Before I begin, I want to cite some of Roosevelt's legitimate accomplishments. For example, he was a dedicated environmentalist. As president, Roosevelt placed a record 20,000,000 acres of land under conservation. He also founded the Forest Reserve, a government agency tasked with caring for forest reservations. Roosevelt also deserves credit for his economic reforms. He established what would become the departments of labor and commerce. He also signed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the food and medical industries. The law also created the concept of prescription drugs, required corporations to place warning labels on potentially addictive products, and outlawed companies from lying about the contents of food and medicine they were selling. But while I obviously think Roosevelt warrants a lot of praise for these decisions, I do believe that the extent and impact of his economic and labor policies are somewhat exaggerated.
Roosevelt gets a ton of approval for improving the enforcement of anti-monopoly laws. Back in 1890, Benjamin Harrison signed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which banned monopolies. Ever since, however, the law had been rarely enforced. Roosevelt strengthened the policy and its use. While he certainly deserves to be celebrated for this, this fact should be placed in additional context. For starters, while the enforcement of the law had always been shotty, Roosevelt's predecessor, William McKinley, had further declined its presence in American law. More specifically, McKinley had an odd desire to only prosecute monopolies that operated in more than one state. In other words, it was incredibly easy for Roosevelt to better solidify its enforcement, as previous presidents like Grover Cleveland and McKinley had made it almost entirely unused. Furthermore, throughout his entire presidency, Roosevelt only sued 40 monopolies. His successors easily outdid this. William Howard Taft, who replaced Roosevelt in 1909, sued 80 monopolies. Then, Woodrow Wilson, who replaced Taft in 1913, created an entire government agency - the Federal Trade Commission - to crack down on monopolies. Roosevelt even believed that there was a distinction between "good" trusts and "bad" trusts, a tendency Taft and Wilson did not possess.
Additionally, Roosevelt gets a lot of credit for intervening in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902. Like with his enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, this aspect of the Roosevelt Administration is usually oversimplified. The strike began on May 12, 1902, after Pennsylvania coal executives refused to meet with labor leaders. Roosevelt outright refused to take a side, let alone on the side of the workers, for months on end. Roosevelt only intervened on October 3, 1902, when he began to worry that the strike would cripple coal shipments, which would have damaged the approval ratings of the party Roosevelt belonged to, the Republican Party, and cause the Democrats to win the upcoming mid-term elections. Yes, Roosevelt deserves credit for helping the workers. But he also deserves criticism for letting them struggle on their own for nearly 5 months.
Yet another area where Roosevelt deserves an immense amount of criticism but enigmatically receives almost none is his foreign policy. Roosevelt was a brutal imperialist. The Monroe Doctrine, instituted by President James Monroe in December of 1823, proclaimed that the world existed in two separate geopolitical hemispheres. According to Monroe, there was the Western Hemisphere, composed of North and South America, and the Eastern Hemisphere, composed of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. From there, Monroe elaborated, saying that the US government would stop interfering in the affairs of the Eastern Hemisphere. In exchange, Monroe said that he would declare war on any state located in the Eastern Hemisphere that tried to manipulate events in the Western Hemisphere.
Originally, the policy was a shield against imperialism. For example, John Tyler extended the Monroe Doctrine to include Hawaii in the Western Hemisphere. As a result, when the French government and military tried to annex the archipelago, Millard Fillmore utilized Tyler and Monroe's legislation to prevent such an event. In other words, the Monroe Doctrine preserved Hawaiian independence. Roosevelt, however, exploited the Monroe Doctrine to transform it into a tool of American imperialism. As president, Roosevelt edited the Monroe Doctrine to include what he, Roosevelt, labeled the "Roosevelt Corollary", which established Washington DC as the main regulating force within the Americas.
His vicious efforts to expand American dominance and hegemony ultimately enabled the rise of Japanese imperialism as well. During his years in the White House, Roosevelt brokered a deal with the Japanese government in which Tokyo recognized the Philippines as an American colony and, in exchange, Washington DC recognized Korea as a Japanese colony.
Similarly, Roosevelt receives a bunch of unwarranted praise for assisting in the creation of the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War. This recount of the story misses two major points: One, the war was effectively over by this point. Back in May of 1905, the Russian military already surrendered following the Battle of Tsushima. While the Treaty of Portsmouth - the agreement Roosevelt helped broker - marked the technical end of the conflict, fighting was already over. Two, the Treaty of Portsmouth was a terrible document. The agreement strengthened Japanese power in Korea by requiring the Russian government to begin recognizing the peninsula as a Japanese colony. It also expanded Japanese dominance abroad, giving Tokyo control over the Liaodong Peninsula, the southern half of Sakhalin, and the city of Port Arthur. In fact, the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth on September 5, 1905, was when Japan began to be thought of as a world superpower.
Like with other elements of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, his foreign policy had some redeeming traits, specifically his response to the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902. On December 9, 1902, the British, German, and Italian navies, in retaliation against the Venezuelan government's failure to pay back its debts to the 3 nations, placed a blockade around Venezuela. At the beginning of 1903, Cipriano Castro, the president of Venezuela, asked Roosevelt for assistance in the situation. Roosevelt agreed and then brokered the Washington Protocols. This agreement stated that if all German, Italian, and British troops left Venezuela, then the Venezuelan government would begin dedicating 30% of the money it made from tariffs to paying off its debt. On February 13, 1903, the document was signed. It worked, and the crisis was diffused. On February 19, 1903, the last of the invading forces left Venezuela, bringing the affair to a close.
My final argument regarding Roosevelt centers around his atrocious treatment of immigrants. Back in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Among other things, this law prohibited Chinese immigration to the US for a 10-year period following its implementation. Just before the policy expired in 1892, the Geary Act was signed, extending the ban until 1902. However, around the time that the Geary Act was set to expire, Roosevelt made the Chinese Exclusion Act a permanent statute. He also brokered the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907, a xenophobic negotiation between the governments of the US and Japan. This informal deal had Roosevelt desegregate white and Japanese-American students in San Francisco. While this is a good thing, it came at an awful price: The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 also required the Japanese government to ban almost all immigration to the US.
On March 3, 1903, Roosevelt signed the Immigration Act of 1903. This law required all immigrants to pay a tax to merely live in the United States. It also prohibited sex workers, anarchists, and people with epilepsy, among other groups, from moving to America.
While Theodore Roosevelt certainly did good for the US - his environmentalism, positive (though inaccurately represented and glorified), defense of Venezuela from European aggression, and desegregation of white and Japanese students in San Francisco are all definitely good things - he was, overall, a very, very bad president. He enabled American and Japanese imperialism, persecuted immigrants, and even placed baggage around many of his indisputably good deeds. He does not deserve his spot on Mount Rushmore and does not deserve the praise he gets in the modern-day.
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