• Roosevelt's "first appearance in public life, as a member of the Legislature of New York, coincided with an outbreak of dissatisfaction over the charter of New York City".
• Later, Roosevelt became "one of the Federal Commissioners", and he "Made a most useful contribution to the more effective enforcement of the Civil Service Law".
• "Then, as Governor of the State of New York, he was instrumental in securing the passage of a law taxing franchises as real property", Roosevelt was a pro-trust.
• As a president of the United States, 1901-1908, he consistently used the power of the Federal government and his own influence and popularity for the purpose of regulating the corporations in what he believed to be the public interest.

A Nationalist
In the book The Promise of American Life, Chapter 1, page 1, Herbert Croly said, [Roosevelt] "has, indeed, been even more of a nationalist than he has a reformer. His most important literary work was a history of the beginning of American national expansion. He has treated all public questions from a vigorous, even from an extreme, national standpoint." Roosevelt thought an efficient national organization was necessary for reform.

What Roosevelt had failed to do
To Roosevelt, the reform means to "made Americans more sensitive to a national idea and more conscious of their national responsibilities". Right after the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment could not do everything for the citizens of the United States. The constituency power failed after Civil War because it was impossible, by law, that the US federal government could do everything for everybody. Theodore Roosevelt repeated the mistakes that the union had made during the Reconstruction. Roosevelt tried to do the progressive reform with a piece of paper. The Pure Food and Drug Act, for example, did not provide a true pure food and better drugs for American people. The reason of his failure was that the federal government was too weak to regulate the business.