Photo of the Day

It is March 20, 1912.

Theodore Roosevelt, the former president, has been out of office for three years.

Tonight, he is opening his campaign for reelection with a speech in Carnegie Hall.

New York's Carnegie Hall.

Three thousand people have come to see him.

Political activists and social workers fill the balcony.

And men and women in evening dress fill the main floor.

Roosevelt on stage at Carnegie Hall.

As Roosevelt walks across the stage,

the crowd fills the Hall with cheers of “Teddy, Teddy.”

And when the cheers subside,

Roosevelt makes an impassioned plea for social justice.

Taft was the first president to play golf. This photo was taken at the Chevy Chase Country Club in Maryland, June 1909.

The progressive reforms he had launched as president

have stalled under Taft, his successor.

Taft has surrounded himself with wealthy businessmen

who share his love of golf.

They have persuaded Taft to adopt a conservative domestic agenda.

Roosevelt is challenging Taft for the Republican nomination

because he believes it is his duty to do so.

It is time, he declares, to end the tyranny of government

by a minority intent on self-enrichment —

the very issue which presses upon America now.

From Roosevelt’s speech:¹

“[W]e are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities.

It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits,

our water-powers, and our harbor fronts.

West Virginia experienced violent coal mine strikes in 1912. Above, a rally of striking miners.

A small minority is [enriching themselves]

on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs.

It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts.

It is a small minority that stands behind the present law of master and servant,

the sweat-shops,

and the whole calendar of social and industrial injustice.

A boy carries raw materials home for his family to work on in their tenement, 1912. Lewis Hine photo.

No sane man who has been familiar with the government of this country

for the last twenty years

will complain that we have had too much of the rule of the majority.

The trouble has been a far different one

that there have held public office in the nation men

who have served not the whole people,

but some special class or special interest.

A congressional committee found that financier J.P. Morgan, above, and a few other New York bankers gained consolidated control of many industries and monopolized them during and after the financial panic of 1907.

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice,

achieved through the genuine rule of the people.

In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism,

leaders to whom are granted great visions,

who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true.

Roosevelt goes aloft with pilot Arch Hoxsey on October 11, 1910, becoming the first president to fly.

We here in America hold in our hands the hope of the world,

and shame and disgrace will be ours,

if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed.

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), one of the world’s first billionaires, owned Standard Oil, iron mines, timberland, and investments in manufacturing and transportation.

If on this new continent we merely build another country

of great but unjustly divided material prosperity,

we shall have done nothing.

To turn this government either into government by a plutocracy

or government by a mob

would be to repeat on a larger scale

the lamentable failures of the world that is dead.

We stand for the rule of the many in the interest of all of us,

for the rule of the many in a spirit of courage,

of common sense, of high purpose,

above all in a spirit of kindly justice toward every man and every woman.”

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

1. The speech has been edited for brevity.