Change afoot...........................

     McKinley had chosen carefully:  a more orthodox phalanx of Republicans would be difficult to assemble.  To a man, these conservatives believed in the sanctity of property and the patrician responsibilities of wealth and power. . . . They tacitly acknowledged that Wall Street, rather than the White House, had executive control of the economy, with the legislative cooperation of Congress and the judicial backing of the Supreme Court.  This conservative alliance, forged after the Civil War, was intended to last well into the new century, if no forever.  Senator Hanna was determined to protect it:  "Let well enough alone!"
      Roosevelt was too restless and too reform minded to heed such a motto.  On the other hand (to use his favorite phrase), he despised the theorists who advocated radical change. . . . 
      The United States, with seventy-seven million citizens, was still uncrowded and healthily competitive.  But its social balance would be threatened if poverty spread in proportion to immigration. . . . Somehow he must grant a little leisure, and a little extra money, to multitudes currently working to survive.  This would enable them to develop those noneconomic virtues—intelligence, unselfishness, courage, decency—which he loosely defined as "character".  Character defined the worth of the individual, and "what was true of the individual is also true of the nation."
      At the same time, he must persuade Union League Republicans that perpetual, mild reform was true conservatism, in that it protected existing institutions from atrophy, and relieved the buildup of radical pressure.

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex