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THE   LOGIC   OF   HIS CAREER

CHAPTER 2 

CHANGING  SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS

   I SHALL in what follows disregard the chronological order of events and treat separately the different topics which I discuss. Before dealing with the Roosevelt Administration, it may be well to consider some of the changes that had taken place in the country since the Republican party was founded. Not only were the political problems very different in 1900 from those in 1865, but the electorate had experienced a complete transformation. New generations had been born and our population had been greatly increased by immigration from many foreign countries, at first from the north and then from the south of Europe. I have a theory that the Civil War had a far greater influence upon the political history of the country subsequent to 1865 than is generally realized. Up to that time it was the greatest war of history; more men were engaged in it, and more were lost upon the field of battle and by disease 'than in any other one conflict until the present colossal struggle in Europe. The character of the men was higher on both sides than in any of the armies the world had ever seen. The soldiers, for the most part, were mere boys. Speaking now of the North, we had, I believe, at one time or another, something like 2,650,000 enlistments in the army and navy out of a population of 22,000,000. In Massachusetts we had 152,000 enlistments out of a population of 1,230,000. Suppose that three individuals were, through family and other ties, vitally interested in the fortunes of every soldier, we had out of our population of 1,230,000, say 600,000 who were in or followed every battle with the keenest personal solicitude, and there should be added to this number many more who, without any direct personal stake in the conflict through near kinsmen in the field, were engaged actively in relief work for the soldiers or for their families at home. *

Apply this same measure to all of the twenty-three loyal States, and we should find over nine millions of our people who were in the army or had a direct personal interest in its fortunes. Similarly, in the South, out of a white population of something less than 5,500,000 with an enrollment of 1,100,000 in their armies, there were 4,400,000 persons who were serving at one time or another, or had a direct personal interest in the army. When these men were mustered out, being still, for the most part, young in years, but hardened veterans in the sternest of experiences 'and prematurely matured, they were scattered North and South among our 32,000,000 people.

At the North, through the Grand Army of the Republic, and at the South, through a similar organization, the war spirit was kept active in every community in the country with all the convictions and prejudices inseparable therefrom. The experience on the field of battle by the men, and at home by the men and women who waited anxiously, was one never to be forgotten by that generation. The rank and file of these great armies was speedily absorbed in civil life. Many of the soldiers entered public life and were members of our State Legislatures and of both houses of Congress. In the 54th Congress, veterans were a majority of the Judiciary, Military Affairs, Appropriations, and Ways and Means Committees. It is a fair statement that our industrial and political life was dominated by the opinions that had been formed and hardened during the war, and even our best men, or some of them, took into the field of business and politics the rule of conduct of the battlefield, that might makes right, that the end justifies the means. Burke says somewhere: "Wars suspend the rules of moral obligation and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil Wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people; they vitiate their politics, they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice."

Democrats and Republicans fought shoulder to shoulder in the Northern armies. Nevertheless, the North looked upon the war as a Republican war and upon the great war measures as Republican measures, and so it happened that the same spirit that animated the army in the field dominated the party in politics. An election must be carried — why! to save the country, and in that holy cause all means were justifiable, that were necessary to attain that end. The Republican party that had fought the war through was the dominant party, its policies were carried into execution with the determination and precision which characterized the movements of an army. The government which had been saved at a fearful cost was to be administered by those who had saved it, as they thought best. To illustrate the hold the Republican party had on its members who had lived through the Civil War, I shall quote, from an article that appeared in one of the magazines some time ago, what a young man said of his father: —
To him it was little short of treason to vote any other than the Republican ticket. I remember now the gloom in our family when we heard that  Blaine was beaten. I think my father had an idea that Cleveland would undo all the achievements of the war. At that time it was impressed on us children that the Republican party had saved the Union. The name "Republican" became pretty nearly sacred to us.
I am not now criticizing the spirit, — indeed, I have much sympathy with it, — I am stating the fact. It was a great generation of men that the war developed. Every President from Grant to McKinley, save Arthur and Cleveland, had served in the war, and Arthur was, I believe, prominent in the administration of the New York militia, and was trained in the same school with the other Republican leaders. Is it any cause for surprise, then, that the purpose, the discipline, the determination which dominated the Union army on the battlefield should have dominated the Republican party in politics. Thus animated, it accomplished much and also afforded much just ground for criticism, for the very reason that some of its leaders carried the ethics of war into political strife, and, with their experience, could hardly have been expected to do anything else. While that generation lived, there was nothing of doubt or uncertainty in the policies or management of the party. When that generation passed off the stage, as it did with the death of McKinley and Hanna, — a new generation succeeded to the management of the affairs of state; a generation to which the war was a matter of history, rather than of experience; a generation that had not passed through that awful trial; in some ways, perhaps, a better generation, in others not so well disciplined; certainly a different one.

