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Theodore Roosevelt Research Paper

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Theodore Roosevelt’s interesting life often tempts biographers to write about him with the history left out. His story offers plenty of drama. Born in 1858 to a wealthy family in New York City he waged a life and death struggle against childhood asthma. Books about brave warriors and explorers comforted the boy when he was sick. His father, Theodore Senior, believed that nature and outdoor exercise could build boys’ bodies and characters, and he put pressure on his son to throw off his invalidism by embracing exercise. In his teens, young Theodore rose to his father’s challenge and strengthened his body by exercising and going hunting. He remained a forever-restless seeker after adventure and knowledge, a man who embraced many identities in …show more content…
ran for governor of New York in 1899. Heeding the serious challenge that Democrat William Jennings Bryan had made to William McKinley in 1896 by railing against trusts, monopolies, and railroads, T.R. as governor won the passage of new factory-inspection and tenement-house laws. T.R. believed that he had not gone far enough as a reformer, but his gubernatorial career was cut short in 1900 when New York’s Republican boss, Boss Platt, pushed T.R. out of New York by arranging for him to become McKinley’s vice presidential running mate. Then the vice presidency was seen as a dead-end job rather than a political stepping stone. The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won the election, but in 1901 an anarchist assassinated President McKinley and T.R. ascended to the presidency.

As president, Theodore Roosevelt had to deal with the dominant conservative wing of his party and a Congress hostile to reform. He took the reins of the presidency without much more of a plan than to emulate Abraham Lincoln’s wisdom and his ability to unite the nation. But legislation required the cooperation of Congress, and it was not readily won. T.R.’s legislative victories were modest but historic—a railroad regulation bill, a Meat Inspection Act, and a Pure Food and Drug Act that established federal responsibility for inspecting products to protect …show more content…
Influenced by a large network of woman reformers, including settlement house founder Jane Addams, the Consumer League’s feisty Florence Kelley, and activists in the Women’s Trade Union League, T.R. endorsed state minimum-wage laws and mother’s pensions (later Aid to Families with Dependent Children). When he ran for president in 1912 on the third party Bull Moose ticket he endorsed woman suffrage and the modern welfare state, i.e. unemployment, health, and old age insurance. Though he never returned to the White House, T.R. made his mark as an environmental and urban reformer, a man who reflected his times and their debates, but also a man who tried to face the future by promoting new causes. T.R.’s story then is not just a private tale of growth and change. Roosevelt the reformer remains one of the most fascinating personalities in American

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