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ADDRESS OF HON .THEODORE ROOSEVELT DELIVERED AT BOSTON, MASS. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1912

DELIVERED AT BOSTON, MASS. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1912 PRESENTED BY MR. REED April 29, 1912. —Ordered to be printed WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1912...

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PRINCIPLES, NOT PERSONALITIES, AT STAKE.

My friends and fellow citizens, men and women of Massachusetts, men and women of Boston, I am glad indeed to be in your old historic State, your old historic city, this evening to plead for a cause which is preeminently the cause for which Massachusetts has stood throughout her existence as a colony and as a Commonwealth. [Cheers.] And friends—friends, I shall make my appeal to you in the name of every man and every principle for whom and for which Massachusetts has stood in the heroic days of t

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FIGHTING FOR EVERY GOOD CITIZEN.

And those allusions I shall make right at the outset, so that I can get down to the part of my speech in which I shall strive, however feebly, to put before you the principles which I think are at stake in this contest. For mind you, friends, I hold that this is infinitely more than a mere faction fight in the Republican Party. [A voice: “That’s where you’re right.”] I hold that this is infinitely more than any ordinary party contest, for I claim that we who stand for the principles of progressi

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WILLING TO LOSE WITH A GOOD MAN.

When Mr. Taft came here on Thursday and I came here on Friday, Mr. Taft came here having lost the State of Illinois; I came here having lost the State of New Hampshire. [Laughter.] In Illinois Mr. Taft’s chief lieutenant had been Mr. Lorimer. [Hisses.] In New Hampshire my chief supporter, chief lieutenant, had been Gov. Bass. [Great applause.] And Mr. Taft came here to explain that he didn’t like Mr. Lorimer [laughter and applause], having kept his dislike strictly private and confidential [laug

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FOUGHT LORIMER IN ILLINOIS.

Now, just one more moment about Mr. Lorimer. I know his record well. Mr. Taft was originally, a year and a quarter ago, against Mr. Lorimer, and at that time he requested me not to assault Mr. Lorimer in public for fear it would help Mr. Lorimer. [Laughter.] And accordingly I kept quiet for several months, until I became convinced that the assault against Mr. Lorimer was going on with such excessive secrecy [laughter] that neither Mr. Lorimer nor any of his friends knew that there was an assault

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THE MAN FOR THE BOSSES.

I have got a couple of columns arranged parallel here, one containing a dozen of my representative supporters and the other containing the dozen foremost supporters of Mr. Taft. There has been a question raised by Mr. Taft as to whom the bosses were for. I will read you these two lists, and I will ask you to judge for yourselves. [A voice: “Exactly.” Laughter.] I will read you—[pounding at entrance]—there seem to be some gentlemen who would like to come in. I will read you the dozen of my suppor

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RECORD IS OPEN TO ALL.

Wait a moment. I know that kind well. And you can guarantee that any supporter of mine comes out in the open and supports me. [Applause.] And you can guarantee also that after he has supported me, and I have accepted his support, I won’t repudiate him afterwards. [Great applause. A voice: “That is a square deal.”] And finally, you can guarantee this, that you can search from the top to the bottom of my record in the past and of my record in the future and you will never find that I have done or

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HISSES ON THE BOSSES.

And now I have given you the names of my supporters. Here are the names of a dozen representative supporters of Mr. Taft: Senator Lorimer [hisses], Senator Penrose [hisses], Senator Gallinger [hisses], Senator Guggenheim [hisses], Senator Aldrich [hisses], Senator Stephenson [hisses], Mr. Kealing of Indiana [hisses], Mr. Barnes of New York [hisses], Mr. Cox of Ohio [hisses], Mr. Cannon [hisses], Mr. Ballinger [hisses], and finally, to balance Frank Heney in California, Mr. Patrick Calhoun [hisse

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APPEAL TO THE PATRIOTS.

And now, friends, to you men and women of Massachusetts, I wish to make as strong an appeal as I know how. I come from another State. I have no New England blood in me, but nine-tenths of the men in our nation’s past to whom I have looked up most have been men of New England blood. [Cries of “Hear! Hear!” and applause.] And I ask Massachusetts now to stand as Massachusetts has ever stood, to stand in the van of the forward movement and not to be dragged reluctantly onward behind the other States

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THE REAL KIND OF FIGHT.

And I ask Massachusetts to support us in this campaign, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. [Applause.] I appeal to you because this is the only kind of a fight worth going into, the kind of fight where the victory is worth winning and where the struggle is difficult. Here in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, we have against us the enormous preponderance of the forces that win victory in ordinary political contests. [A voice: “They won’t do it this time.”] We have against us 95 per cent o

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SILK STOCKINGS AGAINST HIM.

Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of the respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote. [Laughter.] And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel the conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his fight for the Union and for freedom. After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he wrote a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, Ill. It’s a letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house i

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LOWELL’S PROPHECY.

