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CHAPTER 13

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity
of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification
largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment
of living and working conditions among the mass of the people. I felt
that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the
first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of
the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the
government could do in the interest of labor should be done. The Federal
Government can rarely act with the directness that the State governments
act. It can, however, do a good deal. My purpose was to make the
National Government itself a model employer of labor, the effort being
to make the per diem employee just as much as the Cabinet officer regard
himself as one of the partners employed in the service of the public,
proud of his work, eager to do it in the best possible manner, and
confident of just treatment. Our aim was also to secure good laws
wherever the National Government had power, notably in the Territories,
in the District of Columbia, and in connection with inter-State
commerce. I found the eight-hour law a mere farce, the departments
rarely enforcing it with any degree of efficiency. This I remedied
by executive action. Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government
servants often proved to be the prime offenders so far as the
enforcement of the eight-hour law was concerned, because in their zeal
to get good work done for the Government they became harsh taskmasters,
and declined to consider the needs of their fellow-employees who served
under them. The more I had studied the subject the more strongly I had
become convinced that an eight-hour day under the conditions of labor
in the United States was all that could, with wisdom and propriety, be
required either by the Government or by private employers; that more
than this meant, on the average, a decrease in the qualities that tell
for good citizenship. I finally solved the problem, as far as Government
employees were concerned, by calling in Charles P. Neill, the head
of the Labor Bureau; and acting on his advice, I speedily made the
eight-hour law really effective. Any man who shirked his work, who
dawdled and idled, received no mercy; slackness is even worse than
harshness; for exactly as in battle mercy to the coward is cruelty to
the brave man, so in civil life slackness towards the vicious and idle
is harshness towards the honest and hardworking.

We passed a good law protecting the lives and health of miners in the
Territories, and other laws providing for the supervision of employment
agencies in the District of Columbia, and protecting the health
of motormen and conductors on street railways in the District. We
practically started the Bureau of Mines. We provided for safeguarding
factory employees in the District against accidents, and for the
restriction of child labor therein. We passed a workmen's compensation
law for the protection of Government employees; a law which did not
go as far as I wished, but which was the best I could get, and which
committed the Government to the right policy. We provided for an
investigation of woman and child labor in the United States. We
incorporated the National Child Labor Committee. Where we had most
difficulty was with the railway companies engaged in inter-State
business. We passed an act improving safety appliances on railway trains
without much opposition, but we had more trouble with acts regulating
the hours of labor of railway employees and making those railways which
were engaged in inter-State commerce liable for injuries to or the death
of their employees while on duty. One important step in connection with
these latter laws was taken by Attorney-General Moody when, on behalf of
the Government, he intervened in the case of a wronged employee. It
is unjust that a law which has been declared public policy by the
representatives of the people should be submitted to the possibility of
nullification because the Government leaves the enforcement of it to the
private initiative of poor people who have just suffered some crushing
accident. It should be the business of the Government to enforce laws of
this kind, and to appear in court to argue for their constitutionality
and proper enforcement. Thanks to Moody, the Government assumed this
position. The first employers' liability law affecting inter-State
railroads was declared unconstitutional. We got through another, which
stood the test of the courts.

The principle to which we especially strove to give expression, through
these laws and through executive action, was that a right is valueless
unless reduced from the abstract to the concrete. This sounds like a
truism. So far from being such, the effort practically to apply it was
almost revolutionary, and gave rise to the bitterest denunciation of us
by all the big lawyers, and all the big newspaper editors, who, whether
sincerely or for hire, gave expression to the views of the privileged
classes. Ever since the Civil War very many of the decisions of the
courts, not as regards ordinary actions between man and man, but as
regards the application of great governmental policies for social
and industrial justice, had been in reality nothing but ingenious
justification of the theory that these policies were mere high-sounding
abstractions, and were not to be given practical effect. The tendency of
the courts had been, in the majority of cases, jealously to exert their
great power in protecting those who least needed protection and hardly
to use their power at all in the interest of those who most needed
protection. Our desire was to make the Federal Government efficient as
an instrument for protecting the rights of labor within its province,
and therefore to secure and enforce judicial decisions which would
permit us to make this desire effective. Not only some of the Federal
judges, but some of the State courts invoked the Constitution in a
spirit of the narrowest legalistic obstruction to prevent the Government
from acting in defense of labor on inter-State railways. In effect,
these judges took the view that while Congress had complete power as
regards the goods transported by the railways, and could protect wealthy
or well-to-do owners of these goods, yet that it had no power to protect
the lives of the men engaged in transporting the goods. Such judges
freely issued injunctions to prevent the obstruction of traffic in
the interest of the property owners, but declared unconstitutional
the action of the Government in seeking to safeguard the men, and the
families of the men, without whose labor the traffic could not take
place. It was an instance of the largely unconscious way in which the
courts had been twisted into the exaltation of property rights over
human rights, and the subordination of the welfare of the laborer when
compared with the profit of the man for whom he labored. By what I fear
my conservative friends regarded as frightfully aggressive missionary
work, which included some uncommonly plain speaking as to certain unjust
and anti-social judicial decisions, we succeeded in largely, but by no
means altogether, correcting this view, at least so far as the best and
most enlightened judges were concerned.

Very much the most important action I took as regards labor had nothing
to do with legislation, and represented executive action which was not
required by the Constitution. It illustrated as well as anything that
I did the theory which I have called the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the
Presidency; that is, that occasionally great national crises arise which
call for immediate and vigorous executive action, and that in such cases
it is the duty of the President to act upon the theory that he is the
steward of the people, and that the proper attitude for him to take is
that he is bound to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever
the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws
explicitly forbid him to do it.

Early in the spring of 1902 a universal strike began in the anthracite
regions. The miners and the operators became deeply embittered, and the
strike went on throughout the summer and the early fall without any sign
of reaching an end, and with almost complete stoppage of mining. In many
cities, especially in the East, the heating apparatus is designed
for anthracite, so that the bituminous coal is only a very partial
substitute. Moreover, in many regions, even in farmhouses, many of the
provisions are for burning coal and not wood. In consequence, the coal
famine became a National menace as the winter approached. In most big
cities and many farming districts east of the Mississippi the shortage
of anthracite threatened calamity. In the populous industrial States,
from Ohio eastward, it was not merely calamity, but the direct disaster,
that was threatened. Ordinarily conservative men, men very sensitive as
to the rights of property under normal conditions, when faced by this
crisis felt, quite rightly, that there must be some radical action. The
Governor of Massachusetts and the Mayor of New York both notified me, as
the cold weather came on, that if the coal famine continued the misery
throughout the Northeast, and especially in the great cities, would
become appalling, and the consequent public disorder so great that
frightful consequences might follow. It is not too much to say that the
situation which confronted Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, and
to a less degree the States of the Middle West, in October, 1902, was
quite as serious as if they had been threatened by the invasion of a
hostile army of overwhelming force.

The big coal operators had banded together, and positively refused
to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. They knew that the
suffering among the miners was great; they were confident that if order
were kept, and nothing further done by the Government, they would win;
and they refused to consider that the public had any rights in the
matter. They were, for the most part, men of unquestionably good private
life, and they were merely taking the extreme individualistic view of
the rights of property and the freedom of individual action upheld in
the _laissez-faire_ political economics. The mines were in the State
of Pennsylvania. There was no duty whatever laid upon me by the
Constitution in the matter, and I had in theory the power to act
directly unless the Governor of Pennsylvania or the Legislature, if
it were in session, should notify me that Pennsylvania could not keep
order, and request me as commander-in-chief of the army of the United
States to intervene and keep order.

