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Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
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Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
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Revealing Post-Presidential Snapshots:
Theodore Roosevelt in the Outlook,
March-July 1909
by William N. Tilchin
Recently I received from a good friend a gift of a small TR
book of which I previously had been unaware: Theodore
Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials (New York: The Outlook
Company, 1909). It consists of the first eleven editorials written
for the Outlook by its new contributing editor, former President
Roosevelt, over the period March 6 - July 17, 1909. These are
titled, respectively, “Why I Believe in the Kind of American
Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands,” “A Judicial
Experience,” “A Scientific Expedition,” “Where We Cannot
Work With Socialists,” “Where We Can Work With Socialists,”
“Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic,” “The Japanese Question,”
“Tolstoy,” “A Southerner’s View of the South,” “The Thraldom of
Names,” and “Give Me Neither Poverty Nor Riches.”
Guided by his conscience, Roosevelt had bypassed more
lucrative opportunities in order to accept the offer of the
Outlook’s father-son team of Lyman and Lawrence Abbott to
write for their magazine. TR was grateful for the Outlook’s
support “during the crises and controversies of his presidency.”1
Roosevelt would retain his position with the Outlook until June
1914, and even after he submitted his letter of resignation he
continued to publish articles (albeit far fewer) in the Outlook as
a “special contributor.”2
Outlook Editorials is not a time-bound volume, for its
author put forward points of view that he had long held and
would continue to hold for the remainder of his life. Aside
from “A Scientific Expedition,” a very short piece designed to
justify TR’s African safari and to persuade journalists not to try
to cover it, and “A Southerner’s View of the South”—in which
TR lamented that an insightful American writer, Warrington
Dawson, had gained a substantial audience in Great Britain
and Europe but not in the United States—one can identify in
the collection of editorials contained in this little volume an
overarching theme: Theodore Roosevelt and those he most
admired adhered to very progressive ideas regarding the
issues of their era, and also were clear-headed, practical people
seeking just, attainable, workable solutions to the problems
they perceived, while always understanding that perfection is
an impossibility. In other words, these editorials advocated for
what TR considered “practical idealism,” or “realizable ideals.”3
Roosevelt’s editorial of March 6, two days after his
relinquishing of the presidency, explained why he had chosen
the Outlook as the platform for communicating his points of
view. Even when the Outlook had disagreed with his policies as
President, Roosevelt remarked, “Dr. Abbott and his associates
always conscientiously strove to be fair and . . . not only
desired to tell the truth,” but invariably sought “to find out the
facts.”4 Moreover, “the first question asked when any matter
of policy arises . . . is whether . . . a given course is right, and
should be followed because it is in the real and lasting interest
of the Nation.”5 TR contrasted the Outlook with “certain daily
newspapers” and “certain periodicals . . . owned or controlled by
men of vast wealth who have gained their wealth in evil fashion,”
and who have, in effect, “purchased mendacity.”6 Anticipating
his iconic “Man in the Arena” speech in Paris a year later,
Roosevelt then observed:
A cultivated man of good intelligence who has acquired the
knack of saying bitter things, but who lacks the robustness
which will enable him to feel at ease among strong men of
action, is apt, if his nature has in it anything of meanness
or untruthfulness, to strive for a reputation in what is to
him the easiest way. He can find no work which is easier—
and less worth doing—than to sit in cloistered aloofness
from the men who wage the real and important struggles
of life and to endeavor, by an unceasing output of slander
in regard to them, to bolster up his own uneasy desire to be
considered superior to them.7
The Outlook, Roosevelt declared, zeroing in on the central
theme of this book, “has stood for righteousness, but it has
never been self-righteous.” And it “knows that common sense is
essential above all other qualities to the idealist; for an idealist
without common sense, without the capacity to work in hard,
practical fashion for actual results, is merely a boat that is all
sails, and with neither ballast nor rudder.”8
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Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
“A Judicial Experience” recounts the long-ago evolution of
TR’s thinking on the sometimes cruel exploitation of vulnerable
laborers, specifically with regard to his support as a New York
state legislator for a bill banning cigar-making in tenement
houses, a bill that had been enacted into law but then overturned
by the courts. “My reason for relating this anecdote,” TR
explained,
is because from that day to this I have felt an ever-growing
conviction of the need of having on the bench men who,
in addition to being learned in the law and upright, shall
possess a broad understanding of and sympathy with their
countrymen as a whole, so that the questions of humanity
and of social justice shall not be considered by them
as wholly inferior to the defense of vested rights or the
upholding of liberty of contract.
