The Liberty Of The People
Performed by Theodore Roosevelt
Recorded September 22, 1912
The difference between Mr.
Wilson and myself is fundamental. The other day in
a speech at Sioux Falls, Mr. Wilson stated his position
when he said that the history of government, the history
of liberty, was the history of the limitation of governmental
power. This is true as an academic statement of history
in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting
the present. It is true of the history of medieval
Europe. It is not true of the history of 20th Century
America. In the days when all governmental power existed
exclusively in the King or in the baronage, and when
the people had no shred of that power in their own
hand, then it undoubtedly was true that the history
of liberty was the history of the limitation of the
governmental power of the outsiders who possessed
that power. But today, the people have actually or
potentially the entire governmental power. It is theirs
to use and to exercise if they choose to use and to
exercise it. It offers the only adequate instrument
with which they can work for the betterment, for the
uplifting, of the masses of our people. The liberty
of which Mr. Wilson speaks today means merely the
liberty of some great trust magnate to do that which
he is not entitled to do. It means merely the liberty
of some factory owner to work haggard women over hours
for under pay and himself to pocket the proceeds.
It means the liberty of the factory owner who crowds
his operatives into some crazy deathtrap on a top
floor, where if fire starts the slaughter is immense.
It means the liberty of the big factory owner who
is conscienceless and unscrupulous, to work his men
and women under conditions which eat into their lives
like an acid. It means the liberty of even less conscientious
factory owners to make their money out of the toil,
the labor, of little children. Men of this stamp are
the men whose liberty would be preserved by Mr. Wilson.
Men of this stamp are the men whose liberty would
be preserved by the limitation of governmental power.
We propose, on the contrary, to extend governmental
power in order to secure the liberty of the wage-
workers, of the men and women who toil in industry,
to save the liberty of the oppressed from the oppressor.
Mr. Wilson stands for the liberty of the oppressor
to oppress; we stand for the limitation of his liberty
thus to oppress those who are weaker than himself.