Now, friends, there has been an element of comedy to me in being held up in Massachusetts as an anarchistic agitator, when all that I have been doing has been to try to reduce to practice in the present day what the greatest men of Massachusetts have preached in past time. [Applause.] I have got here, and I am going to read to you, just a few lines from Lowell and then two lines from Emerson—Lowell’s being written nearly 60 years ago and Emerson’s 50 years ago. Lowell’s run: [Cries of “Good!”] F

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EMERSON AND THE PEOPLE.

I think I could get every worthy citizen of the Back Bay who at present feels the deepest distrust of us to applaud with tepid decorum [laughter] the following two lines of Emerson, provided only that I merely read them, in the course of a lecture on Emerson, and did not ask to translate them into action. [Laughter and applause.] The lines are: He is describing the birth of Massachusetts, the birth of the United States, and he describes this country as being foreordained through the ages to show

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“THE MOB” WHO RULE.

But when I ask that the choppers, the plowmen, the fishers be given the absolute, the real control over their Government: when I ask that the farmers, the factory workers, the retail merchants, the young professional men, the railroad men, all the average citizens, be given the real control of this Government of theirs, be given the right to nominate their own candidates, be given the right to supervise the acts of all their servants—the minute I do that, I am told that I am appealing to the mom

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THE PEOPLE NO JUDGES.

All I am trying to do is to practically put into effect now in America, in 1912, the principles which your great leaders in Massachusetts, your great statesmen of the past, your great writers, your poets of the past, preached 30 and 50 and 70 years ago. [Applause.] That is all that I am trying to do. And, friends, I now wish to put before you just what I mean by one of my proposals which has attracted the most criticism, and the people will catch up with it in the end. In different parts of this

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MASSACHUSETTS JUDGES GOOD.

Here in Massachusetts you have had, I believe, a very unusually high quality of service from your judges. [Applause.] When I was President, one of the revolutionary things that I did, of which you have heard so much, was, without any precedent—to put on the Supreme Court of the Nation two judges from Massachusetts. [Applause.] It was revolution; it had never been done before, but I should not think that Massachusetts would attack me because of it. [Laughter and applause.] I put on those two men—

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THE BAY STATE EXAMPLE.

And when I made my Columbus speech the State that I held up as an example to other States in the matter of the treatment of its judiciary was Massachusetts. [Applause.] Now, from reading the Massachusetts papers you would have thought that I was holding up the Massachusetts courts to obloquy. I was holding them up for imitation elsewhere and I was advocating that in other States you should exercise the same type of supervision over your courts as Massachusetts has exercised. But that was not all

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THE TRAITOR JUDGES.

In some of these Commonwealths there have been put on the bench judges who have betrayed the interests of the people. [“Right!”] If you doubt my words, you study the history of the cases in California in which Frank Heney was engaged, you study the history of the cases in Missouri in which Folk and Hadley were engaged. In those two States, gentlemen, I would have gone to any necessary length to take off the bench the judges who had betrayed the interests of justice and of the plain people. [Appl

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DO NOT KNOW VITAL NEEDS.

But the courts in those States have been composed of men who know nothing whatever of the vital needs of the great bulk of their fellow Americans, and who, unlike your courts in Massachusetts, have endeavored to impose their own outworn philosophy of life upon the millions of their fellow citizens. Now, I want to give you certain examples, concrete cases of just what I mean, because I have always found that a concrete case explains my position better than a general statement. Almost as soon as I

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TO THE MEN OF THE WEST.

Gentlemen, I am just going to give these one or two examples just to show you what I mean; that is all. For instance, I lived out West, in the cow country, quite a time, the short-grass country [laughter], and we would ship trainloads of cattle East. I and three or four other men who were going would go in the caboose at the end of the cattle train. If the train stopped we would jump out with our poles, and we would run up along the length of the cars to poke up the cattle that had lain down, be

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KNOWS THE BRAKEMAN.

Now, once or twice I had to perform that voyage in a late fall or early winter night with snow on the roofs of the cars and the wind blowing, and I was thoroughly contented when it was through. And now, friends, when a workman’s-compensation act comes up and the question arises whether a brakeman, a switchman, any man of the kind should be compensated for the loss of life or limb in taking charge of the trains in which you and I travel in comfort in the Pullman cars—when that comes up I think of

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THE JUDGES DON’T KNOW.

Now in New York those worthy, well-meaning, elderly judges of the court of appeals have never had such an experience in their lives. They don’t know. They don’t visualize to themselves how that brakeman feels. They are not able to present to their minds the risks incident to the ordinary, everyday performance of his duties. They don’t know the brakeman. They don’t know what it is—I am speaking of a case I know—they don’t know what it means when a brakeman loses both legs, and the following winte

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BELIEVES IN JUSTICE.

I am not a sentimentalist. If there is one quality I dislike as much as hardness of heart it is softness of head. But I do believe in justice just as you believe in justice, and I am trying to get justice, and I am trying to get it for those who are less fortunate just as for those who are more fortunate. [Applause.] Just wait. I want to give you just four or five cases of laws which the courts of Illinois and New York have declared unconstitutional. When I went into the legislature 30 years ago

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LIFE IN DESPAIR.

