My Dinner with Theodore Roosevelt by Daphne

My Dinner with Theodore Roosevelt by Daphne - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

If I were to have dinner with any historical figure I would choose to have dinner with the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt who was one of the most effective presidents in my opinion for his environmental work and also work in how he fixed many of the problems that were arising during the industrial revolution of the mid 1800’s.
I first learned about Mr. Roosevelt in my sophomore history class when we were learning about the negative aspects of the Industrial revolution while is was a revolutionary event where many people stepped forward into a whole new dimension and opportunity to run a business. However many people took advantage of that and many companies would band together to manipulate commerce in their favor, by forming monopolies and trusts that would complicate matters for any small business owner who looked to compete with the larger companies.
Theodore Roosevelt solved these dilemmas, but this reason alone isn’t why I admire him, I learned that Mr. Roosevelt was not the rough rider that many people knew him as, when he was a child he suffered from asthma and was not able to go outside since there was little treatment for the illness at the time, despite the childhood illness he always liked to be outside as he was a naturalist and he ran a cattle ranch, many presidency were affluent in that time and still continue to be today but Roosevelt was a man of the people since he got to experience a life that not many presidents get to experience and see how the common man works and how they live. This played into his presidency as he set up environmental programs to conserve many of the national parks that we still have today, one of them being Yellowstone and he set up anti-trust laws to make commerce fair for all small businesses; he set up the Food and Drug Administration to start regulating and assuring the freshness of foods since many foods in that times were being tainted and working conditions were still not safe for many workers which were leaving the people's health at risk as well.
I admire President Roosevelt for his work and I feel that he was a good president as well as a good person who cared a lot about the future of the United States and it’s people.
If I were to have him over for dinner I’d probably ask him more about his adventures and the full life that he had in which he lived many thrills which include fighting in the Spanish-American war and the adventure that got stuffed bears to be dubbed ‘Teddy Bears’ in his honor, I would be very sure that Mr. Roosevelt would be a very interesting dinner guest.