It was by men of this later generation that our political and social questions were to be discussed and settled. The men of the former generation eould not do more than save the country; that certainly was a service that entitles them to our gratitude for all time: to them, other questions by comparison naturally seemed insignificant. Thus it happened that the men of the new generation, secure in their citizenship and threatened by no great calamity, were engaged in building a superstructure upon foundations which were laid under conditions of extreme difficulty. Meantime, the spirit of grim determination of those who, in sweat and blood, preserved the Union was succeeded by a spirit of unrest, of doubt, and of inquiry. That feeling was increasing when Roosevelt became President and was more clearly accentuated when he was nominated in 1904 and became the dominant force in our political life.

If, then, we can assume that the war spirit, as I will call it for lack of a better name, pervaded the Republican party and the North and insured unity of action for so many years, what happened to weaken it and to make discord where, in spite of temporary lapses, comparative harmony so long prevailed? I have suggested that the war spirit had not only grown weaker because the generation inspired by it had passed on, but also because the weakening influence was being spread over a constantly increasing number of people through the increase in our population, by the birth of new generations, and by immigration. The population of the twenty-three loyal States, in 1860, was 22,044,714. The population of all the States, excluding the eleven States once in rebellion, was, in 1910, 69,572,332, an increase of 47,527,-618; so that even had the Northern war spirit continued in unabated strength it must have influenced a constantly and rapidly diminishing proportion of the people. Then, too, the spirit could not be inherited, for the reason that much of this increase in the population of the Northern States was due to immigrants who can have little share in our traditions. Since 1860 we have received into the country, including the year 1912, 24,573,337 immigrants, and most of them settled in the North and West. Many, no doubt, have returned to their native countries. Of the total white male population, twenty-one years old or over, North Dakota contains of foreign-born, fifty-eight per cent; Minnesota, fifty-one per cent; Wisconsin, forty-five per cent; one third of the population of Massachusetts is foreign-born. In 1910, there were about 13,345,545 foreign-born whites in the United States. In the eleven seceding States about 3 per cent of the white population were foreign-born. In the States other than the eleven seceding States, including the colored people, about 19 per cent of the entire population were foreign-born. It is hardly necessary to multiply statistics to show how disproportionately small the foreign-born population is in the South. My conclusion, then, as to the section of country outside of the seceding States, is that a very potent influence in the apparent lack of unity in the Republican party in these latter days, and one to which too little importance has been attached, has been the weakening of the war spirit accompanied by a large increase in our population, a considerable portion of which is uninfluenced by our traditions. The question might naturally be asked, if what I say about the Northern section of the country be true, why is it that there has been no disintegration of the solid South? The answer is that the animosity engendered by the war was naturally very much more intense in the South than in the North and that the native population in the South has not been increased by immigration to the extent that it has been in the North.

Atone time or another substantially 1,200,000 men from the Confederate States were under arms during' the Civil War, — practically the entire population available for military service, — so that it is fair to say — assuming, as I have for the North, that three of the population of the South were vitally interested in the fortunes of each soldier — that between four and five millions of the population of the South had a direct personal contact with the operations of the war. The white population was 5,469,462. We may go even further and say that the entire white population of the South was brought in direct personal contact with the experience of the battlefield.. Almost all the battles were fought in the South, sections of the country were stripped bare by both armies, the fortunes of many great families were entirely destroyed, and very naturally, when the war was over, a feeling of great bitterness remained, a feeling that has been transmitted .from one generation to another. For this reason we have had in the South what we would naturally expect to find under these conditions, a solid support for the Democratic party, representing not so much allegiance to that party as an undying hostility to the Republican party, which the Southern people held responsible for the war,, for the equally cruel experiences of the reconstruction period, and for the Negro problem.

