The rise of finance capitalism was making the practice of laissez faire more and more untenable. With the extraordinary concentration of power in large-scale industrialism, the unrestrained individualism of businessmen proved too dangerous to the nation's welfare to remain uncontrolled. As a consequence, the concepts of personal freedom and minimum government, the shibboleths of nineteenth-century liberals, began slowly yet irresistibly to yield to the ideal of social justice. Men of good will everywhere came to perceive the fallacy of the Adam Smith doctrine that the interests of the individual automatically coincided with the welfare of the group. They realized that while the free activity of the individual seemed right and natural in the days of the beckoning frontier, when businesses were small, when land was relatively free and every man could be his own master, it assumed a grievous aspect when exercised by powerful industrialists for private gain. With the frontier gone, with farmers and wage-earners equally dependent for their livelihood upon large corporations, the cry for social justice pierced the conscience of many of our eminent citizens.

Theodore Roosevelt, one of these youthful social reformers, was no radical. He believed in property rights, in law and order, in sound capitalism. When Bryan and the Populists combined to advance radical reforms, he attacked them ferociously. Yet he was a moralist in action. He abhorred injustice and despised the selfish and sordid practices of powerful corporations. Dedicated to fight for the right, he spoke out against "the malefactors of great wealth" with such force and feeling as to call forth Vachel Lindsay's sardonic remark that Roosevelt "cursed Bryan and then aped his ways."

Born on October 27, 1858, of a wealthy and socially prominent family and blessed with a father of high morality and a strong sense of civic stewardship, Theodore Roosevelt early developed a broad altruism. In his childhood he suffered severely from asthma. Many a night his father had to hold him in his arms to help him breathe more freely. The attachment between son and parent was strengthened by the latter's warm and sympathetic attentiveness. In time the elder Roosevelt's charities, civic activities, and general concern for the welfare of mankind became the sickly boy's own ideals for action.

When Theodore was nine his father, eager to develop his son's puny body in the hope of reducing his asthma, turned one of the rooms in their home into a gymnasium and prescribed certain daily exercises. The boy needed no prodding. His anxiety to be strong -- to rid himself of physical illness and excel in sports -became the passion of his youth and persisted to the end of his life. He exercised long and regularly and indulged in various sports to the utmost of his endurance. At every opportunity he joined his father in riding horseback and in tramping through the woods. As he grew older and stronger he began to take lessons in boxing and practiced this manly sport until the middle of his Presidency, when an accidental blow practically blinded him in one eye.

By the time Theodore entered Harvard College in 1876 he had almost rid himself of his asthma and had built up his body to more than normal strength. Yet he persisted in strenuous physical exercise and preached its great pleasures and advantages. When he married Alice Lee in 1881 and went to Europe on his honeymoon, he made sure to climb the Jungfrau and Matterhorn peaks. Later still, when he went to live on his ranch in the Dakotas, he prided himself on his ability to work as hard as any of the cowboys. By that time he had attained exceptional robustness, and his ideal of the strenuous life was to him both a living reality and a glorious goal. . .