[Chanticleer]

Teddy was a great one. How's this for timely?

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of neutrality?

[tutstar]

Wow!

That quote is from TR?

[G.Mason]

"How's this for timely?"

Very.

Thanks.

[LadyNavyVet]

Thanks for pinging me over. Ol' TR hit the nail on the head. Bottom line--we can't afford the long-term consequences for short-term economic gain. Not then, and certainly not now.

[pepsionice]

The amusing thing is that Teddy was the "accidental" president...coming on only after the president was shot. He would not have been considered presidential material prior to that point and simply was the New York vote getter in the election. If you looked at his entire life...he was a combination of Cheney, Reagan, and Steve Irwin. This guy lived the life that most of us would have dreamed about. His entire vision of America was more than just talk...he actually traveled the entire globe and knew exactly what America offered to its citizens. His place in American history ought to be alot higher, and its hard rate him less than the 3rd or 4th best president that ever lived.