Your TR Source
Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt from October 1858 to December 1870. Notable events include the Roosevelt family’s involvement in the American Civil War, Theodore Roosevelt meeting John Hay as a child, and the Roosevelt family’s first European trip.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
The article discusses how Minnesota’s public school in Owatonna houses and provides for children from poverty-stricken families or those lacking sufficient support. While it is a necessary institution, it is frequently overcrowded and has a waiting list. Cyrus Townsend Brady recently commented on the benefits of the state providing pensions for widows with dependents instead of removing their children to an institution. Such a program would not cost more than the school’s current expenditures. Additionally, forming a state commission to investigate poverty would aid the initiative.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-04-09
Anastasia Swift asks John J. Wynne to send Benziger’s Magazine and the July issue of Sacred Heart Magazine to her granddaughter, Christine Nilsson. Swift reports that business and social conditions in Hawaii are still bad and getting worse.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-24
Anastasia Swift asks John J. Wynne to send The Messenger to the above address. She is old, but her daughter plans to keep up the magazine after she dies if she can afford it. However, the Swifts live in Hawaii, and their financial situation has become much worse since it was annexed to the United States. Swift believes that if President Roosevelt knew more about the situation he would do more for Hawaii.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904
A priest stands at the pulpit in a cathedral, preaching from the “Holy Ledger.” Beneath his feet is a cut-away of an area labeled “Rentals” and revealing bags of money above the phrase, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” The bottom half of the image shows the squalor of poor families living in sections of the city identified as “Filth Lane, Tuberculosis Alley, Bacteria Court, Thug Corner, Squalor Street, [and] Fire Trap.”
The great radical cartoonist Art Young, creator hundreds of effective and famous cartoons over his long career, once called “Holy Trinity” the favorite among his cartoons. The color double-page in Puck was prompted by an article about the Episcopal Church in New York City owning a multitude of tenements. Its clergy, in Young’s powerful Puck cartoon, were in effect slumlords
This Puck cartoon garnered much attention at the time, as much as the expose that inspired it. Charles Edward Russell, who had written the expose in Everybody’s Magazine, in 1911 reported that Trinity Church had quietly destroyed 156 of the tenements they owned. “It was one of the great cartoons of history,” he wrote. Young himself added in his autobiography His Life and Times, “He went on to say… that I could feel that thousands of people in New York were better housed and more comfortable because of the power of my pencil. That commendation was the fines reward that had come to me since I had begun to draw.”
A group of wealthy citizens exit Trinity Church on Wall Street, New York City, with poor persons huddled on the street on both sides, and tenement housing in the background. The inscription over the door reads “He that Giveth to the Poor Lendeth to the Lord.”
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1895-01-09
Puck stands on a stage speaking to wealthy philanthropists. From left: an empty seat “reserved for Russell Sage,” Mrs. Leland Stanford, Miss [Helen Miller?] Gould, John D Rockefeller Jr., Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt [William K., by resemblance], [and] J. P. Morgan.” Puck is displaying a “Plan for model tenement” and pointing to a view of current tenement housing conditions projected on a magic-lantern screen on the stage. In the “Christmas sermon,” Puck is entreating that when these generous millionaires are performing their philanthropy, they not only endow schools and libraries, which benefit “those that already have much,” but also “give something to those who have less than nothing.”
Around the time of this cartoon, Puck, always a magazine of reform through its cartoons and editorials, joined the ranks of periodicals urging social justice activism and attention to urban ills in the movement called Naturalism. Having rejected the prescriptions of Bryanism, it welcomed and paralleled the reform agenda of Theodore Roosevelt. By 1910 its stances were vaguely Socialist.
Theodore Roosevelt sends his apologies to Arthur Haag Howland for being unable to come visit the Bowery Mission or the Children’s home in Nyack for their celebration.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-05-28
Samuel Kaser asks Theodore Roosevelt to help his newborn triplets out of “very poor circumstances” due to his unemployment.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-03-26
James. N. Williamson assures Theodore Roosevelt that as a president for the people, he did his best to do away with dishonest practices. He thought President William H. Taft would follow in his footsteps, but he has been “captured” by Big Business. Because of this, he cannot be elected again. While president, the businessmen came to realize Roosevelt was not against them, only that they should conduct business honestly. Williamson appeals to Roosevelt to accept the nomination as he his the only republican who can win.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-12-23
Copy of legal document stating Adam J. Sembower does not bring in enough money through the Sunday School to continue the programming and unless there is a change, Sembower will be forced to leave and Sunday School, Young People’s Society, and regular preaching will cease for 150 to 200 poor children and adults in the community. The document is seemingly copied and notarized by Sembower.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-11-22
Florence Evangeline Henry Jolley asks Theodore Roosevelt to help her secure a position after being let go from the the position of post mistress at the Minnesota State Capitol. Jolley is trying to support her three children but cannot find a position in Minnesota. She hopes Roosevelt might have a connection to an ocean vessel that needs a stewardess.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-06
Henry Novoa Spada, a correspondent for two Spanish-language newspapers – Blanco y Negro and El Figaro – requests an interview with Theodore Roosevelt. He would like to discuss his plan for helping poor young people who cannot pay for commercial education.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-07-20
C. M. Snyder discusses how her son is her only means of support. He tries hard but his wages are not enough. Snyder hopes Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt can help.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-06-18