IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR 
65 
McKinley stood for certain principles, certain promises to the people 
made in the platform of the year before. Could an impulsive man like 
Theodore Roosevelt, a man full of ideas and views of his own, be 
expected to carry out his predecessor’s policy? There was a distinct 
feeling of relief in the community when he came out with a declaration 
that this was what he proposed to do. 
Yet McKinley’s policy did not cover the whole range of legisla¬ 
tion, and the remembrance of Roosevelt’s radical reform administra¬ 
tion in New York was not altogether agreeable to the hide-bound 
conservatives or the class of shady politicians who had axes to grind. 
They felt that a man like this in the Presidential chair might prove 
like the proverbial bull in the china shop. 
Roosevelt’s last speech as Vice-President gave some indications of 
his attitude. It was given at Minneapolis on September 2d, three days 
before the tragedy at Buffalo, and gave strong indications of his 
mental attitude. Some quotations from it may not be amiss. 
“Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up 
or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the state, 
and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision 
and control as regards the great corporations that are its creatures; 
particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive 
a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic 
tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self- 
restraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need 
arises.” 
In these few words we have the keynote of much of Roosevelt’s 
Presidential career. Throughout his nearly eight years of office he 
hammered away at the monopolies that had arisen in the land, and to 
some degree succeeded in fettering them. 
A strong advocate of America for Americans, this is what he had 
to say about the Monroe Doctrine: 
“This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe Doc¬ 
trine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still less 
should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandizement at the 
expense of any other American state. But, most emphatically, we 
must make it evident that we intend on this point ever to maintain the 