It may be added that in the South the descendants of those who lived through the Civil War feel, at least some of them, even more bitterly than their elders, because, as a result of the losses incident upon the war, they have been denied opportunities for education and a position which by inheritance is theirs, and have been compelled to turn for a bare livelihood to occupations which in the earlier days would have been considered ill suited to them.

That feeling of bitterness is, of course, growing weaker as new generations enter upon the duties of citizenship, but it has remained a very potent influence much longer than the corresponding influence in the North.

I was a delegate to the Convention that nominated Roosevelt for President in 1904. A portrait, of heroic size, of Mark Hanna, hung over the platform. I said to a man who sat next to me, "What would happen if Hanna were living?" He said in reply, "He would be nominated here to-day." Of course he would not have been nominated; I merely mention this as indicating that the "old order" which was incarnated in Hanna had not then passed away; but it was passing. I felt it in the atmosphere of; the Convention. An entirely new type of man was President, who had no knowledge of the Civil War excepting that gained from books and from his family associations both with the North and with the South. When McKinley and Hanna died, the old dynasty fell. Roosevelt became President in his own right March 4, 1905. He was not hampered by either a business or professional experience. I mean by this that he had not acquired that over-caution which is inseparable from either calling; the former leading to a dread of anything that will "disturb business," and the latter forbidding any action based upon anything short of legal evidence. Roosevelt, as I have tried to demonstrate, was intense in his devotion to the job in hand, whatever it might be, intent upon achieving results, and a man who never took counsel of his fears. I do not mean by that to say that he acted purely from impulse, though his acts may sometimes have given that impression. John Hay, after he had been in his cabinet for three years, said of him: —

Roosevelt is prompt and energetic, but he takes infinite pains to get at the facts before he acts. In all the crises in which he has been accused of undue haste, his action has been the result of long meditation and well-reasoned conviction. If he thinks rapidly, that is no fault; he thinks thoroughly, and that is the essential.
The people were ready to follow a new leadership. The former generation had successfully fought for the preservation of the nation, had stimulated the building of railroads by lavish government grants, had tempted settlers to take up lands in the West upon their own terms. The new generation, under the leadership of Roosevelt, was to fight for conservation of our resources, for the quickening of the public conscience which, once enlightened, would demand the proper regulation of corporations, would curb the tendency to private monopoly in public land and natural resources, and would recognize that labor has its rights as well as capital, and that neither should prey upon the other. It must in truth be said that the people were far in advance of Congress when Roosevelt became President and Congress continued to lag behind for some time thereafter. Both branches were still largely in control of men bred in the "war school" of which I have spoken. They led well and wisely for the most part, but looked with suspicion upon the new school of thought, and while they granted much, it was with a somewhat niggardly hand and protesting spirit. Do not imagine that I am over-critical of these men. I belonged myself to that wing of the party. In safe progress there must always be those who press forward, the pioneers, and others of just as patriotic purpose who perform the perhaps more ignoble but no less necessary task of seeing that the wheels of progress do not revolve in the wrong direction. The conservative of to-day was the progressive of yesterday, the progressive of to-day is the conservative of to-morrow, so rapidly do our views change in response to public opinion.

I must not omit to say a few words about changed industrial conditions between 1865 and 1900 which created an entirely new set of problems to be dealt with. Our great industrial progress has been made since the Civil War, and it was not until 1894 that we became first among the manufacturing nations of the world; but it is to the development in the years following upon 1897 that I would call particular attention, for it was then that the problems with which we have been and are attempting to deal were thrust upon us with startling rapidity.

There had been a growing practice, among our manufacturers and managers of railroads, to have some understanding among themselves as to the prices at which their commodities should be sold, in order to prevent disastrous competition. I shall here discontinue further reference by name to railroads, as I shall discuss them elsewhere. This led to the formation of trade combinations and pools, in different branches of business, more or less protective, the weakest form being a simple understanding as to prices and the strongest form a pool when, say, five companies engaged in the same industry would allot the sale of their product in certain proportions: one, fifty per cent; another, thirty, another, ten, and so on, aggregating one hundred per cent. Any one overselling his allotment paid into the pool, any one underselling his allotment received from the pool. All these devices were more or less ineffective. A disturbing influence now appeared, as a result of the decision, in 1897, in the Trans-Missouri case, construing the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890, which I shall examine in more detail later. The Supreme Court in this decision held that the Sherman Act applied to all contracts in restraint of trade, whether they be reasonable or unreasonable.