I remember well of one of them coming upon a room about 14 feet—16 feet, perhaps—square, in which two families lived, one of them with a boarder. Those two families, men, women, and children, worked and lived, day in and day out, night in and night out, there, at the manufacture of tobacco into cigars. They lived in squalid filth, with the great sheets of tobacco in the bed clothing, under the beds, mixed up with stale food, put in the corners of the dirty room. We got a bill through to put a st

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TAKES WORLD OF TIME.

It was not home at all, as you say, that squalid 16-foot room where those families lived day in and day out and worked day in and day out; and yet the court forbade us to try and improve those conditions, to try and make the conditions of tenement-house life so that it would be possible for decent men and decent women to live decently there and bring up their children as American citizens should be brought up. Friends, it is idle for any man to ask me to sit unmoved and without protest when a co

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THE LAW THAT WAS PASSED.

Then we passed a law providing that in factories there should be safeguards over all the dangerous machinery, and a girl working in a factory had her arm taken off above the elbow by an unprotected flywheel. She sued and recovered damages, and the court of appeals of the State of New York threw out her case, and there was another gem in their opinion. They said that they would not permit the legislature to interfere with the liberty of that girl to work amidst dangerous machinery. [Laughter.] No

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DREADFUL DENIAL OF JUSTICE.

And I hold that it was a dreadful denial of justice to prevent that poor girl from recovering for the accident due to the criminal carelessness of her employer, and I, for one, will never rest when there is a decision like that on the books until we have got it repealed. [“Good! Good!” and cheers.] I could give you 20 such cases. I will only give you 2 more—only 2 more. Then in the next case that came up that I refer to we passed a law, modeled on your Massachusetts law, a law forbidding women t

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THE COURT’S BARRIER.

The Massachusetts court held that your law was constitutional; but our law, which did not go as far, the Court of Appeals of the State of New York held as unconstitutional, and there was this further gem in the language—the court said that there had been altogether too much legislation of this kind in the United States and the time had come for the court fearlessly to oppose the barrier of its judgment against it. I love that word “fearlessly.” [Prolonged cheering.] Those amiable, well-meaning,

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FOR THE 10,000,000.

My proposal is this: That in a case like that, the 10,000,000 people of the State of New York, to whom those 6 or 7 elderly, worthy, well-meaning men had said that they could not have justice—that those 10,000,000 people, after a time amply sufficient in which to come to a sober judgment, should be permitted to vote for themselves as to whether the Constitution, which they themselves had made, had been correctly interpreted by your court here in Massachusetts and the Court of Appeals in the Stat

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THE COMPENSATION ACT.

One more case, only one more—two, perhaps. [Laughter.] We passed in New York a workmen’s compensation act. The Supreme Court of the United States, interpreting exactly the same language in the Constitution of the United States as the court of appeals interpreted in the constitution of the State of New York, and in reference to a practically exactly similar bill, decided that that law was constitutional. The Court of Appeals of the State of New York decided that the Supreme Court of the United St

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“UNCONSTITUTIONALITY.”

At this moment in the State of New York if a New York brakeman is injured on a train going straight through across New York, from Boston to Chicago, he has a right to recover, it is constitutional for him to recover [laughter] for the injury. But if his brother is working on a trolley in the same city in which he is injured on the railroad train, or if he is working on a railway train that only goes from Albany to Buffalo, then it becomes unconstitutional for him to recover. [Laughter and applau

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ANARCHY OR JUSTICE.

Friends, it is idle to tell me that I have not the right to protest that the United States Supreme Court was right and the court of appeals wrong [applause]; and if I am an anarchist, I am an anarchist in company with the Supreme Court of the United States. [Applause and cheers.] All I ask is that, in that kind of a case, the ten millions of people of New York State shall not be balked of justice, but, after ample time for due deliberation on their part, shall be permitted to vote in this case w

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THE BATTLE FOR JUSTICE.

Now, friends, I ask you of Massachusetts to stand in the front of the battle for justice and for righteousness as I have outlined. I wish that I could make the men who are best off in the community—the big corporation men, the big bankers, merchants, railroad men—understand that in this fight for justice we ought to have the right to expect them to lead....

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FOR THE RIGHT.

Surely, friends, surely men of Massachusetts, if we are true to the Massachusetts ideals of the past, we will expect those to whom much has been given to take the lead in striving to get justice for their fellows to whom less has been given. [Applause.] I want the men who are well off to give justice now because it is right, and not to wait till they have given justice simply because they fear longer to deny it. Justice! Let it come, because we believe in it. Let it not be forced upon us because

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MISSOURI AND MASSACHUSETTS.

And now I ask you of Massachusetts to respond to the appeal contained in this telegram to me from Missouri, which says that the State convention of Missouri, representing the State, has refused all compromise and has sent a delegation to Chicago standing straight for me [great cheering] and for the cause that I represent. And I ask you people of Massachusetts, you men of Massachusetts, on next Tuesday to put yourselves beside Illinois and Pennsylvania and Maine in the lead of the movement. [Grea

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