Editing Theodore Roosevelt (section)

===Second term===
As his second term progressed, Roosevelt moved to the left of his Republican Party base and called for a series of reforms, most of which Congress failed to pass.{{Sfn|Gould|2012|p=2}}{{Failed verification|date=August 2024|talk="promoted policies to the left"|reason=the cited page 2 content does not support this sentence}} Roosevelt's influence waned as he approached the end of his second term, as his promise to forego a third term made him a [[Lame duck (politics)|lame duck]] and his concentration of power provoked a backlash from many Congressmen.{{Sfn|Miller|1992|pp=463–464}} He sought a national [[Incorporation (business)|incorporation]] law, called for a federal [[Income tax in the United States|income tax]] (despite the Supreme Court's ruling in ''[[Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.]]''), and an [[Estate tax in the United States|inheritance tax]]. Roosevelt called for limits on the use of court injunctions against labor unions during strikes; injunctions were a powerful weapon that mostly helped business. He wanted an employee liability law for industrial injuries (pre-empting state laws) and an [[Eight-hour day|eight-hour work day]] for federal employees. In other areas, he also sought a [[postal savings system]] (to provide competition for local banks), and he asked for campaign reform laws.{{sfn|Ricard|2011|pp=160–166}}

The election of 1904 continued to be a source of contention between Republicans and Democrats. A Congressional investigation in 1905 revealed that corporate executives donated tens of thousands of dollars in 1904 to the [[Republican National Committee]]. In 1908, a month before the general presidential election, Governor [[Charles N. Haskell]] of Oklahoma, former Democratic Treasurer, said that Senators beholden to Standard Oil lobbied Roosevelt, in the summer of 1904, to authorize the leasing of Indian oil lands by Standard Oil subsidiaries. He said Roosevelt overruled his [[United States Secretary of Interior|Secretary of the Interior]] [[Ethan A. Hitchcock (Interior)|Ethan A. Hitchcock]] and granted a pipeline franchise to run through the [[Osage Nation|Osage lands]] to the Prairie Oil and Gas Company. The New York ''Sun'' made a similar accusation and said that Standard Oil, a refinery that financially benefited from the pipeline, had contributed $150,000 to the Republicans in 1904 (equivalent to ${{Format price|{{Inflation|US-GDP|150,000|1904|r=-5}}}} in {{Inflation-year|US-GDP}}) after Roosevelt's alleged reversal allowing the pipeline franchise. Roosevelt branded Haskell's allegation as "a lie, pure and simple".{{Sfn|Chambers|1974|p=219}}

====Rhetoric of righteousness====
Roosevelt's rhetoric was characterized by an intense moralism of personal righteousness.<ref>Leroy G. Dorsey, "Preaching Morality in Modern America: Theodore Roosevelt's Rhetorical Progressivism." in ''Rhetoric and Reform in the Progressive Era, A Rhetorical History of the United States: Significant Moments in American Public Discourse'', ed. J. Michael Hogan, (Michigan State University Press, 2003), vol 6 pp 49–83.</ref><ref>Joshua D. Hawley, ''Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness'' (2008), p. xvii. [https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Joshua-David-Hawley/dp/0300120109 excerpt]. [[Josh Hawley]] in 2019 became a Republican senator with intense moralistic rhetoric.</ref><ref>See also ''The Independent'' (February 6, 1908) [https://books.google.com/books?id=RjAPAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22justified+by+the+advocacy+of+a+system+of+morality%22&pg=PA275 p. 274 online]</ref> The tone was typified by his denunciation of "predatory wealth" in a message he sent Congress in January 1908 calling for passage of new labor laws: <blockquote>Predatory wealth--of the wealth accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wageworkers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition, and to defrauding the public by stock jobbing and the manipulation of securities. Certain wealthy men of this stamp, whose conduct should be abhorrent to every man of ordinarily decent conscience, and who commit the hideous wrong of teaching our young men that phenomenal business success must ordinarily be based on dishonesty, have during the last few months made it apparent that they have banded together to work for a reaction. Their endeavor is to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, to prevent any additional legislation which would check and restrain them, and to secure if possible a freedom from all restraint which will permit every unscrupulous wrongdoer to do what he wishes unchecked provided he has enough money....The methods by which the Standard Oil people and those engaged in the other combinations of which I have spoken above have achieved great fortunes can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which would also justify every form of criminality on the part of a labor union, and every form of violence, corruption, and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballot box stuffing in politics.<ref>Roosevelt,
"Special message to Congress, January 31, 1908," in {{harv|Morison|1952|loc=vol 5 pp. 1580, 1587}}; online version at [https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-workers-compensation UC Santa Barbara, "The American Presidency Project"]</ref> </blockquote>