Variations on a Theme

This speech is a hard one to break down.

Teddy Roosevelt is, in this speech, awfully fond of repetition. He pretty much goes in a circle, saying (roughly), "Lying is bad and journalists cause problems, no I love journalists and hate corruption, there are good bankers and bad laborers."

Lather, rinse, repeat.

There are no clearly defined sections, no new ideas brought up in further parts of the speech, just variations on a theme.

The one distinction occurs around the halfway point, where he generally stops talking to journalists and starts talking about the social climate in America more broadly. It's at this point where he stops giving advice to specific people and starts talking about the national character.

How it Breaks Down

Dear Journalists

In this part, TR's trying to set guidelines for investigative journalists, trying to get them to stop creating a toxic public atmosphere. (The talk about getting businesses to stop making a literal toxic atmosphere would come later.)

He has a lot of complaints about attitudes toward businesses and corruption in the United States and he starts with asking journalists to have a hand in changing that.

The People and Public Malaise/Hysteria

About halfway through the speech, TR shifts gears and talks about the public climate that he assumes journalists had a hand in creating. He speaks out against two ends of the spectrum—complete apathy and fanatical hatred of the wealthy—and ends by saying that we need to think about things in his two favorite flavors: good and evil.