Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1903 — President Talks Plainly. [ARTICLE]

President Talks Plainly.

President Roosevelt speaks plainly when be sees the need for speaking all. He has lately been speaking oat against the widely prevalent dislike of parents to raising children, and he has now reiterated the same views in a letter to two New York women, who in a book recently published, “The Woman who Toils” have protested against the love of luxury and frivolity, which they claim, is exhausting the vitality of the American people. The President says: * “I do not known whether 1 most pity or most despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those, the acquirement of which normally means oost and effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes through life, denied these highest of all joys whioh spring only from home life, from the having and the bringing up of many healthy children, I feel sot them deep and respectful sympa j thy extended to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a cam- 1 paign or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the

fault of others, “But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart eo cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an object of contempuous abhtirrenoe by all healthy people. “If the men of tbe nation are not anxious to work in many different ways with ail their might and strength and ready and able to fight at need and anxious to be fathers of families, aod if the women do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future n