As long as I could avoid interfering I did so; but I directed the head
of the Labor Bureau, Carroll Wright, to make a thorough investigation
and lay the facts fully before me. As September passed without any sign
of weakening either among the employers or the striking workmen,
the situation became so grave that I felt I would have to try to do
something. The thing most feasible was to get both sides to agree to a
Commission of Arbitration, with a promise to accept its findings; the
miners to go to work as soon as the commission was appointed, at the old
rate of wages. To this proposition the miners, headed by John Mitchell,
agreed, stipulating only that I should have the power to name the
Commission. The operators, however, positively refused. They insisted
that all that was necessary to do was for the State to keep order, using
the militia as a police force; although both they and the miners asked
me to intervene under the Inter-State Commerce Law, each side requesting
that I proceed against the other, and both requests being impossible.

Finally, on October 3, the representatives of both the operators and the
miners met before me, in pursuance of my request. The representatives of
the miners included as their head and spokesman John Mitchell, who kept
his temper admirably and showed to much advantage. The representatives
of the operators, on the contrary, came down in a most insolent frame of
mind, refused to talk of arbitration or other accommodation of any kind,
and used language that was insulting to the miners and offensive to me.
They were curiously ignorant of the popular temper; and when they went
away from the interview they, with much pride, gave their own account of
it to the papers, exulting in the fact that they had "turned down" both
the miners and the President.

I refused to accept the rebuff, however, and continued the effort to get
an agreement between the operators and the miners. I was anxious to get
this agreement, because it would prevent the necessity of taking
the extremely drastic action I meditated, and which is hereinafter
described.

Fortunately, this time we were successful. Yet we were on the verge of
failure, because of self-willed obstinacy on the part of the operators.
This obstinacy was utterly silly from their own standpoint, and
well-nigh criminal from the standpoint of the people at large. The
miners proposed that I should name the Commission, and that if I put
on a representative of the employing class I should also put on a labor
union man. The operators positively declined to accept the suggestion.
They insisted upon my naming a Commission of only five men, and
specified the qualifications these men should have, carefully choosing
these qualifications so as to exclude those whom it had leaked out I was
thinking of appointing, including ex-President Cleveland. They made the
condition that I was to appoint one officer of the engineer corps of
the army or navy, one man with experience of mining, one "man of
prominence," "eminent as a sociologist," one Federal judge of the
Eastern district of Pennsylvania, and one mining engineer.

They positively refused to have me appoint any representative of labor,
or to put on an extra man. I was desirous of putting on the extra man,
because Mitchell and the other leaders of the miners had urged me
to appoint some high Catholic ecclesiastic. Most of the miners were
Catholics, and Mitchell and the leaders were very anxious to secure
peaceful acquiescence by the miners in any decision rendered, and they
felt that their hands would be strengthened if such an appointment
were made. They also, quite properly, insisted that there should be
one representative of labor on the commission, as all of the others
represented the propertied classes. The operators, however, absolutely
refused to acquiesce in the appointment of any representative of labor,
and also announced that they would refuse to accept a sixth man on the
Commission; although they spoke much less decidedly on this point. The
labor men left everything in my hands.

The final conferences with the representatives of the operators took
place in my rooms on the evening of October 15. Hour after hour went by
while I endeavored to make the operators through their representatives
see that the country would not tolerate their insisting upon such
conditions; but in vain. The two representatives of the operators were
Robert Bacon and George W. Perkins. They were entirely reasonable. But
the operators themselves were entirely unreasonable. They had worked
themselves into a frame of mind where they were prepared to sacrifice
everything and see civil war in the country rather than back down and
acquiesce in the appointment of a representative of labor. It looked as
if a deadlock were inevitable.

Then, suddenly, after about two hours' argument, it dawned on me that
they were not objecting to the thing, but to the name. I found that they
did not mind my appointing any man, whether he was a labor man or
not, so long as he was not appointed _as_ a labor man, or _as_ a
representative of labor; they did not object to my exercising any
latitude I chose in the appointments so long as they were made under the
headings they had given. I shall never forget the mixture of relief
and amusement I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they
would heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if
I would call it Tweedledee they would accept it with rapture; it gave
me an illuminating glimpse into one corner of the mighty brains of these
"captains of industry." In order to carry the great and vital point and
secure agreement by both parties, all that was necessary for me to do
was to commit a technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn face. This
I gladly did. I announced at once that I accepted the terms laid down.
With this understanding, I appointed the labor man I had all along
had in view, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway
Conductors, calling him an "eminent sociologist"--a term which I doubt
whether he had ever previously heard. He was a first-class man, whom
I afterward put on the Inter-State Commerce Commission. I added to the
Arbitration Commission, on my own authority, a sixth member, in the
person of Bishop Spalding, a Catholic bishop, of Peoria, Ill., one of
the very best men to be found in the entire country. The man whom the
operators had expected me to appoint as the sociologist was Carroll
Wright--who really was an eminent sociologist. I put him on as recorder
of the Commission, and added him as a seventh member as soon as
the Commission got fairly started. In publishing the list of the
Commissioners, when I came to Clark's appointment, I added: "As a
sociologist--the President assuming that for the purposes of such a
Commission, the term sociologist means a man who has thought and studied
deeply on social questions and has practically applied his knowledge."

The relief of the whole country was so great that the sudden appearance
of the head of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors as an "eminent
sociologist" merely furnished material for puzzled comment on the part
of the press. It was a most admirable Commission. It did a noteworthy
work, and its report is a monument in the history of the relations of
labor and capital in this country. The strike, by the way, brought me
into contact with more than one man who was afterward a valued friend
and fellow-worker. On the suggestion of Carroll Wright I appointed as
assistant recorders to the Commission Charles P. Neill, whom I afterward
made Labor Commissioner, to succeed Wright himself, and Mr. Edward
A. Moseley. Wilkes-Barre was the center of the strike; and the man in
Wilkes-Barre who helped me most was Father Curran; I grew to know
and trust and believe in him, and throughout my term in office, and
afterward, he was not only my stanch friend, but one of the men by whose
advice and counsel I profited most in matters affecting the welfare of
the miners and their families.

I was greatly relieved at the result, for more than one reason. Of
course, first and foremost, my concern was to avert a frightful calamity
to the United States. In the next place I was anxious to save the great
coal operators and all of the class of big propertied men, of which they
were members, from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would
have brought on them if I had not acted; and one of the exasperating
things was that they were so blinded that they could not see that I was
trying to save them from themselves and to avert, not only for their
sakes, but for the sake of the country, the excesses which would have
been indulged in at their expense if they had longer persisted in their
conduct.

The great Anthracite Strike of 1902 left an indelible impress upon
the people of the United States. It showed clearly to all wise and
far-seeing men that the labor problem in this country had entered upon
a new phase. Industry had grown. Great financial corporations, doing a
nation-wide and even a world-wide business, had taken the place of
the smaller concerns of an earlier time. The old familiar, intimate
relations between employer and employee were passing. A few generations
before, the boss had known every man in his shop; he called his men
Bill, Tom, Dick, John; he inquired after their wives and babies; he
swapped jokes and stories and perhaps a bit of tobacco with them. In the
small establishment there had been a friendly human relationship between
employer and employee.