Too many contemporary judges, Roosevelt went on,
often signally fail to protect the laboring man and the
laboring man’s widow and children in their just rights,
and . . . heartbreaking and pitiful injustice too often results
therefrom; and this primarily because our judges lack either
the opportunity or the power thoroughly to understand the
working man’s and working woman’s position and vital
needs.9
“Where We Cannot Work With Socialists” (the longest
editorial in this book), “Where We Can Work With Socialists,”
and “Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic” as a group reveal a
great deal about TR as a strongly progressive, always thoughtful,
always practical reformer. They expound at length on the
principal theme of the volume.
The core thesis of “Where We Cannot Work With Socialists”
is encapsulated in the following excerpt:
There are dreadful woes in modern life, dreadful suffering
among some of those who toil, brutal wrong-doing among
some of those who make colossal fortunes by exploiting
the toilers. It is the duty of every honest and upright man,
of every man who holds within his breast the capacity for
righteous indignation, to recognize these wrongs, and to
strive with all his might to bring about a better condition of
things. But he will never bring about this better condition
by misstating facts and advocating remedies which are not
merely false, but fatal.10
Much of this essay consists of a multi-pronged attack on those
TR termed “doctrinaire” or “advanced” or “extreme” or “ultra-”
socialists. He found such people to be “not only convinced
opponents of private property, but also bitterly hostile to
religion and morality,” and he ridiculed the theory that the
masses of citizens of any country ever would willingly work
hard, without regard for their compensation, “for the benefit of
the community.” (A common Marxian rendition of this theory
is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs.”)11 Notwithstanding his earlier assessment “that every
step toward civilization is marked by a check on individualism,”
Roosevelt went on to assert the necessity of “great accumulations
of capital” and of highly skilled management of industrial
enterprises.12
Roosevelt demonstratively set up “Where We Can Work
With Socialists” as a sequel by restating in its opening sentence
a declaration found in the closing sentence of “Where We
Cannot Work With Socialists”: The implementation of extreme
socialist ideas ultimately would bring about the “annihilation
of civilization.”13 Yet he proceeded to point out in the sequel’s
second paragraph that
the self-styled Socialists are of many and utterly different
types. . . . There are many peculiarly high-minded men and
women who like to speak of themselves as Socialists, whose
attitude, conscious or unconscious, is really merely an
indignant recognition of the evil of present conditions and
an ardent wish to remedy it, and whose Socialism is really
only an advanced form of liberalism. . . . The Socialists
of this moral type may in practice be very good citizens
indeed, with whom we can at many points cooperate.
They are often joined temporarily with what are called
the “opportunist Socialists”—those who may advocate an
impossible and highly undesirable Utopia as a matter of
abstract faith, but who in practice try to secure the adoption
only of some given principle which will do away with some
phase of existing wrong. With these two groups of Socialists
it is often possible for all far-sighted men to join heartily in
the effort to secure a given reform or do away with a given
abuse.14
TR then illustrated this general argument through a more
concrete discussion:
An employers’ liability law is no more Socialistic than a fire
department; the regulation of railway rates is by no means
as Socialistic as the digging and enlarging of the Erie Canal
at the expense of the State. A proper compensation law
would merely distribute over the entire industry the shock of
accident or disease, instead of limiting it to the unfortunate
individual on whom, through no fault of his, it happened to
fall. As communities become more thickly settled and their
lives more complex, it grows ever more and more necessary
for some of the work formerly performed by individuals,
each for himself, to be performed by the community for the
community as a whole. Isolated farms need no complicated
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
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Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials
more can be done by the resolute effort for a many-sided
higher life. This life must largely come to each individual
from within, by his own effort, but toward the attainment
of it each of us can help many others. Such a life must
represent the struggle for a higher and broader humanity,
to be shown not merely in the dealings of each of us within
the realm of the State, but even more by the dealings of each
of us in the more intimate realm of the family; for the life of
the State rests and must ever rest upon the life of the family
and the neighborhood.18
Theodore Roosevelt at his desk in the Outlook office.
