Article June 22, 1899 Issue

Use and Abuse of Property

Governor Roosevelt was the principal guest and speaker at a dinner recently given by the Independent Club of Buffalo, N. Y. He received a most enthusiastic reception. The subject of his address was "The Use and Abuse of Property." He spoke in part as follows:—

I want to talk to you of what concerns all of us, particularly concerns those of us who for the moment occupy public position, and what is the attitude that should properly be observed by legislators and by elective officers toward wealth, and the attitude that should be observed in return by men of means, and especially by the organizations of men of means which we distinguish as corporations, toward the body politic and toward their fellow-citizens.

Now, of course a great deal of what I have to say must be trite. All the great truths up to which we try to act are trite. I certainly have not yet found any new principle of importance in public life, and, so far as I have been able to get, I have become more and more a convinced believer in the doctrine flouted a few years ago by a then eminent statesman, that, after all, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule are the two guides to conduct upon which we should base our actions in political affairs. I do not mean to speak in a spirit of cant, and I am about the last person who would advocate holding up to any body of men an impractical theory of life, for I grow steadily to feel more and more that if you make your theory impractical you will make your practice imperfect, and that if you set up a theory which no man can live up to you will in practice condone a course of life on the part of your public men which falls far short of what it is your right and duty to insist upon.

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