I don't know much about the Republican oligarchy of Roosevelt's day, but I do know a little about today's Conservative psychology. They view government as fundamentally illegitimate, that decisions about the marketplace should be made by the market, which means that they will be made by them, since they represent the class that has the resources and skills and boldness to play the market. They take the risks, they suffer the losses, therefore they should make the choices and harvest the benefits. If they guess wrong, the invisible hand of capitalism will remove them, right? If it hasn't yet, then they obviously must be doing everything right. All wealth and benefit derives from them, is due to their effort and intelligence. And of course, they make no effort to keep others from joining their ranks and becoming their competitors, so they are democratic as well. Anyone who can't see this must be driven by envy and lust for unearned power; someone without the ability to make things happen for himself, so he must use the violence of state power to elevate himself. Power must be earned by those with the will to seize it. It cannot be legislated or litigated.

They see themselves as the people with the knowledge, courage and civic mindedness to wager it all in the marketplace, everyone else is an employee, someone who has traded his freedom to act and achieve for security. Employees are second class people, people who forfeited the right to make things happen and accepted instead the comfort and quiet of a salaried existence. Basically, it is the entrepreneur and the manager and the executive who operates as a free agent in society, his rivals and opponents should only be those of similar talent and power, and the society is simply not qualified to control or regulate him because it has no understanding of his problems, responsibilities, obligations or character. The society only seeks to extend its own security, and being essentially impotent, can only do so by stealing from him and by hobbling his activities.

Roosevelt came from that class, knew how it operated and how it thought. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he had said that.