There was no such relation between the great railway magnates, who
controlled the anthracite industry, and the one hundred and fifty
thousand men who worked in their mines, or the half million women and
children who were dependent upon these miners for their daily bread.
Very few of these mine workers had ever seen, for instance, the
president of the Reading Railroad. Had they seen him many of them could
not have spoken to him, for tens of thousands of the mine workers were
recent immigrants who did not understand the language which he spoke and
who spoke a language which he could not understand.

Again, a few generations ago an American workman could have saved money,
gone West and taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In
earlier days a man who began with pick and shovel might have come to own
a mine. That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense majority,
and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty thousand mine workers
could ever aspire to enter the small circle of men who held in their
grasp the great anthracite industry. The majority of the men who earned
wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were
compelled to progress not by ceasing to be wage-earners, but by
improving the conditions under which all the wage-earners in all the
industries of the country lived and worked, as well of course, as
improving their own individual efficiency.

Another change which had come about as a result of the foregoing was a
crass inequality in the bargaining relation between the employer and
the individual employee standing alone. The great coal-mining and
coal-carrying companies, which employed their tens of thousands, could
easily dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, on
the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies.
He needed a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get
one. What the miner had to sell--his labor--was a perishable commodity;
the labor of to-day--if not sold to-day--was lost forever. Moreover,
his labor was not like most commodities--a mere thing; it was part of
a living, breathing human being. The workman saw, and all citizens who
gave earnest thought to the matter saw, that the labor problem was not
only an economic, but also a moral, a human problem. Individually the
miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wage-contract with the
great companies; they could make fair terms only by uniting into trade
unions to bargain collectively. The men were forced to cooperate to
secure not only their economic, but their simple human rights. They,
like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions under which
they lived to unite in unions of their industry or trade, and these
unions were bound to grow in size, in strength, and in power for good
and evil as the industries in which the men were employed grew larger
and larger.

A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough
approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One
of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher
or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or
carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because
_we are all of about the same size_. Therefore a simple and poor society
can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich
and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals,
and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become
so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them,
and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes
necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first
in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all
combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their
own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers'
associations and trade unions.

This the great coal operators did not see. They did not see that their
property rights, which they so stoutly defended, were of the same
texture as were the human rights, which they so blindly and hotly
denied. They did not see that the power which they exercised by
representing their stockholders was of the same texture as the power
which the union leaders demanded of representing the workmen, who had
democratically elected them. They did not see that the right to use
one's property as one will can be maintained only so long as it is
consistent with the maintenance of certain fundamental human rights, of
the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or, as we
may restate them in these later days, of the rights of the worker to a
living wage, to reasonable hours of labor, to decent working and
living conditions, to freedom of thought and speech and industrial
representation,--in short, to a measure of industrial democracy and, in
return for his arduous toil, to a worthy and decent life according to
American standards. Still another thing these great business leaders did
not see. They did not see that both their interests and the interests of
the workers must be accommodated, and if need be, subordinated, to the
fundamental permanent interests of the whole community. No man and no
group of men may so exercise their rights as to deprive the nation of
the things which are necessary and vital to the common life. A strike
which ties up the coal supplies of a whole section is a strike invested
with a public interest.

So great was that public interest in the Coal Strike of 1902, so deeply
and strongly did I feel the wave of indignation which swept over the
whole country that had I not succeeded in my efforts to induce the
operators to listen to reason, I should reluctantly but none the less
decisively have taken a step which would have brought down upon my head
the execrations of many of "the captains of industry," as well as of
sundry "respectable" newspapers who dutifully take their cue from them.
As a man should be judged by his intentions as well as by his actions, I
will give here the story of the intervention that never happened.

While the coal operators were exulting over the fact that they had
"turned down" the miners and the President, there arose in all parts
of the country an outburst of wrath so universal that even so naturally
conservative a man as Grover Cleveland wrote to me, expressing his
sympathy with the course I was following, his indignation at the conduct
of the operators, and his hope that I would devise some method of
effective action. In my own mind I was already planning effective
action; but it was of a very drastic character, and I did not wish
to take it until the failure of all other expedients had rendered it
necessary. Above all, I did not wish to talk about it until and unless I
actually acted. I had definitely determined that somehow or other act
I would, that somehow or other the coal famine should be broken. To
accomplish this end it was necessary that the mines should be run, and,
if I could get no voluntary agreement between the contending sides, that
an Arbitration Commission should be appointed which would command such
public confidence as to enable me, without too much difficulty, to
enforce its terms upon both parties. Ex-President Cleveland's letter not
merely gratified me, but gave me the chance to secure him as head of the
Arbitration Commission. I at once wrote him, stating that I would very
probably have to appoint an Arbitration Commission or Investigating
Commission to look into the matter and decide on the rights of the
case, whether or not the operators asked for or agreed to abide by the
decisions of such a Commission; and that I would ask him to accept the
chief place on the Commission. He answered that he would do so. I picked
out several first-class men for other positions on the Commission.

Meanwhile the Governor of Pennsylvania had all the Pennsylvania
militia in the anthracite region, although without any effect upon the
resumption of mining. The method of action upon which I had determined
in the last resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to ask me
to keep order. Then I would put in the army under the command of some
first-rate general. I would instruct this general to keep absolute
order, taking any steps whatever that was necessary to prevent
interference by the strikers or their sympathizers with men who wanted
to work. I would also instruct him to dispossess the operators and run
the mines as a receiver until such time as the Commission might make its
report, and until I, as President, might issue further orders in view of
this report. I had to find a man who possessed the necessary good sense,
judgment, and nerve to act in such event. He was ready to hand in the
person of Major-General Schofield. I sent for him, telling him that if
I had to make use of him it would be because the crisis was only less
serious than that of the Civil War, that the action taken would be
practically a war measure, and that if I sent him he must act in a
purely military capacity under me as commander-in-chief, paying no heed
to any authority, judicial or otherwise, except mine. He was a fine
fellow--a most respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers and a
black skull-cap, without any of the outward aspect of the conventional
military dictator; but in both nerve and judgment he was all right, and
he answered quietly that if I gave the order he would take possession
of the mines, and would guarantee to open them and to run them without
permitting any interference either by the owners or the strikers or
anybody else, so long as I told him to stay. I then saw Senator Quay,
who, like every other responsible man in high position, was greatly
wrought up over the condition of things. I told him that he need be
under no alarm as to the problem not being solved, that I was going to
make another effort to get the operators and miners to come together,
but that I would solve the problem in any event and get coal; that,
however, I did not wish to tell him anything of the details of my
intention, but merely to have him arrange that whenever I gave the word
the Governor of Pennsylvania should request me to intervene; that when
this was done I would be responsible for all that followed, and would
guarantee that the coal famine would end forthwith. The Senator made
no inquiry or comment, and merely told me that he in his turn would
guarantee that the Governor would request my intervention the minute I
asked that the request be made.

