of dogma and spirituality, says biographer William Harbaugh, led to a broad tolerance. He campaigned among Protestants, Catholics and Jews, and appointed them to office. He was suspicious of Mormons until they renounced polygamy. In 1907, concerning the proposed motto "In God We Trust" on money, he wrote, "It seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements." Roosevelt talked a great deal about religion. Biographer Edmund Morris states: Roosevelt publicly encouraged church attendance and was a conscientious churchgoer himself. When gas rationing was introduced during the First World War, he walked the three miles from his home at Sagamore Hill to the local church and back, even after a serious operation had made it difficult for him to travel by foot. It was said that Roosevelt "allowed no engagement to keep him from going to church," and he remained a fervent advocate of the Bible throughout his adult life. According to Christian F. Reisner, "Religion was as natural to Mr. Roosevelt as breathing," and when the travel library for Roosevelt's famous Smithsonian-sponsored African expedition was being assembled, the Bible was, according to his sister, "the first book selected." In an address delivered to the Long Island Bible Society in 1901, Roosevelt declared that: Political positions When he assumed the presidency, Roosevelt reassured many conservatives, stating that "the mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance." The following year, Roosevelt asserted the president's independence from business interests by opposing the merger which created the Northern Securities Company, and many were surprised that any president, much less an unelected one, would challenge powerful banker J.P. Morgan. In his last two years as president, Roosevelt became increasingly distrustful of big business, despite its close ties to the Republican Party. Roosevelt sought to replace the 19th-century laissez-faire economic environment with a new economic model which included a larger regulatory role for the federal government. He believed that 19th-century entrepreneurs had risked their fortunes on innovations and new businesses, and that these capitalists had been rightly rewarded. By contrast, he believed that 20th-century capitalists risked little but nonetheless reaped huge and, given the lack of risk, unjust, economic rewards. Without a redistribution of wealth away from