One day, when I was a home from school with a sore throat, my mother brought home a comic book for me. This was back in the day when publishers were still putting out comic books focused on classic literature and historical characters.
The comic my mom had picked out was about Theodore Roosevelt.
I’m not sure why my mother felt I might benefit from reading about the life of Teddy Roosevelt, but it certainly was an entertaining story.
And I could identify with Teddy. He had a difficult childhood, suffering from poor health and debilitating asthma, and he was bullied in school. But he applied himself to exercise and body building. While attending Harvard College, he would row up to 25 miles a day. Ran through the woods. Hiked in the mountains and swam in icy rivers. Later, he fought in wars, and became a big game hunter.
And incidentally, elected U.S. President.
I didn’t have poor health growing up, and I wasn’t bullied in school. Also, I never tried to improve my body, never attended Harvard, never learned to row a boat, never fought in wars or hunted big game. (Whether I will be elected President remains to be seen.). But as a kid, I could identify with young Teddy, because, like him, no one ever thought I would amount to anything.
Of course, a comic book can never tell the whole story of a person’s life, so some details were left out. For example, the comic never mentioned the PTA.
I no longer have that comic book, but it really made a big impression on me. Especially the part where Teddy organized a group of volunteer “Rough Riders” to fight in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. And also, his aggressive use of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act to bust up big corporations and monopolies. And for establishing the United States Forest Service… creating 51 bird reserves… four game preserves… and 150 National Forests.
Due to his dedication to conservation, Roosevelt was voted the first honorary member of the Camp-Fire Club of America.
Not every U.S. President has been so honored.
But the reason I’m thinking about Teddy Roosevelt in 2023, one hundred years after his passing, is some new information I came across. Accidentally. (Not from a comic book.). We have so many sources of information in 2023, it boggles the mind. And some of it is even believable information. Like, when I learned about President Theodore Roosevelt and the moms who formed the PTA.
Let your mind drift back to 1908. Teddy Roosevelt has been President for seven years already, and America is a better place for it. But there are still some problems.
Some of the problems have to do with men… and some of the problems have to do with women.
America’s growing industrial economy is churning out manufactured goods like there’s no tomorrow, and transporting them hither and yon on an ever-expanding railroad network. But the people who work in the factories are living in slums, and suffering from malnutrition, while corporate presidents and shareholders are living a life of luxury unlike any the world has ever seen. People are calling it, ‘The Gilded Age’, but not everyone is gilded.
Behold! A federal system of social welfare is on the horizon. Not everyone can see it yet, but it’s there.
Can you see it?
But one big question. Is social welfare… Constitutional? (That always seems to be a big question.)
The federal government had tiptoed into the treacherous waters of socialism following the Civil War, by creating welfare programs to assist disabled veterans, and widows and orphans of soldiers killed in the war.
It’s all well and good to take care of the widows, and orphans. But how about, like, mothers in general? Could the U.S. Constitution really prohibit the government from taking care of mothers? Back then, a lot of Congressional representatives such a proposal ‘ unconstitutional’.
But I mean, come on, Mr. Congressman. We’re talking about the people who carry us in their bellies for nine months, and then worry about us for the rest of their lives.
Like I said, it’s 1908. Mothers can’t vote in most states; they can’t own property; have a bank account; or sign a contract. But nearly one in five manufacturing jobs is held by a woman, who is either a mother already, or likely to become a mother in the near future. (If she’s careless.) Enter, stage left, Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Alice McLellan Birney, and the National Congress of Mothers. The aim of the organization is to lobby Congress for economic protections for mothers.
And President Theodore Roosevelt steps up, to help out. Referring to the National Congress of Mothers, (and no doubt, thinking about his own mother), the President declares:
“This is one body that I put even ahead of the veterans of the Civil War, because, when all is said and done, it is the mother — and the mother only — who is a better citizen even than the soldier who fights for his country.”
The National Congress of Mothers changed their name, that same year, to ‘The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations’.
I assume Teddy was also in support of voting rights for mothers. Considering they are better citizens than even soldiers.
Who else is gonna buy you a comic book, when you’re sick?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.