These negotiations were concluded with the utmost secrecy, General
Schofield being the only man who knew exactly what my plan was, and
Senator Quay, two members of my Cabinet, and ex-President Cleveland and
the other men whom I proposed to put on the Commission, the only other
men who knew that I had a plan. As I have above outlined, my efforts to
bring about an agreement between the operators and miners were finally
successful. I was glad not to have to take possession of the mines on my
own initiative by means of General Schofield and the regulars. I was all
ready to act, and would have done so without the slightest hesitation or
a moment's delay if the negotiations had fallen through. And my action
would have been entirely effective. But it is never well to take drastic
action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in less
drastic fashion; and, although this was a minor consideration, I was
personally saved a good deal of future trouble by being able to avoid
this drastic action. At the time I should have been almost unanimously
supported. With the famine upon them the people would not have tolerated
any conduct that would have thwarted what I was doing. Probably no man
in Congress, and no man in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, would
have raised his voice against me. Although there would have been
plenty of muttering, nothing would have been done to interfere with the
solution of the problem which I had devised, _until the solution was
accomplished and the problem ceased to be a problem_. Once this was
done, and when people were no longer afraid of a coal famine, and began
to forget that they ever had been afraid of it, and to be indifferent as
regards the consequences to those who put an end to it, then my enemies
would have plucked up heart and begun a campaign against me. I doubt if
they could have accomplished much anyway, for the only effective remedy
against me would have been impeachment, and that they would not have
ventured to try.[*]

     [*] One of my appointees on the Anthracite Strike Commission
     was Judge George Gray, of Delaware, a Democrat whose
     standing in the country was second only to that of Grover
     Cleveland. A year later he commented on my action as
     follows:

"I have no hesitation in saying that the President of the United States
was confronted in October, 1902, by the existence of a crisis more grave
and threatening than any that had occurred since the Civil War. I mean
that the cessation of mining in the anthracite country, brought about
by the dispute between the miners and those who controlled the greatest
natural monopoly in this country and perhaps in the world, had
brought upon more than one-half of the American people a condition
of deprivation of one of the necessaries of life, and the probable
continuance of the dispute threatened not only the comfort and health,
but the safety and good order, of the nation. He was without legal or
constitutional power to interfere, but his position as President of the
United States gave him an influence, a leadership, as first citizen
of the republic, that enabled him to appeal to the patriotism and good
sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral
coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then
existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country.
He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers
to which I have alluded.

"So far from interfering or infringing upon property rights, the
Presidents' action tended to conserve them. The peculiar situation, as
regards the anthracite coal interest, was that they controlled a natural
monopoly of a product necessary to the comfort and to the very life of a
large portion of the people. A prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of
this necessary of life would have tended to precipitate an attack upon
these property rights of which you speak; for, after all, it is vain
to deny that this property, so peculiar in its conditions, and which
is properly spoken of as a natural monopoly, is affected with a public
interest.

"I do not think that any President ever acted more wisely, courageously
or promptly in a national crisis. Mr. Roosevelt deserves unstinted
praise for what he did."

They would doubtless have acted precisely as they acted as regards the
acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 1903, and the stoppage of
the panic of 1907 by my action in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company
matter. Nothing could have made the American people surrender the canal
zone. But after it was an accomplished fact, and the canal was
under way, then they settled down to comfortable acceptance of the
accomplished fact, and as their own interests were no longer in
jeopardy, they paid no heed to the men who attacked me because of what I
had done--and also continue to attack me, although they are exceedingly
careful not to propose to right the "wrong," in the only proper way if
it really was a wrong, by replacing the old Republic of Panama under the
tyranny of Colombia and giving Colombia sole or joint ownership of
the canal itself. In the case of the panic of 1907 (as in the case
of Panama), what I did was not only done openly, but depended for its
effect upon being done and with the widest advertisement. Nobody in
Congress ventured to make an objection at the time. No serious leader
outside made any objection. The one concern of everybody was to stop
the panic, and everybody was overjoyed that I was willing to take the
responsibility of stopping it upon my own shoulders. But a few months
afterward, the panic was a thing of the past. People forgot the
frightful condition of alarm in which they had been. They no longer had
a personal interest in preventing any interference with the stoppage of
the panic. Then the men who had not dared to raise their voices until
all danger was past came bravely forth from their hiding places and
denounced the action which had saved them. They had kept a hushed
silence when there was danger; they made clamorous outcry when there was
safety in doing so.

Just the same course would have been followed in connection with the
Anthracite Coal Strike if I had been obliged to act in the fashion I
intended to act had I failed to secure a voluntary agreement between the
miners and the operators. Even as it was, my action was remembered with
rancor by the heads of the great moneyed interests; and as time went by
was assailed with constantly increasing vigor by the newspapers these
men controlled. Had I been forced to take possession of the mines,
these men and the politicians hostile to me would have waited until the
popular alarm was over and the popular needs met, just as they waited
in the case of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and then they
would have attacked me precisely as they did attack me as regards the
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company.

Of course, in labor controversies it was not always possible to champion
the cause of the workers, because in many cases strikes were called
which were utterly unwarranted and were fought by methods which cannot
be too harshly condemned. No straightforward man can believe, and no
fearless man will assert, that a trade union is always right. That
man is an unworthy public servant who by speech or silence, by direct
statement or cowardly evasion, invariably throws the weight of his
influence on the side of the trade union, whether it is right or wrong.
It has occasionally been my duty to give utterance to the feelings of
all right thinking men by expressing the most emphatic disapproval of
unwise or even immoral notions by representatives of labor. The man is
no true democrat, and if an American, is unworthy of the traditions
of his country who, in problems calling for the exercise of a moral
judgment, fails to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are
good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad employers, and
good and bad men of small means and of large means alike.

But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all citizens,
irrespective of race, creed, section or economic interest and position,
does not imply a failure to recognize the enormous economic, political
and moral possibilities of the trade union. Just as democratic
government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes
committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be
condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders.
The problem lies deeper. While we must repress all illegalities and
discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of
corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of
labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent,
and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true
industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.

This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not
understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human
and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an
increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale
moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of
human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of
hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social
uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day
who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of
these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in
mill and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all
these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves
and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that
the Nation and the Government, within the range of fair play and a just
administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who
have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for
a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely
fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business.
Each man should have all he earns, whether by brain or body; and
the director, the great industrial leader, is one of the greatest of
earners, and should have a proportional reward; but no man should live
on the earnings of another, and there should not be too gross inequality
between service and reward.

There are many men to-day, men of integrity and intelligence, who
honestly believe that we must go back to the labor conditions of half
a century ago. They are opposed to trade unions, root and branch. They
note the unworthy conduct of many labor leaders, they find instances
of bad work by union men, of a voluntary restriction of output, of
vexations and violent strikes, of jurisdictional disputes between unions
which often disastrously involve the best intentioned and fairest of
employers. All these things occur and should be repressed. But the same
critic of the trade union might find equal causes of complaint against
individual employers of labor, or even against great associations of
manufacturers. He might find many instances of an unwarranted cutting of
wages, of flagrant violations of factory laws and tenement house laws,
of the deliberate and systematic cheating of employees by means of truck
stores, of the speeding up of work to a point which is fatal to the
health of the workman, of the sweating of foreign-born workers, of
the drafting of feeble little children into dusty workshops, of
black-listing, of putting spies into union meetings and of the
employment in strike times of vicious and desperate ruffians, who
are neither better nor worse than are the thugs who are occasionally
employed by unions under the sinister name, "entertainment committees."
I believe that the overwhelming majority, both of workmen and of
employers, are law-abiding peaceful, and honorable citizens, and I do
not think that it is just to lay up the errors and wrongs of individuals
to the entire group to which they belong. I also think--and this is
a belief which has been borne upon me through many years of practical
experience--that the trade union is growing constantly in wisdom as well
as in power, and is becoming one of the most efficient agencies toward
the solution of our industrial problems, the elimination of poverty and
of industrial disease and accidents, the lessening of unemployment,
the achievement of industrial democracy and the attainment of a larger
measure of social and industrial justice.

