Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1900 — Gems From “Teddy’s” Books. [ARTICLE]

Gems From “Teddy’s” Books.

Theodore Roosevelt, the republican candidate for vice-presi-dent, the man who in case of election may become president, has written several books in which readers of the same can get a true insight into the man’s character and his ideals of citizenship. Intelligent men who are thoughtfully weighing Mr. Roosevelt’s claim for their political" support, will do well to read some* passages from his life of Benton, in the American Statesmen Series. In that book, pages 290 to 295, in a chapter entitled “The Abolitionist Dances to the Slave Baron’s Piping,” Mr. Roosevelt pays his respects to the Abolitionist, and, among other things, says: “Polk was backed by rabid Southern fire eaters and slavery extensionists, who had deified negro bondage and exalted it beyond the Union, the Constitution, and everything else; by the almost solid foreign vote, still unfit for the duties of American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes of all the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt politicians, who found ignorance and viqiousness tools ready forged to their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without which the election would have been lost; and, lastly, HE WAS ALSO BACKED INDIRECTLY BUT MOST POWERFULLY BY POLITICAL ABOLITIOISTS. * * * The Liberty party, in running Birney, simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all its consequences; they in no sense paved the way for the Republican party, or helped forward the anti-slavery cause, or hurt the existing organizations. * * * They bore considerable resemblance—except that, after all, they really did have a principle to contend for—to the political Prohibitionists of the present day, who go into the third party organizations, and are, not even excepting the saloon keepers themselves, the most efficient allies on whom intemperance and the liquor traffic can count.” HE DON’T LIKE THE PEACEFUL QUAKER. On page 37 of the same work this knight of the bronco and the six-shooter uncorks his vial of condemnation on the peaceful Quaker, as follows: “But after all, this ruffianism was really not a whit worse in its effects on the national character than was the case with certain of the ‘universal peace’ and ‘non-resistance’ developments in the northeastern states; in fact, it was more healthy. A class of professional non-combatants is as hurtful to the real, healthy growth of a nation as is a class of‘fire-eaters; for weakness or folly is nationally as bad as a vice, or worse; and in the long run A QUAKER MAY BE QUITE AS UNDESIRABLE A CITIZEN AS A DUELIST.” HIS IDEAL CITIZEN. Nor is the Life of Benton the only book in which Mr. Roosevelt has seen fit to indulge in expressions of this sort. His older book, “Ranch Life and Hunting Trail,” presents a passage that is a revelation of the man’s ways of thinking, and of his real character. Speaking of the cowboys, on pages 9 and 10 of that book, he says: “Peril and hardships and years of toil, broken by weeks of brutal dissipation, draw haggard lines across their eager faces, but never dim their reckless eyes nor break their bearing of self-confidence. * * * When drunk on the villainous whiskey of the frontier towns they cut mad antics, riding their horses into the saloons, firing their pistols right and left, from boisterous lightheartedness rather than from viciousness, and indulging too often in deadly shooting affrays brought on either by the accidental contact of the moment, or on account of some longstanding grudge, or perhaps because of bad blood between the ranches or localities. THEY ARE MUCH BETTER FELLOWSAND PLEASANTER COMPANIONS THAN SMALL FARMERS OR AGRICULTURAL LABORERS. NOR ARE THE MECHANICS AND WORKMEN OF A GREAT CITY TO BE MENTIONED IN THE SAME BREATH.” This passage ought greatly to add to the enthusiasm with which the honest, peaceable, lawabiding, temperate, God-fear-ing and Christian farmers and working men of the country will vote the Republican ticket—may be!! Any one anxious to verify these statements will find both of the volumes which we mention in almost any public library.