How Did Theodore Roosevelt Changed America

Theodore Roosevelt's presidency may have changed the United States forever. Although he was not the American people’s first choice to be president, Roosevelt certainly did grow on the American people. Roosevelt had many accomplishments in his presidency, both domestic and foreign. Because Roosevelt was a different type of president, it proves that his policies changed the landscape of the US politically, economically, and socially. Theodore Roosevelt changed America socially by helping the people of the United States. Roosevelt supported labor unions and felt that the government should be fair to both the labor unions as well as the management. In 1902, 140,000 miners in Pennsylvania went on strike so they could get better working conditions …show more content…
President Roosevelt helped mediate a treaty for the Russo-Japan war, and Japan had some demands the Roosevelt strongly disagreed with. This caused tensions with Japan to run extremely high and was close to war. Tensions were so high that a San Francisco school board decided to segregate children of Japanese and Korean descent. Roosevelt eventually persuaded the school board to end the segregation and made a “Gentleman’s Agreement” with Japan (Theodore Roosevelt World Book). The Gentleman’s Agreement said that any person who was issued a passport to just work in the US and any Japanese person with a passport from a different country would not be allowed to enter the United States. However, Japanese families and Japanese people who left the US are allowed to enter and reenter (Smithsonian Gentleman’s Agreement). This agreement changed the landscape of the US politically because it showed the rest of the countries that the US was willing to start fighting if no agreement was made. Roosevelt also helped to create the Panama Canal. Before Panama was a country, it was owned by Columbia who did not want to build a canal between Panama. Since Columbia was not willing to negotiate, Roosevelt and the US government supported a revolution to make Panama their own country. After Panama became their own country, Panama and the US made a treaty giving the US total control over the canal for $10 million and $250,000 annually (Theodore Roosevelt Miller Center). This example shows that Roosevelt’s policies change the landscape of the US because it shows other countries that the US was willing to use force for anything necessary. Theodore Roosevelt continued to use the Monroe doctrine to help Venezuela after they did not pay off debts to European countries, like Germany, Italy, and England. German appeared to be getting ready