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a
wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade.
If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that
policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to
put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are
benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their
power in the common interests advanced by the union. Nevertheless,
irrespective of whether a man should or should not, and does or does
not, join the union of his trade, all the rights, privileges and
immunities of that man as an American and as a citizen should be
safeguarded and upheld by the law. We dare not make an outlaw of any
individual or any group, whatever his or its opinions or professions.
The non-unionist, like the unionist, must be protected in all his legal
rights by the full weight and power of the law.

This question came up before me in the shape of the right of a non-union
printer named Miller to hold his position in the Government Printing
Office. As I said before, I believe in trade unions. I always prefer to
see a union shop. But any private preferences cannot control my public
actions. The Government can recognize neither union men nor non-union
men as such, and is bound to treat both exactly alike. In the Government
Printing Office not many months prior to the opening of the Presidential
campaign of 1904, when I was up for reelection, I discovered that a man
had been dismissed because he did not belong to the union. I reinstated
him. Mr. Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor,
with various members of the executive council of that body, called upon
me to protest on September 29, 1903, and I answered them as follows:

"I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and I appreciate the
opportunity to meet with you. It will always be a pleasure to see you
or any representative of your organizations or of your Federation as a
whole.

"As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what I have already
said. In dealing with it I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely
with the relation of the Government to its employees. I must govern
my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer,
and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United
States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are
enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and cannot and must not be
construed as permitting the crimination against some of the people. I
am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to
creed, color, birthplace, occupation or social condition. My aim is
to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the employment and
dismissal of men in the Government service I can no more recognize
the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or
against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a
Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him.

"In the communications sent me by various labor organizations protesting
against the retention of Miller in the Government Printing Office, the
grounds alleged are twofold: 1, that he is a non-union man; 2, that he
is not personally fit. The question of his personal fitness is one to be
settled in the routine of administrative detail, and cannot be allowed
to conflict with or to complicate the larger question of governmental
discrimination for or against him or any other man because he is or is
not a member of a union. This is the only question now before me for
decision; and as to this my decision is final."

Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the workingman, I
have often been called a Socialist. Usually I have not taken the trouble
even to notice the epithet. I am not afraid of names, and I am not
one of those who fear to do what is right because some one else will
confound me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord.
Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high-minded and
honorable citizens, who in reality are merely radical social reformers.
They are oppressed by the brutalities and industrial injustices which we
see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists
and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure
of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on
the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling
all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this
title mistakenly applied to me.

None the less, without impugning their motives, I do disagree most
emphatically with both the fundamental philosophy and the proposed
remedies of the Marxian Socialists. These Socialists are unalterably
opposed to our whole industrial system. They believe that the payment of
wages means everywhere and inevitably an exploitation of the laborer
by the employer, and that this leads inevitably to a class war between
those two groups, or, as they would say, between the capitalists and the
proletariat. They assert that this class war is already upon us and
can only be ended when capitalism is entirely destroyed and all the
machines, mills, mines, railroads and other private property used in
production are confiscated, expropriated or taken over by the workers.
They do not as a rule claim--although some of the sinister extremists
among them do--that there is and must be a continual struggle between
two great classes, whose interests are opposed and cannot be reconciled.
In this war they insist that the whole government--National, State and
local--is on the side of the employers and is used by them against
the workmen, and that our law and even our common morality are class
weapons, like a policeman's club or a Gatling gun.

I have never believed, and do not to-day believe, that such a class war
is upon us, or need ever be upon us; nor do I believe that the interests
of wage-earners and employers cannot be harmonized, compromised and
adjusted. It would be idle to deny that wage-earners have certain
different economic interests from, let us say, manufacturers or
importers, just as farmers have different interests from sailors, and
fishermen from bankers. There is no reason why any of these economic
groups should not consult their group interests by any legitimate means
and with due regard to the common, overlying interests of all. I do
not even deny that the majority of wage-earners, because they have less
property and less industrial security than others and because they do
not own the machinery with which they work (as does the farmer) are
perhaps in greater need of acting together than are other groups in the
community. But I do insist (and I believe that the great majority of
wage-earners take the same view) that employers and employees have
overwhelming interests in common, both as partners in industry and as
citizens of the republic, and that where these interests are apart they
can be adjusted by so altering our laws and their interpretation as to
secure to all members of the community social and industrial justice.

I have always maintained that our worst revolutionaries to-day are those
reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need
for change. Such men seem to believe that the four and a half million
Progressive voters, who in 1912 registered their solemn protest against
our social and industrial injustices, are "anarchists," who are not
willing to let ill enough alone. If these reactionaries had lived at an
earlier time in our history, they would have advocated Sedition Laws,
opposed free speech and free assembly, and voted against free schools,
free access by settlers to the public lands, mechanics' lien laws, the
prohibition of truck stores and the abolition of imprisonment for debt;
and they are the men who to-day oppose minimum wage laws, insurance
of workmen against the ills of industrial life and the reform of
our legislators and our courts, which can alone render such measures
possible. Some of these reactionaries are not bad men, but merely
shortsighted and belated. It is these reactionaries, however, who, by
"standing pat" on industrial injustice, incite inevitably to industrial
revolt, and it is only we who advocate political and industrial
democracy who render possible the progress of our American industry
on large constructive lines with a minimum of friction because with a
maximum of justice.

Everything possible should be done to secure the wage-workers fair
treatment. There should be an increased wage for the worker of
increased productiveness. Everything possible should be done against the
capitalist who strives, not to reward special efficiency, but to use
it as an excuse for reducing the reward of moderate efficiency. The
capitalist is an unworthy citizen who pays the efficient man no more
than he has been content to pay the average man, and nevertheless
reduces the wage of the average man; and effort should be made by the
Government to check and punish him. When labor-saving machinery
is introduced, special care should be taken--by the Government if
necessary--to see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit,
and that it is not all absorbed by the employer or capitalist. The
following case, which has come to my knowledge, illustrates what I mean.
A number of new machines were installed in a certain shoe factory, and
as a result there was a heavy increase in production even though there
was no increase in the labor force. Some of the workmen were instructed
in the use of these machines by special demonstrators sent out by the
makers of the machines. These men, by reason of their special aptitudes
and the fact that they were not called upon to operate the machines
continuously nine hours every day, week in and week out, but only for an
hour or so at special times, were naturally able to run the machines at
their maximum capacity. When these demonstrators had left the factory,
and the company's own employees had become used to operating the
machines at a fair rate of speed, the foreman of the establishment
gradually speeded the machines and demanded a larger and still larger
output, constantly endeavoring to drive the men on to greater exertions.
Even with a slightly less maximum capacity, the introduction of this
machinery resulted in a great increase over former production with the
same amount of labor; and so great were the profits from the business in
the following two years as to equal the total capitalized stock of the
company. But not a cent got into the pay envelope of the workmen beyond
what they had formerly been receiving before the introduction of this
new machinery, notwithstanding that it had meant an added strain,
physical and mental, upon their energies, and that they were forced
to work harder than ever before. The whole of the increased profits
remained with the company. Now this represented an "increase of
efficiency," with a positive decrease of social and industrial justice.
The increase of prosperity which came from increase of production in no
way benefited the wage-workers. I hold that they were treated with gross
injustice; and that society, acting if necessary through the Government,
in such a case should bend its energies to remedy such injustice; and
I will support any proper legislation that will aid in securing the
desired end.

