas. But the point of this article is not to bring up what Debs did but what a REPUBLICAN former President had to say after he retired. I am old enough to remember what it was like prior to the slow destruction of the middle class. When I was growing up in the 50's & 60's there was still a real progressive income tax and regulations on corporations. No, things weren't perfect but most people did live a much better life than now and we weren't totally controlled by the plutocrats. I wonder, though if, with all the brainwashing that has taken place since the elevation of The Actor to President back in 1980, the majority of the people of the US would even listen or understand what TR had to say? Without hearing or reading that speech given 100 years ago I cannot say exactly what TR had in mind, and frankly I doubt that you can either upny! (I apologize in advance IF you've read the whole thing.)
There wasn't a presidential election that year thank you for the edit peggyforpeace. The liberals have a choice join with the real left or stay within confines of a two party capitalist system. Liberals participation in the witch hunts of the fifties is a practical historical warning to all good liberal leftists. Read Edmund Morris' biography. He was a warmonger and imperialist. So you can stop any hypocritical attempt at some moral authority that is typical of your type. Thank you.
Please do tell me what is "my type?" You seem to be a bit of a prig...
Typical in the respect that instead sticking to meat an argument your type always picks on some minor point and or personal attacks for the purpose of misdirection. The liberals only have a past and no future.The liberals best days are behind them. They are reactionary. It is ridiculous to think we have to vote for the lesser of two evils. That somehow, gee if only those Dems or Repubs would listen to us. We'll force them to our way of thinking by voting more in. Sure. You appear to be a Pollyanna.
Your rudeness speaks for itself. Additionally, your current posting really makes no sense. Golly, perhaps you might use more precise language. And, no, I am not a Pollyanna. I've likely been on the planet many years longer than you and don't take myself nearly as seriously as you seem to take yourself. Have a nice night.
I stand by the posting. Your reply proves my point. Just opening your eyes to what the world is really like. To show how ridiculous it is to hold up TR as anything but a warmonger and imperialist. That everything he did was to advance the interests of the empire and if that meant appeasing a few poor people with some flowery words. It speaks volumes that you can't find a hole in my assertion and you continue to level your petty personal attacks. The older generations contributions to civilization speak for itself. The whole of society needs to be more critical to discern a better way forward. And not take it on faith when their "wise elders" speak of the good old days.
In essence, the speech was a trial ballon for TR's bid for the 1912 Republican Presidential Nomination, and later became known as the New Nationalism in contrast to Wilson's New Freedom platform. It's interesting to investigate why TR was mad at his chosen successor Taft as Taft was far more the Trust Buster that TR ever was. IMO, the 1912 election was a disaster for the USA as TR split the Republican vote which allowed Wilson to win. The 1912 election provides us with an important historical Waht If? as Taft would have easily trounced Wilson and the Progressive core was centered in the Republican Party.
Text of the speech here:
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/trnationalismspeech.pdf
Basically it was a call to throw a few bones to the dogs...er, working class. Which, as you point out, happened in 50's and 60's. Those days are long gone and we are being marched lockstep off a cliff. Roosevelt sums it up nicely towards the end of the speech:
"Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism."
there is nothing good about income tax on people who can hardly provide for their family breaking their back building the 1%'s equity. TDR or not.
Cool. He also gave away Eleanor to marry Franklin, rather than sell her. I enjoy the following lost story.
TR was a close friend of Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University. One chance day found Butler outbound from Manhattan on a ship going to Europe. The ship's Captain announced via public address system that in ten minutes they would pass a ship inbound for Manhattan. On this ship was former President Theodore Roosevelt, returning from a hunting safari in Africa (along with the encephalo end of myriad beasties).
Butler had a sudden idea and started laughing. He spun on his feet, ran back to his stateroom, and grabbed the Bible from a dresser drawer. Then he tore off for the ship's Radio Communication shack. He told the clerk he had an urgent message for TR - so the clerk established a radio link with that ship and got ready to transmit in Morse Code.
On the incoming ship, TR was paged to the radio shack for an urgent message from Nicholas Murray Butler. Butler opened the Bible to a random page and pointed at a verse for the clerk to start sending Morse code. Once a minute he chose another random page.
The point was that both TR and Butler were disdainful of Christianity, and TR later said this was one of the best jokes ever played upon him. Butler includes this story in his two-volume autobiography. It is also the only known joke that one winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has ever played upon another winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trylon
Transcript of the speech here:
[split URL]
[http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/
trnationalismspeech.pdf]
"
THE NEW NATIONALISM
Osawatomie, Kansas
August 31, 1910.
We come here to-day to commemorate one of the epochmaking events of the long struggle for the rights of man - the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country - this great Republic - means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.
...
"
Triumph of American exceptional-ism. "of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him." Poverty will always exist under this system. Ghandi said that "poverty was terrorism".
The Democrats should "repackage" the speech in a campaign ad that could be run in every state of the Union, declaring that Republicans have abandoned these principles, worked to dismantle them and are now (and have been for decades) on the side of the Plutocrats (Economic Royalists in FDR's words).
The Democrats?