system of sewerage; but this does not mean that public
control of sewerage in a great city should be resisted on the
ground that it tends toward Socialism. Let each proposition
be treated on its own merits, soberly and cautiously, but
without any of that rigidity of mind which fears all reform.15
Roosevelt concluded “Where We Can Work With Socialists”
with a call for “equality of opportunity, but not for equality of
reward unless there is also equality of service,” and for a “strong,
just, wise, and democratic” government doing “its full share” to
help remedy “the evils of today.”16
“Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic” begins by dismissing
both “doctrinaire socialism” and “unrestricted individualism.”17
The second half of this short editorial displays TR as a particularly
penetrating analyst of societal development:
The influences that tell upon [society] are countless; they
are closely interwoven, interdependent, and each is acted
upon by many others. It is pathetically absurd, when such
are the conditions, to believe that some one simple panacea
for all evils can be found. Slowly, with infinite difficulty,
with bitter disappointments, with stumblings and haltings,
we are working our way upward and onward. In this
progress something can be done by continually striving to
improve the social system, now here, now there. Something
In “The Japanese Question,” Roosevelt in essence was
seeking to have the United States sustain and build upon his
remarkable presidential accomplishments pertaining to U.S.Japan relations.19 He called the attention of readers to his success
through a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan’s government
in limiting the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United
States. “The Japanese,” TR wrote, “are a highly civilized people
of extraordinary military, artistic, and industrial development;
they are proud, warlike, and sensitive.” In interacting with
Japan (as with other nations), the United States should always
be careful to employ “all possible courtesy”; the delicate issue of
immigration should continue to be handled with “the minimum
of offensiveness” and should produce “the least possible friction”
and “the least possible hard feeling.”20 Roosevelt also reminded
his audience indirectly that the world cruise of the Great White
Fleet during 1907-1909 had contributed significantly to the
establishment of amicable relations between the United States
and Japan. Looking forward, “all really patriotic and far-sighted
Americans” should “insist that hand in hand with a policy of
good will toward foreign nations should go the policy of the
upbuilding of our navy.”21 TR closed this editorial with a broader
argument about the importance of U.S. naval power that he had
been making since the 1880s and would revisit repeatedly for
the remainder of his life:
The professional peace advocate who wishes us to stop
building up our navy is, in reality, seeking to put us in a
position where we would be absolutely at the mercy of any
other nation that happened to wish to disregard our desires
to control the immigration that comes to our shores, to
protect our own interests in the Panama Canal, to protect
our own citizens abroad, or to take any stand whatever
either for our own international honor or in the interest of
international righteousness. . . . A strong navy is the surest
guaranty of peace that America can have, and the cheapest
insurance against war that Uncle Sam can possibly pay.22
“Tolstoy” is devoted primarily to the presentation of a
complex, predominantly negative view of an extraordinary writer
TR acknowledged to be “a man of genius, a great novelist.”23 But
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
even here the overarching theme of Outlook Editorials appears
in a reference to the
men . . . who made our Constitution; men accustomed to
work with their fellows, accustomed to compromise; men
who clung to high ideals, but who were imbued with the
philosophy which Abraham Lincoln afterwards so strikingly
exemplified, and were content to take the best possible
where the best absolute could not be secured. This was the
spirit of Washington and his associates in one great crisis of
our national life, of Lincoln and his associates in the other
great crisis. It is the only spirit from which it will ever be
possible to secure good results in a free country.24
“The Thraldom of Names,” an especially fascinating
editorial and the volume’s second longest, begins with the
premise that the use of labels such as “liberty” and “order”
can obscure “the simple fact that despotism is despotism, . . .
oppression oppression, whether committed by one individual or
by many individuals, by a State or by a private corporation. . . .
All forms of tyranny and cruelty must alike be condemned by
honest men.” The American people “have achieved democracy
in politics just because we have been able to steer a middle
course between the rule of the mob and the rule of the dictator,”
and “we shall achieve industrial democracy because we shall
steer a similar middle course between the extreme individualist
and the Socialist.”25 Roosevelt then elaborated:
to modern business, but which, under the decisions of the
courts, and because of the short-sightedness of the public,
have become the chief factors in political and business
debasement. But it would be just as bad to put the control
of the Government into the hands of demagogues and
visionaries who seek to pander to ignorance and prejudice
by penalizing thrift and business enterprise, and ruining
all men of means, with, as an attendant result, the ruin of
the entire community. . . . It is absolutely indispensable
to foster the spirit of individual initiative, of self-reliance,
[while recognizing] that the growth of our complex
civilization necessitates an increase in the exercise of the
functions of the State.26
Addressing his corporate critics, TR insisted that
the movement for Government control of the great business
corporations is no more a movement against liberty than a
movement to put a stop to violence is a movement against
liberty. . . . The huge irresponsible corporation which
demands liberty from the supervision of Government agents
stands on the same ground as the less dangerous criminal
of the streets who wishes liberty from police interference.27
Roosevelt wrapped up “The Thraldom of Names” by
summarizing its essential message in one powerful sentence:
We must stand for the good citizen because he is a good
citizen, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, and
we must mercilessly attack the man who does evil,
wholly without regard to whether the evil is done in high
or low places, whether it takes the form of homicidal
violence among members of a federation of miners, or of
unscrupulous craft and greed in the head of some great
Wall Street corporation.28
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
It is essential that we should wrest the control of the
Government out of the hands of rich men who use it for
unhealthy purposes, and should keep it out of their hands;
and to this end the first requisite is to provide means
adequately to deal with corporations, which are essential
35
The triumphant return to the United States of the Great White Fleet in February 1909,
completing a fourteen-month world cruise that featured a very friendly
reception in Japan in October 1908.