The wage-worker should not only receive fair treatment; he should give
fair treatment. In order that prosperity may be passed around it is
necessary that the prosperity exist. In order that labor shall receive
its fair share in the division of reward it is necessary that there be
a reward to divide. Any proposal to reduce efficiency by insisting that
the most efficient shall be limited in their output to what the least
efficient can do, is a proposal to limit by so much production, and
therefore to impoverish by so much the public, and specifically to
reduce the amount that can be divided among the producers. This is all
wrong. Our protest must be against unfair division of the reward for
production. Every encouragement should be given the business man, the
employer, to make his business prosperous, and therefore to earn more
money for himself; and in like fashion every encouragement should be
given the efficient workman. We must always keep in mind that to reduce
the amount of production serves merely to reduce the amount that is
to be divided, is in no way permanently efficient as a protest against
unequal distribution and is permanently detrimental to the entire
community. But increased productiveness is not secured by excessive
labor amid unhealthy surroundings. The contrary is true. Shorter hours,
and healthful conditions, and opportunity for the wage-worker to make
more money, and the chance for enjoyment as well as work, all add to
efficiency. My contention is that there should be no penalization of
efficient productiveness, brought about under healthy conditions;
but that every increase of production brought about by an increase in
efficiency should benefit all the parties to it, including wage-workers
as well as employers or capitalists, men who work with their hands as
well as men who work with their heads.

With the Western Federation of Miners I more than once had serious
trouble. The leaders of this organization had preached anarchy, and
certain of them were indicted for having practiced murder in the case of
Governor Steunenberg, of Idaho. On one occasion in a letter or speech I
coupled condemnation of these labor leaders and condemnation of certain
big capitalists, describing them all alike as "undesirable citizens."
This gave great offense to both sides. The open attack upon me was made
for the most part either by the New York newspapers which were frankly
representatives of Wall Street, or else by those so-called--and
miscalled--Socialists who had anarchistic leanings. Many of the latter
sent me open letters of denunciation, and to one of them I responded as
follows:

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, April 22, 1907.

Dear Sir:

I have received your letter of the 19th instant, in which you enclose
the draft of the formal letter which is to follow. I have been notified
that several delegations, bearing similar requests, are on the way
hither. In the letter you, on behalf of the Cook County, Moyer-Haywood
conference, protest against certain language I used in a recent letter
which you assert to be designed to influence the course of justice
in the case of the trial for murder of Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. I
entirely agree with you that it is improper to endeavor to influence the
course of justice, whether by threats or in any similar manner. For this
reason I have regretted most deeply the actions of such organizations as
your own in undertaking to accomplish this very result in the very case
of which you speak. For instance, your letter is headed "Cook
County Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Conference," with the headlines:
"_Death_--cannot--will not--and shall not claim our brothers!" This
shows that you and your associates are not demanding a fair trial, or
working for a fair trial, but are announcing in advance that the verdict
shall only be one way and that you will not tolerate any other verdict.
Such action is flagrant in its impropriety, and I join heartily in
condemning it.

But it is a simple absurdity to suppose that because any man is on trial
for a given offense he is therefore to be freed from all criticism upon
his general conduct and manner of life. In my letter to which you object
I referred to a certain prominent financier, Mr. Harriman, on the one
hand, and to Messrs. Moyer, Haywood and Debs on the other, as being
equally undesirable citizens. It is as foolish to assert that this was
designed to influence the trial of Moyer and Haywood as to assert that
it was designed to influence the suits that have been brought against
Mr. Harriman. I neither expressed nor indicated any opinion as to
whether Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were guilty of the murder of Governor
Steunenberg. If they are guilty, they certainly ought to be punished.
If they are not guilty, they certainly ought not to be punished. But no
possible outcome either of the trial or the suits can affect my judgment
as to the undesirability of the type of citizenship of those whom I
mentioned. Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, and Debs stand as representatives of
those men who have done as much to discredit the labor movement as the
worst speculative financiers or most unscrupulous employers of labor and
debauchers of legislatures have done to discredit honest capitalists and
fair-dealing business men. They stand as the representatives of those
men who by their public utterances and manifestoes, by the utterances of
the papers they control or inspire, and by the words and deeds of those
associated with or subordinated to them, habitually appear as guilty of
incitement to or apology for bloodshed and violence. If this does
not constitute undesirable citizenship, then there can never be any
undesirable citizens. The men whom I denounce represent the men who
have abandoned that legitimate movement for the uplifting of labor, with
which I have the most hearty sympathy; they have adopted practices which
cut them off from those who lead this legitimate movement. In every way
I shall support the law-abiding and upright representatives of labor,
and in no way can I better support them than by drawing the sharpest
possible line between them on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
those preachers of violence who are themselves the worst foes of the
honest laboring man.

Let me repeat my deep regret that any body of men should so far forget
their duty to the country as to endeavor by the formation of societies
and in other ways to influence the course of justice in this matter.
I have received many such letters as yours. Accompanying them
were newspaper clippings announcing demonstrations, parades, and
mass-meetings designed to show that the representatives of labor,
without regard to the facts, demand the acquittal of Messrs. Haywood and
Moyer. Such meetings can, of course, be designed only to coerce court
or jury in rendering a verdict, and they therefore deserve all the
condemnation which you in your letters say should be awarded to those
who endeavor improperly to influence the course of justice.

You would, of course, be entirely within your rights if you merely
announced that you thought Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were "desirable
citizens"--though in such case I should take frank issue with you and
should say that, wholly without regard to whether or not they are guilty
of the crime for which they are now being tried, they represent as
thoroughly undesirable a type of citizenship as can be found in this
country; a type which, in the letter to which you so unreasonably take
exception, I showed not to be confined to any one class, but to exist
among some representatives of great capitalists as well as among some
representatives of wage-workers. In that letter I condemned both types.
Certain representatives of the great capitalists in turn condemned
me for including Mr. Harriman in my condemnation of Messrs. Moyer and
Haywood. Certain of the representatives of labor in their turn condemned
me because I included Messrs. Moyer and Haywood as undesirable citizens
together with Mr. Harrison. I am as profoundly indifferent to the
condemnation in one case as in the other. I challenge as a right the
support of all good Americans, whether wage-workers or capitalists,
whatever their occupation or creed, or in whatever portion of the
country they live, when I condemn both the types of bad citizenship
which I have held up to reprobation. It seems to be a mark of utter
insincerity to fail thus to condemn both; and to apologize for either
robs the man thus apologizing of all right to condemn any wrongdoing in
any man, rich or poor, in public or in private life.