Do you suppose no one will notice the invalidating element of utter hypocrisy?
Precisely the reason Democrats will fare badly in the November elections. They won't be able to contrast themselves with their Republican challengers since most of them have been rubber-stamping Obama's rebranded Republican agenda for the past 18 months.
Uh-Oh! You have been paying attention!
As I recall, TRs first term was by succession, not by election to the presidency. So he didn't have to raise money for campaign ads.
Correct, but he did get elected in 1904 well before women and minorities could vote. The political dynamics between the Republican and Democrat Parties was also vastly different from today.
TR was a past President as, for example, Carter is now. TR's speech, so threatening to the corporate sector, would not, if given today, be covered in a media now owned by that corporate sector. It would be a non-event.
Now, only that relatively small sector of the citizenry that combs the Web for information would know it had been given.
It would have been nice to include a link to the text of the speech. Does anyone have one?
Here's a link to a pdf of Teddy Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" speech:
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/trnationalismspeech.pdf
Thanks Ray for posting the link. Every semester, I printed the whole speech and distributed it to my US History students for them to read and respond to in the form of a short essay. Often the students would remark that the speech garnered only a few words within their history texts when it ought to be printed in fully. Unfortunately, very few people know of the speech as the Rich have worked very hard to get it eliminated from the historical memory, something even the authors's abet by not placing a link to the original speech. Something also not mentioned by the authors is the fact that TR's audience was far more politically astute than the late Middle Class Society they bemoan, which is ultimately why we're in the mess we're in.
3 years later a small group of men met in secrecy at Jekyll Island, Georgia to form the cartel that would draft The Federal Reserve Act that was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This act has been incrementally amended about 100 times. These men create our currency by fiat issued in the form of debt. These bankers have sucked the wealth created by working men and women and slaves out of our nation ever since ; hitherto. We are owned by these bankers that have financed both sides of what has become a perpetual state of war.Volumes have been written on this subject matter but we were too busy pointing our fingers at each other and shopping at the mall or otherwise distracted by media events to even care about our future which may be irretrievably lost forever as we wait and do nothing again.
"But Taft disappointed Roosevelt and outraged the progressive wing of Roosevelt’s Republican Party."
It's difficult to believe there was ever such a thing.
The plutocrats might not necessarily want us to forget that speech. Fake "populists" from both parties will take apart speeches from genuine populists in the past and use them to seduce and delude voters into identifying with them. Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, Obama, Gingrich, etc... did it to get to power and then deliver for the elites. We need genuine populists.
The situation will not improve without bloodshed. Bloodshed is the ONLY thing that will begin to restrain our overlords.
The bloodshed focus discredits the idea of miltant action and is unlikely to shake the mental cages of the pseudo-pacifists.
Plesae give it a rest,
Ever heard of "The Manifestation Principle"? If you and all the idiots who think like you continue to think your puny, violent mindset that our situations can only be changed through violence, then so shall it be. THIS NEGATIVE THINKING IS PRECISELY WHAT IS CAUSING THE CURRENT BLOODSHED!!! Others like I prefer to expand the thought that we can change things peaceably and without violence. The more of us who think our situations can be changed for the better through peace and non-violence, the more this becomes reality. Think peace and non-violence. Study The Course In Miracles. GET IT!!!
The Republicans say they want to reduce the deficit and keep taxes low on the rich. Most Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich. To me this should be a big campaign issue and a winner, but I guess to most people it is not. I feel out of step, and it seems that no amount of hippity-hopping relieves me of this nightmare.
You are out of step. Elections are decided with money, not votes.
I think the important aspect of this speech is that a conservative right wing ex-president made it. He's actually calling for regulation of corporations and campaign finance reform. Compare and contrast that with our democrat president who is way right of this platform. Head right from Obama and you have slathering fools advocating the "free market" of robber barons as seen by this tea bagger idiocy.
Teddy Roosevelt said a number of other things as well. Look closer before kneejerk approval.
In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
A few others...
No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
So in this context, how valuable is this article?
All in all, a worthless imperialist scum bag regardless of the contents of this speech.
Teddy Roosevelt didn't help none. Look at the position the world is now if you want proof.
yes, thank you...
the world's current condition, and direction, puts the lie to almost everything historical...
Including TR's genocide of 500,000 Phillipinos.
By allowing our "leaders" to do things like the slaughter of the Philippinos (or the Vietnamese or the Afghans), we tacitly endorse techniques of the most violent and pitiless treatment. This strengthens those who engage in thuggish behavior, which eventually comes home to roost.
See Mark Twain's description of the roundup and shooting of the Moros, unarmed men, women and children in 1906. Sadly, I believe Twain suppressed publication of his anti-imperialist writings until way after his death.
Joe
I think it only demonstrates how far right this country has gone. A republican president from the 50's WARNED us about the impending military industrial complex.
"A republican president from the 50's WARNED us about the impending military industrial complex."
Indeed he knew all about it......He helped create it....
Why do you think that the Peace activists no longer hold banners with quotes from Henry Ford or Dwight Eisenhower at their vigils, or no longer do vigils since Obama got elected POTUS?
Hypocrisy at its finest!