Article Data
Author: Ray Hahn
Affiliation: South Jersey Postcard Club
Written: Winter 2002

Publication history:
            First: SJPCC Newsletter, January 2002
           
Note: Post card club newsletter editors may copy all or part of this article for use in any club publication. Lockkeeper requests that you notify ray@lockkeeper.com of any intention to use this article and please, ascribe the article to the original author.

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Number of words: 373.
Illustrations: 1 photograph and 1 postcards


Mr. Roosevelt’s Hunting Trip
by Ray Hahn

           Theodore Roosevelt, while president of our country was, in addition to being a very successful politician, a crusader for good government and social justice.
           Roosevelt’s second administration (1905-1909) was marked by many achievements in legislation for railroad regulation, pure foods and drugs, employer liability and measures providing for federal inspection of stock-yards and packing houses. His programs supporting the conservation of land and natural resources made it possible to double the number of national parks within that four year period.
           Mr. Roosevelt’s impact on world politics was never more dominate than during those years of his second term. Through his manipulation of the powers of the Presidency (Remember his comment concerning the presidency? He called it a Bully Pulpit.) he brokered an end to the Russo-Japanese war, he intervened decisively in the Algeciras Crisis (1905) and was a stabilizing influence in conflicts that concerned Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.
           Roosevelt’s political and legislative achievements, coupled with his physical and intellectual vitality, made him a very popular president and he could easily have won re-election in 1908 had he chosen to be nominated. He left the oval office on March 4, 1909.
           Only a month later, Roosevelt and his son Kermit landed in Mombasa, the main Indian Ocean seaport of Kenya. There, Roosevelt gathered a safari party of nearly 250 porters and guides. For the next year, they trekked across British East Africa, into the Congo and then back to the Nile ending in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.
           The purpose of the trip was to gather nature specimens for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and thus with their goal in mind, the Roosevelts collected over 1,100 items, including more than 500 speciments that were considered big game. In Roosevelt’s own words, he regarded his expedition to be “the most noteworthy collection of big animals that has ever come out of Africa.”
           After his year long hunt, Mr. Roosevelt left Africa and proceeded in early May of 1910 to England to represent the USA at the funeral of King Edward VII and from there he went on to Norway to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace which he won for his part in ending the Russo-Japanese War.
He returned home in June 1910.


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