You say you ask for a "square deal" for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. So
do I. When I say "Square deal," I mean a square deal to every one; it is
equally a violation of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to
protest against denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing
and for a labor leader to protest against the denunciation of a labor
leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing. I stand for equal justice to
both; and so far as in my power lies I shall uphold justice, whether
the man accused of guilt has behind him the wealthiest corporation, the
greatest aggregations of riches in the country, or whether he has behind
him the most influential labor organization in the country.

I treated anarchists and the bomb-throwing and dynamiting gentry
precisely as I treated other criminals. Murder is murder. It is not
rendered one whit better by the allegation that it is committed
on behalf of "a cause." It is true that law and order are not all
sufficient; but they are essential; lawlessness and murderous violence
must be quelled before any permanence of reform can be obtained. Yet
when they have been quelled, the beneficiaries of the enforcement of
law must in their turn be taught that law is upheld as a means to the
enforcement of justice, and that we will not tolerate its being turned
into an engine of injustice and oppression. The fundamental need in
dealing with our people, whether laboring men or others, is not charity
but justice; we must all work in common for the common end of
helping each and all, in a spirit of the sanest, broadest and deepest
brotherhood.

It was not always easy to avoid feeling very deep anger with the
selfishness and short-sightedness shown both by the representatives of
certain employers' organizations and by certain great labor federations
or unions. One such employers' association was called the National
Association of Manufacturers. Extreme though the attacks sometimes made
upon me by the extreme labor organizations were, they were not quite
as extreme as the attacks made upon me by the head of the National
Association of Manufacturers, and as regards their attitude toward
legislation I came to the conclusion toward the end of my term that the
latter had actually gone further the wrong way than did the former--and
the former went a good distance also. The opposition of the National
Association of Manufacturers to every rational and moderate measure
for benefiting workingmen, such as measures abolishing child labor, or
securing workmen's compensation, caused me real and grave concern; for
I felt that it was ominous of evil for the whole country to have men who
ought to stand high in wisdom and in guiding force take a course and use
language of such reactionary type as directly to incite revolution--for
this is what the extreme reactionary always does.

Often I was attacked by the two sides at once. In the spring of 1906 I
received in the same mail a letter from a very good friend of mine who
thought that I had been unduly hard on some labor men, and a letter from
another friend, the head of a great corporation, who complained about me
for both favoring labor and speaking against large fortunes. My answers
ran as follows:

April 26, 1906.

"Personal. _My dear Doctor_:

"In one of my last letters to you I enclosed you a copy of a letter of
mine, in which I quoted from [So and so's] advocacy of murder. You may
be interested to know that he and his brother Socialists--in reality
anarchists--of the frankly murderous type have been violently attacking
my speech because of my allusion to the sympathy expressed for murder.
In _The Socialist_, of Toledo, Ohio, of April 21st, for instance, the
attack [on me] is based specifically on the following paragraph of my
speech, to which he takes violent exception:

"We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital
than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because
there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate
to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the
so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class
feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in
murder. One attitude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case
the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there
need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of
sympathy for crime.

"Remember that this crowd of labor leaders have done all in their
power to overawe the executive and the courts of Idaho on behalf of men
accused of murder, and beyond question inciters of murder in the past."

April 26, 1906.

"_My dear Judge_:

"I wish the papers had given more prominence to what I said as to the
murder part of my speech. But oh, my dear sir, I utterly and radically
disagree with you in what you say about large fortunes. I wish it were
in my power to devise some scheme to make it increasingly difficult to
heap them up beyond a certain amount. As the difficulties in the way
of such a scheme are very great, let us at least prevent their being
bequeathed after death or given during life to any one man in excessive
amount.

"You and other capitalist friends, on one side, shy off at what I say
against them. Have you seen the frantic articles against me by [the
anarchists and] the Socialists of the bomb-throwing persuasion, on the
other side, because of what I said in my speech in reference to those
who, in effect, advocate murder?"

On another occasion I was vehemently denounced in certain capitalistic
papers because I had a number of labor leaders, including miners from
Butte, lunch with me at the White House; and this at the very time that
the Western Federation of Miners was most ferocious in its denunciation
of me because of what it alleged to be my unfriendly attitude toward
labor. To one of my critics I set forth my views in the following
letter:

November 26, 1903.

"I have your letter of the 25th instant, with enclosure. These men, not
all of whom were miners, by the way, came here and were at lunch with
me, in company with Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Mr. Wayne MacVeagh, and
Secretary Cortelyou. They are as decent a set of men as can be. They all
agreed entirely with me in my denunciation of what had been done in the
Court d'Alene country; and it appeared that some of them were on the
platform with me when I denounced this type of outrage three years ago
in Butte. There is not one man who was here, who, I believe, was in
any way, shape or form responsible for such outrages. I find that the
ultra-Socialistic members of the unions in Butte denounced these men for
coming here, in a manner as violent--and I may say as irrational--as the
denunciation [by the capitalistic writer] in the article you sent me.
Doubtless the gentleman of whom you speak as your general manager is
an admirable man. I, of course, was not alluding to him; but I most
emphatically _was_ alluding to men who write such articles as that you
sent me. These articles are to be paralleled by the similar articles in
the Populist and Socialist papers when two years ago I had at dinner
at one time Pierpont Morgan, and at another time J. J. Hill, and at
another, Harriman, and at another time Schiff. Furthermore, they could
be paralleled by the articles in the same type of paper which at the
time of the Miller incident in the Printing Office were in a condition
of nervous anxiety because I met the labor leaders to discuss it. It
would have been a great misfortune if I had not met them; and it would
have been an even greater misfortune if after meeting them I had yielded
to their protests in the matter.

"You say in your letter that you know that I am 'on record' as opposed
to violence. Pardon my saying that this seems to me not the right way to
put the matter, if by 'record' you mean utterance and not action. Aside
from what happened when I was Governor in connection, for instance with
the Croton dam strike riots, all you have to do is to turn back to what
took place last June in Arizona--and you can find out about it from
[Mr. X] of New York. The miners struck, violence followed, and the
Arizona Territorial authorities notified me they could not grapple with
the situation. Within twenty minutes of the receipt of the telegram,
orders were issued to the nearest available troops, and twenty-four
hours afterwards General Baldwin and his regulars were on the ground,
and twenty-four hours later every vestige of disorder had disappeared.
The Miners' Federation in their meeting, I think at Denver, a short
while afterwards, passed resolutions denouncing me. I do not know
whether the _Mining and Engineering Journal_ paid any heed to this
incident or know of it. If the _Journal_ did, I suppose it can hardly
have failed to understand that to put an immediate stop to rioting by
the use of the United States army is a fact of importance beside which
the criticism of my having 'labor leaders' to lunch, shrinks into the
same insignificance as the criticism in a different type of paper about
my having 'trust magnates' to lunch. While I am President I wish the
labor man to feel that he has the same right of access to me that the
capitalist has; that the doors swing open as easily to the wage-worker
as to the head of a big corporation--_and no easier_. Anything else
seems to be not only un-American, but as symptomatic of an attitude
which will cost grave trouble if persevered in. To discriminate against
labor men from Butte because there is reason to believe that rioting has
been excited in other districts by certain labor unions, or individuals
in labor unions in Butte, would be to adopt precisely the attitude of
those who desire me to discriminate against all capitalists in Wall
street because there are plenty of capitalists in Wall Street who
have been guilty of bad financial practices and who have endeavored to
override or evade the laws of the land. In my judgment, the only safe
attitude for a private citizen, and still more for a public servant, to
assume, is that he will draw the line on conduct, discriminating against
neither corporation nor union as such, nor in favor of either as such,
but endeavoring to make the decent member of the union and the upright
capitalists alike feel that they are bound, not only by self-interest,
but by every consideration of principle and duty to stand together on
the matters of most moment to the nation."

