aug 31, 1910 - Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 Speech

Description:

Roosevelt, speaking on August 31 from a train in Osawatomie, Kansas, and with the hindsight of a former President, condemned “the great special business interests” who “too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.”

He argued that the Constitution did not "give the right of suffrage to any corporation" and that "there can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."

Though Roosevelt lost the 1912 election, his position on the corrupting influence of money in politics has continued to be a hallmark of progressive politics down to today.