Why The Trusts And Bosses Oppose The Progressive Party

Performed by Theodore Roosevelt
Recorded September 22, 1912

Now this statement of Mr. Archbold represents but part of the truth. Mr. Bliss did have real and great influence with me. I respected him and admired him. I should have paid heed to any request or suggestion he made, would have carefully considered it and would have earnestly desired to adopt it, if I honorably could. But it is perfectly true that neither Mr. Bliss nor any other human being ever had any influence over me so far as concerned getting me to abandon the prosecution of any corporation or any individual engaged in wrong doing. To this extent, Mr. Archbold’s testimony is entirely true, and I call your attention to the fact that Mr. Archbold and Mr. Penrose come forward to testify against me only because at the moment, I am heading the Progressive movement. Were I a private citizen, it wouldn’t enter their heads to make any assault on me. They dislike me, I grant you, and the longer I live the greater cause I shall give them to dislike me. But that isn’t the fundamental motive that’s influencing them. The fundamental motive that induces them to act as they have acted in this matter is, not merely that they dislike me, but far more because they dread you. They dread you, the people. You and those like you who make up the people of the United States. They know that their time has come once the people obtain real power. We stand for the rights of the people. We stand for the rights of the wage-worker. We stand for his right to a living wage. We stand for the right and duty of the government to limit the hours of women in industry, to abolish child labor, to shape the conditions of life and living so that the average wage worker shall be able so to lead his own life and so to support his wife and his children that these children shall grow up into men and women fit for the exacting duties of American citizenship. The big trust magnates of the type of Mr. Archbold, the big politicians of the old boss type so well represented by Mr. Penrose, stand against the people. They object to the government, to government being used primarily in the interest of the people themselves. Naturally, they will do all they can to breakdown the only real enemies that they have and the only real champions, the only real and efficient champions of popular right, and economic, social, and industrial justice.