The last of the eleven Outlook Editorials,
a short one titled “Give Me Neither Poverty
Nor Riches,” is a fitting finale for this
collection. Here TR rejected the idea that
“the heaping up of wealth” is “the be-all and
end-all of life” and called, in the interest of the
entire community, for the “effective taxation
of vast fortunes,” particularly through “a
heavily graded progressive inheritance tax, a
singularly wise and unobjectionable kind of
tax.”29
At the time Outlook Editorials was
published, Theodore Roosevelt was well
into his long safari in East Africa and was
largely disengaged from political combat.
In the summer of 1909, of course, nobody
36
could foresee either the establishment in 1912 of the TR-led
Bull Moose Party or the enormously destructive Great War of
1914-1918 about which Roosevelt would have so much to say,
and whose effects on him politically and personally would be
so profound. But these editorials offered a strong indication
that Roosevelt’s disengagement would be only temporary, that
his progressive prescriptions for the nation’s internal problems
would likely become increasingly far-reaching, and that he
would be a political force to reckon with throughout his postpresidential years.
Endnotes
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House,
2001), pp. 540-541.
1
Theodore Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, June 29, 1914, in Elting
E. Morison et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8
vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951-1954),
Vol. VII, p. 768. See, for example, Roosevelt’s Outlook review
of the first two volumes of Albert Beveridge’s The Life of John
Marshall, July 18, 1917, pp. 448-449.
2
3
See William N. Tilchin, “Morality and the Presidency of
Theodore Roosevelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal,
Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 4-5.
Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials (New York: The
Outlook Company, 1909), p. 3.
4
5
Ibid., p. 10.
6
Ibid., p. 4.
7
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
8
Ibid., pp. 7-8.
9
Ibid., pp. 20-21.
10
Ibid., p. 44.
11
Ibid., pp. 34, 37-39.
12
Ibid., pp. 31-32, 45-47, 49.
13
Ibid., pp. 50, 53.
14
Ibid., pp. 54-56.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
15
Ibid., pp. 57-58.
16
Ibid., pp. 63-64.
17
Ibid., p. 67.
18
Ibid., pp. 68-69.
For a detailed analysis of would-be historian James Bradley’s
abominable misrepresentation of the subject of TR and Japan,
see William N. Tilchin, “An Outrage Pure and Simple,” Theodore
Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, Fall 2010,
pp. 39-45.
19
20
TR, Outlook Editorials, pp. 73, 75, 77.
21
Ibid., p. 77.
22
Ibid., pp. 78-79.
Ibid., pp. 85, 92. “Strong men may gain something from
Tolstoy’s moral teachings,” Roosevelt observed at one point, “but
only on condition that they are strong enough and sane enough
to be repelled by those parts of his teachings which are foolish
or immoral.” Outlook Editorials, p. 86. A later letter from TR
to his close English friend Arthur Lee (written on the day of the
presidential election in 1912) included this paragraph: “I sent the
part of your letter referring to Jane Addams direct to her, and,
when I get an answer from her, I will send it to you. I have deeply
prized her support. There were points where I had to drag her
forward, notably as regards our battleship program, for she is a
disciple of Tolstoy; but she is a really good woman who has done
really practical work for the betterment of social conditions.” TR
to Lee, November 5, 1912, Letters of TR, Vol. VII, p. 633. (For a
discussion of the TR-Addams relationship, see Louise W. Knight,
“Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt: A Political Friendship,”
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XXXIV, Nos. 1, 2,
& 3, Winter-Spring-Summer 2013, pp. 69-75.)
23
24
TR, Outlook Editorials, p. 92.
25
Ibid., pp. 104, 106.
26
Ibid., pp. 108-109.
27
Ibid., p. 116.
28
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., pp. 123-125. Would TR be appalled by the present-day
opponents of the progressive estate tax, who obviously do not
find it “unobjectionable,” and who prefer to label it the “death
tax”?
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