The Square Deal was Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program, which reflected his three major goals: conservation of natural resources, corporate law, and consumer protection.
Thus, it aimed at helping middle-class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting business from the most extreme demands of organized labor.
[2]A Progressive Era Republican, Roosevelt believed in government action to mitigate social evils, and as president he in 1908 denounced "the representatives of predatory wealth" as guilty of "all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing competition, and to defrauding the public by stock-jobbing and the manipulation of securities.
The press was using the term "Square Deal" as early as 1871 in a New York Times local news article that reads "Many of the inscriptions on the front of trucks, drays, and other vehicles are quite amusing.
"[8] In 1901, he declared "a square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor" during a speech in Lynn, Massachusetts, recorded by stereograph (photo) image.
"[11] In October 1904, while Roosevelt was readying publication of his book A Square Deal for Every Man[12] (Chicago, R. J. Thompson, 1905), The New York Times reported: No sooner have the Democrats concluded their task of going through the President's many books with a fine-tooth comb to ferret out campaign material, than Republicans come forth with a pamphlet of about the same size, and prepared on a somewhat similar plan, making conspicuous Mr. Roosevelt's sentiments on numerous civic and governmental questions.
The 94-page pamphlet's 75 topics include: America, A Good American, Alaska, Anarchy, Army and Navy, Capital, Character, Charity, Citizenship, Farmer, Peace, Publicity, Trusts, Weaklings, and World Power.
The press also criticized him for it: In his insistence upon "a square deal for all," President Roosevelt uses a phrase which is as catchy and as impracticable as either of those "glittering generalities" or the Declaration of Independence that have been shining and ringing all over the civilized world for a hundred and twenty-nine years and bid fair to serve for centuries to come as a potent inspiration in every struggle against tyranny and oppression, every movement toward greater liberty.
In other areas he also sought a postal savings system to provide competition to local banks, and, finally, campaign finance reform.
His court policies in particular caused his anointed successor, William Howard Taft, to lead a counter-crusade which defeated Roosevelt in the Republican presidential primaries in 1912.
[26] Labor unions in the age of Samuel Gompers were generally on the Democratic side, but Roosevelt felt that favorable policies toward them would gain votes or at least neutralize their opposition.