Grand Old Partisan highlights Theodore Roosevelt’s commitment of a Square Deal for all Americans. He envisioned a more just society. The three Cs of the Square Deal were control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources.
His initial use of the phrase was in speeches to Black soldiers. Next, he popularized it in a letter to a journalist.
September 7th 1903, the President first said "Square Deal" in a speech. At a Labor Day celebration in Syracuse, Roosevelt said:
"It is all-essential to the continuance of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country."
"In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole."
"The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the States; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or in envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to do justice to others. It is because the average American citizen, rich or poor, is of just this type that we have cause for our profound faith in the future of the Republic."
"There is no worse enemy of the wage-worker than the man who condones mob violence in any shape or who preaches class hatred. In his turn, the capitalist who is really a conservative, the man who has forethought as well as patriotism, should heartily welcome every effort, legislative or otherwise, which has for its object to secure fair dealing by capital, corporate or individual, toward the public and toward the employee."
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing; and this is a prize open to every man, for there can be no better worth doing than that done to keep in health and comfort and with reasonable advantages those immediately dependent upon the husband, the father, or the son. There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for the man or the woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the duties which life ought to bring."
"Life can mean nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving. A recent writer has finely said: "After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens. To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but even in that there are possibilities that are glorious. But to carry no load at all – there is nothing in that. No one seems to arrive at any goal really worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy laden."
"To win success in the business world, to become a first-class mechanic, a successful farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends. So it is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests. The man or woman who, as bread-winner and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored; and is to be envied by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel the need and duty of doing such work. The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the Republic."
"We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all. There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to stand neither for nor against any man because he is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged in one occupation or another, because he works with his brains or because he works with his hands. We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less."
"Finally, we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it."
Here is a Video Version of this article on YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r8ZaQi5xPCE&si=csMRCgRdWeLCy3yT
Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.
Each day, Michael Zak's grandoldpartisan YouTube channel and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than sixteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states.
He also wrote the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.
Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.
See www.youtube.com/q?v=IzxKCiXc5Qc for a brief video of a Texas Republican praising Back to Basics for the Republican Party.
"This is the most amazing book about politics that I have ever read. The Overview should be required reading for anyone with even a minor interest in government. The remainder is an enthralling history lesson that I will never forget. For years, we have all been misled about the true nature of the GOP. This is the real deal! Read it and be proud!"
"Your book is a national treasure. I'm always recommending it."
"Michael Zak wrote the definitive history of the GOP."
"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is the most significant contribution to the Republican Party in the last twenty years apart from Ronald Reagan."
"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is more important to our party now than ever before."
and
"one of the best books I ever read"
My father, of blessed memory, wrote a book now available on Kindle:
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