The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

SPEECHES OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 351
in the interest of all of us avoid cramping a strength which, if beneficially used, will
be for the good of us all. The marvelous prosperity which we have been enjoying
for the past few years has been due primarily to the high average of honesty, thrift,
and business capacity among our people as a whole, but some of it has also been due
to the ability of the men who are the industrial leaders of the nation. In securing
just and_fair dealing by these men, let us remember to do them justice in return, and
this not only because it is our duty, but because it is our interest; not only for
their sakes, but for ours. We are neither the friend of the rich man as such, nor the
friend of the poor man as such ; we are the friend of the honest man, rich or poor
and we intend that all men, rich and poor alike, shall obey the law alike and receive
its protection alike.
Fellow-Citizens:
Address at Logansport Indiana
September 23, 1902
I am going to ask you to take what I say at its exact face value, as I
like whatever I say to be taken. We believe that the American business man
is of peculiar type; and probably the qualities of energy, daring, and resource-
fulness which have given him his prominence in the international industrial
world find their highest development here in the West. It is the merest truism
to say that in the modern world industrialism is the great factor in the growth
of nations. Material prosperity is the foundation upon which every mighty
national structure must be built. Of course there must be more than this. There
must be a high moral purpose, a life of the spirit which finds its expression in many
different ways; but unless material prosperity exists also, there is scant room in which
to develop the higher life. The productive activity of our vast army of workers, of
those who work with head or hands, is the prime cause of the giant growth of this
nation. We have great natural resources, but such resources are never more than
opportunities, and they count for nothing if the men in possession have not the power
to take advantage of them. You have built up in the West these cities of the Mis-
sissippi Valley and the Great Lakes, as all the region round about them has been built
up—that is, because you had the qualities of heart and brain, the qualities of moral
and physical fiber, which enabled you to use to the utmost advantage whatever you
found ready to your hands. You win not by shirking diflScuIties, but by facing and
overcoming them.
In such development laws play a certain part, but individual characteristics a
still greater part. A great and successful commonwealth like ours in the long run
works under good laws, because a people endowed with honest and practical common
sense ultimately demand good laws. But no law can create industrial well-