Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Upton Sinclair
President Roosevelt disagrees with the contents of a letter that a preacher sent to Upton Sinclair in which he compared him to Leo Tolstoy, Émile Zola, and Maksim Gorky. Roosevelt believes that if the type of socialism advocated in Sinclair’s book were implemented, one of the first efforts made would be to eliminate starvation. He sites a work by Walter A. Wyckoff in which Wyckoff traveled the country doing physical labor and found that in many cases, it is possible to quickly gain a position with steady work that allowed him to save. He agrees with Sinclair that radical action must be taken to end the “arrogant and selfish greed” of capitalists. However, he thinks that it is more important to develop the hearts and minds of the working class.
Collection
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Creation Date
1906-03-15