The worst wrongs that capitalism can commit upon labor would sink into insignificance when compared with the hideous wrong done by those who would degrade labor by entailing upon it the rapid lowering of self-reliance. The Roman mob, living on the bread given them by the state and clamoring for excitement and amusement to be purveyed by the state, represent for all time the very nadir to which a free and self-respecting population of workers can sink if they grow habitually to rely upon others, and especially upon the state, either to furnish them, charity, or to permit them to plunder, as a means of livelihood.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917