Teddy Roosevelt Cartoon Teddy Roosevelt Standing Next to a Railroad Clip Art
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BOB DOUGHTY: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English language.
Theodore Roosevelt became president of the United states of america at the kickoff of the twentieth century. It was a time of great technological progress in the United states of america.
Yet many people felt that there was also little social progress. They demanded reforms in politics, industry and the use of natural resources.
Theodore Roosevelt supported this call for reforms. His first target was big business.
This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe proceed the story of the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt.
KAY GALLANT: In the early on nineteen hundreds, a grouping of wealthy American businessmen agreed to bring together their railroads. They formed a company, or trust, to control the articulation railroad. The new company would have complete control of rail transportation in the American West. At that place would be no contest.
President Roosevelt believed the new visitor violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The law said it was illegal for businesses to interfere with trade among us. Roosevelt said he would make no compromises in enforcing the law. He asked the Supreme Court to break up the railroad trust.
"Nosotros are not," Roosevelt said, "attacking these big companies. We are only trying to do abroad with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them. But nosotros believe they must exist controlled to serve the public proficient."
HARRY MONROE: The Supreme Courtroom ruled against the railroad trust. In the side by side few years, other trusts would be broken up in the same manner. The American people called this trust-busting. And they called Theodore Roosevelt the trust-buster.
Roosevelt made several speeches explaining his position on large business. Everywhere he went, he found wide public back up. Afterward, he told a friend why people liked him so well. He said: "I put into words what is in their hearts and minds, but not in their mouths."
KAY GALLANT: President Roosevelt won even more than public support for his actions during a labor crisis in the coal manufacture. The incident was i of many in American history in which a president had to determine if he should interfere in individual industry.
Coal miners went on strike in the jump of nineteen-oh-two. They demanded more pay and safer working atmospheric condition. Mine owners refused to negotiate. 1 even insulted the miners.
He said: "The rights and interests of the laboring man will exist protected and cared for. Information technology will not be the labor activists who have intendance of him. It volition be the Christian men to whom God in his great wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country."
This cocky-serving utilise of organized religion fabricated many Americans support the striking workers.
HARRY MONROE: After several months, President Roosevelt invited coal mine owners and union leaders to a coming together in Washington. He asked them to go along in mind that a third group was involved in their dispute: the public. He warned that the nation faced the possibility of a wintertime without heating fuel.
Roosevelt said: "I did not telephone call this meeting to hash out your claims and positions. I called it to appeal to your love of country."
The union leaders said they were willing to accept the president engage an independent commission to settle the strike. They said they would have the committee's decision equally concluding. The mine owners rejected the idea. Ane warned the president not even to talk nigh it. Such talk, he said, was illegal interference in private industry.
KAY GALLANT: That fabricated Theodore Roosevelt angry. Later, he said: "If it were non for the high function I held, I would have taken him by the seat of the pants and the nape of the neck and thrown him out the window."
Finally, Roosevelt got both sides to agree to a compromise. Mine owners agreed to have an contained committee study the miners' demands. And the miners' agreed to render to work until the report was completed.
Several months afterward, the report was ready. The committee proposed that miners accept a smaller pay increase in exchange for improved working weather. Both sides accustomed the proposal. The coal strike ended.
HARRY MONROE: Not everyone was happy. Many people still felt Roosevelt had no right to interfere. Roosevelt disagreed. "My business concern," he said, "is to see fair play amidst all men -- capitalists or wage-workers. All I desire to do is encounter that every man has a off-white deal. No more, no less." Roosevelt believed the United States needed a strong leader. He planned to strengthen the presidency whenever he could.
Roosevelt was an agile, noisy homo. Every bit one writer described him: "Theodore is always the middle of activeness. When he goes to a wedding, he wants to exist the bride. When he goes to a funeral, he wants to be the expressionless human."
Many of Roosevelt'south friends thought he was an over-grown boy. "You must ever remember," one said, "that the president is about six years former." Some other friend sent this message to Roosevelt on his xl-sixth altogether: "You lot have made a very skillful get-go in life. We have great hopes for you lot when you grow upwards."
KAY GALLANT: Theodore Roosevelt loved outdoor activities. He especially loved the natural beauty of the state. He worried about its futurity. Roosevelt wrote: "I recognize the correct and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural riches of our land. Merely I do not recognize the right to waste them, nor to rob -- by wasteful utilize -- the generations that come after united states."
Roosevelt set aside big areas of wood land for national utilise. He created fifty special areas to protect wildlife. And he established a number of national parks.
HARRY MONROE: Theodore Roosevelt faced the responsibilities of foreign policy with the same strength he used in facing national problems. He firmly believed in expanding American ability in the world. "We accept no option," he said, "as to whether or not we volition play a great part in the world. All that we can decide is whether we will play our part well or poorly."
To play well, Roosevelt said, the United States needed a stiff Navy. It also needed a canal across Central America so the Navy could sail apace betwixt the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
KAY GALLANT: For many years, people had dreamed of such a waterway. With a culvert across Central America, ships could sail directly from ocean to sea. They would not have to make the long, costly voyage around the southern end of South America.
The most probable identify to build such a culvert was at the thinnest bespeak of state: Panama. Another possible place was just to the north: Nicaragua.
Over the years, several attempts were made to build the canal.
HARRY MONROE: In the eighteen eighties, Ferdinand de Lesseps -- builder of the Suez Culvert -- formed a French visitor to build a waterway across Panama. De Lesseps spent three hundred million dollars to build just 1-third of the culvert. He could become no more money. His visitor failed.
In the eighteen nineties, an American company tried to build a canal across Nicaragua. It made little progress. After three years, it gave up the attempt. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in the early on 19 hundreds, he was ready to try once again.
KAY GALLANT: A study was made to make up one's mind which would be a amend identify for the canal -- Panama or Nicaragua. Engineers said it would cost less to consummate the canal De Lesseps had started twenty years earlier in Panama. But De Lesseps' visitor still endemic the country on which the canal would exist built. The Usa would have to buy the state, besides as the rights to build the waterway.
The study decided it would be less costly, overall, to build the canal in Nicaragua. The proposal went to the United States Congress for blessing.
That will exist our story next week.
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BOB DOUGHTY: Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. You lot tin find our series online with transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and images at voaspecialenglish.com. You tin can likewise follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.
Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.
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This is program #149
Source: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/roosevelt-wrestles-powerful-business-interests-as-president--100478299/115907.html
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