On another of the various occasions when I had labor leaders to dine
at the White House, my critics were rather shocked because I had John
Morley to meet them. The labor leaders in question included the heads
of the various railroad brotherhoods, men like Mr. Morrissey, in
whose sound judgment and high standard of citizenship I had peculiar
confidence; and I asked Mr. Morley to meet them because they represented
the exact type of American citizen with whom I thought he ought to be
brought in contact.

One of the devices sometimes used by big corporations to break down the
law was to treat the passage of laws as an excuse for action on their
part which they knew would be resented by the public, it being their
purpose to turn this resentment against the law instead of against
themselves. The heads of the Louisville and Nashville road were bitter
opponents of everything done by the Government toward securing good
treatment for their employees. In February, 1908, they and various
other railways announced that they intended to reduce the wages of
their employees. A general strike, with all the attendant disorder and
trouble, was threatened in consequence. I accordingly sent the following
open letter to the Inter-State Commerce Commission:

February 16, 1908.

"To the Inter-State Commerce Commission:

"I am informed that a number of railroad companies have served notice
of a proposed reduction of wages of their employees. One of them, the
Louisville and Nashville, in announcing the reduction, states that 'the
drastic laws inimical to the interests of the railroads that have in the
past year or two been enacted by Congress and the State Legislatures'
are largely or chiefly responsible for the conditions requiring the
reduction.

"Under such circumstances it is possible that the public may soon be
confronted by serious industrial disputes, and the law provides that in
such case either party may demand the services of your Chairman and
of the Commissioner of Labor as a Board of Mediation and Conciliation.
These reductions in wages may be warranted, or they may not. As to this
the public, which is a vitally interested party, can form no judgment
without a more complete knowledge of the essential facts and real merits
of the case than it now has or than it can possibly obtain from the
special pleadings, certain to be put forth by each side in case their
dispute should bring about serious interruption to traffic. If the
reduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of business being
such that the burden should be and is, equitably distributed between
capitalist and wage-worker, the public should know it. If it is caused
by legislation, the public, and Congress, should know it; and if it is
caused by misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any
railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the excuse of
unfriendly legislation is advanced as a method of covering up past
business misconduct by the railroad managers, or as a justification for
failure to treat fairly the wage-earning employees of the company.

"Moreover, an industrial conflict between a railroad corporation and
its employees offers peculiar opportunities to any small number of
evil-disposed persons to destroy life and property and foment public
disorder. Of course, if life, property, and public order are endangered,
prompt and drastic measures for their protection become the first plain
duty. All other issues then become subordinate to the preservation of
the public peace, and the real merits of the original controversy are
necessarily lost from view. This vital consideration should be ever
kept in mind by all law-abiding and far-sighted members of labor
organizations.

"It is sincerely to be hoped, therefore, that any wage controversy that
may arise between the railroads and their employees may find a peaceful
solution through the methods of conciliation and arbitration already
provided by Congress, which have proven so effective during the past
year. To this end the Commission should be in a position to have
available for any Board of Conciliation or Arbitration relevant data
pertaining to such carriers as may become involved in industrial
disputes. Should conciliation fail to effect a settlement and
arbitration be rejected, accurate information should be available in
order to develop a properly informed public opinion.

"I therefore ask you to make such investigation, both of your records
and by any other means at your command, as will enable you to furnish
data concerning such conditions obtaining on the Louisville and
Nashville and any other roads, as may relate, directly or indirectly, to
the real merits of the possibly impending controversy.

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT."

This letter achieved its purpose, and the threatened reduction of
wages was not made. It was an instance of what could be accomplished
by governmental action. Let me add, however, with all the emphasis I
possess, that this does not mean any failure on my part to recognize the
fact that if governmental action places too heavy burdens on railways,
it will be impossible for them to operate without doing injustice to
somebody. Railways cannot pay proper wages and render proper service
unless they make money. The investors must get a reasonable profit or
they will not invest, and the public cannot be well served unless the
investors are making reasonable profits. There is every reason why rates
should not be too high, but they must be sufficiently high to allow
the railways to pay good wages. Moreover, when laws like workmen's
compensation laws, and the like are passed, it must always be kept in
mind by the Legislature that the purpose is to distribute over the whole
community a burden that should not be borne only by those least able
to bear it--that is, by the injured man or the widow and orphans of the
dead man. If the railway is already receiving a disproportionate return
from the public, then the burden may, with propriety, bear purely on the
railway; but if it is not earning a disproportionate return, then the
public must bear its share of the burden of the increased service the
railway is rendering. Dividends and wages should go up together; and the
relation of rates to them should never be forgotten. This of course does
not apply to dividends based on water; nor does it mean that if foolish
people have built a road that renders no service, the public must
nevertheless in some way guarantee a return on the investment; but it
does mean that the interests of the honest investor are entitled to
the same protection as the interests of the honest manager, the honest
shipper and the honest wage-earner. All these conflicting considerations
should be carefully considered by Legislatures before passing laws. One
of the great objects in creating commissions should be the provision of
disinterested, fair-minded experts who will really and wisely consider
all these matters, and will shape their actions accordingly. This is one
reason why such matters as the regulation of rates, the provision for
full crews on roads and the like should be left for treatment by railway
commissions, and not be settled off hand by direct legislative action.

APPENDIX

SOCIALISM

As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning Socialism, I
wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism versus
Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. Simkhovitch.
What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and
ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me,
Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical
insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied
philosophy. Crude thinkers in the United States, and moreover honest and
intelligent men who are not crude thinkers, but who are oppressed by
the sight of the misery around them and have not deeply studied what has
been done elsewhere, are very apt to adopt as their own the theories
of European Marxian Socialists of half a century ago, ignorant that the
course of events has so completely falsified the prophecies contained
in these theories that they have been abandoned even by the authors
themselves. With quiet humor Professor Simkhovitch now and then makes
an allusion which shows that he appreciates to perfection this rather
curious quality of some of our fellow countrymen; as for example when
he says that "A Socialist State with the farmer outside of it is a
conception that can rest comfortably only in the head of an American
Socialist," or as when he speaks of Marx and Engels as men "to whom
thinking was not an irrelevant foreign tradition." Too many thoroughly
well-meaning men and women in the America of to-day glibly repeat and
accept--much as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized
dogma in their day--various assumptions and speculations by Marx and
others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been
shown to possess not one shred of value. Professor Simkhovitch possesses
the gift of condensation as well as the gift of clear and logical
statement, and it is not possible to give in brief any idea of his
admirable work. Every social reformer who desires to face facts should
study it--just as social reformers should study John Graham Brooks's
"American Syndicalism." From Professor Simkhovitch's book we Americans
should learn: First, to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that
the orthodox or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic
socialism of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory; and,
third, that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in
reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points good
citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, and whom
in many practical matters of government good citizens well afford to
follow.