File:0330120007d12w.jpg

English: “Having a Bully Time”

	Cartoonist:  Edward Windsor Kemble
	Source:  Harper's Weekly
	Date:   March 30, 1912, p. 7

This Harper’s Weekly cartoon portrays Theodore Roosevelt, in the garb of a militant suffragist and Rough Rider cowboy boots, shattering the windows of American government and economy. (In 1912, he was the only major-party candidate to support women’s suffrage.) The image reflects the fact that Roosevelt was moving leftward politically to the shock of his critics. In August 1910, his “New Nationalism” speech anticipated the modern welfare state in which a strong federal government intervened to help workers and consumers against the negative effects of big business (the existence of which he accepted as “the result of an imperative economic law”). In February 1912, his “Charter for Democracy” speech added the recall of judicial decisions (subject only to Supreme Court review) to his growing list of direct democracy initiatives. These and other reforms were articulated in his “Confession of Faith” speech in August when accepting the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party.