It followed from this decision that all contracts affecting interstate commerce which in any way restrained trade were invalid and criminal.

It became impossible, therefore, for manufacturers and others safely to enter into any agreement, however reasonable, for the maintenance of prices, and hence they were driven to the conclusion that if they could not combine they must unite; in other words, it being a criminal offense for A, B, and C to agree together to maintain reasonable prices for their products, they were compelled to consolidate their interests to get the protection they needed, and thus it appears that the decision in the Trans-Missouri case had a powerful influence in hastening the formation of the great consolidations or trusts with which we are familiar.

And here another factor entered the field of business consolidation — the bankers; theretofore any permanent consolidation of interests in the form of combinations and pools had been unsatisfactory because the members would not all keep faith, and often one stubborn person refusing to make any kind of a trade agreement would impose disastrous conditions upon his business competitors. It was never dreamed prior to 1897 that some outside power could step in and, if necessary, buy out all the members of any given industry, but this power the bankers, with their great financial resources, supplied. It was a sort of Aladdin's lamp. A given industry, if controlled, could make profits of $500,000 per year; the bankers stepped in and would offer $5,000,000 for all the companies involved — the individual companies could take cash or stock for their properties. The sanguine took stock, the pessimists took cash, and the deal was closed overnight. A certain amount of preferred stock was issued — cumulative, perhaps, and sold to the banker's customers; the promoters took the common stock, and would at a later day perhaps sell at a good price what had, cost them little. There was nothing necessarily immoral about this, but it created a large number of consolidations or trusts, as they were miscalled, concentrated the control of enormous capitalization, and made the "trust problem," which we are far from having settled yet. These, then, were the conditions, political and industrial, which confronted Roosevelt when he became President, and if he pressed new questions upon the country for consideration, it was because changed conditions demanded their discussion and settlement.

These questions were forced upon him by the progress of events over which he had no control. He, undaunted, did not dodge them, but insistently and persistently forced their consideration upon the country.

It is not my purpose to consider in any detail all the events of the Roosevelt Administration. If one would get a correct impression of a rugged coast, it is only necessary to note the prominent headlands and the deep indentations, and with these alone history will be concerned. Roosevelt brought to his great task high ideals, prodigious industry, an active and an educated mind, a good deal of political experience, and an honest desire to do his best.

    There are many subjects to which he devoted much attention and of which he spoke in almost all his messages to Congress. Prominent among them was the proper method of dealing with the trusts. In his first message to Congress, delivered in December, 1901, after he had been President for three months, he spoke of changed business conditions, urged caution in dealing with corporations, and deprecated legislation in the absence of calm inquiry. He recognized, however, certain harmful tendencies and expressed the opinion that combinations should be supervised rather than prohibited. He thought publicity the first essential in dealing with the subject — a suggestion he had made when he was Governor of New York. He added that, in his opinion, a law could be drafted akin to the Interstate Commerce Act which would give Congress effective control over these large corporations.

At this point it may be well to state what I understand to have been the law on this subject when Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency, to which I have already briefly alluded.

The Sherman Act was passed July 2, 1890, for the purpose, as it was then stated, of extending the provisions of the common law to interstate commerce and to enforce them by suitable penalties. By the common law is meant, "those principles, usages, and rules of action applicable to the government and security of persons and of property which do not rest for their authority upon any express and positive declaration of the will of the legislature."

Contracts in unreasonable restraint of trade had always been void at common law. The enactment of the Sherman Act made the common law statute law for the United States and something more, and declared, in substance, every contract in whatever form in restraint of interstate trade to be illegal, and that every person making such contract should be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment at the discretion of the court; and that every person monopolizing or attempting to monopolize any part of interstate trade should be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment at the discretion of the court.

The act as at first interpreted by the courts did not seriously embarrass business combinations, for the reason that it was held not to apply to contracts not in unreasonable restraint of trade. As a rule, where the combination affected did not control the entire product in any given industry, it was held to be not inhibited by the Sherman Act, which was passed with the declared purpose to extend to interstate commerce the common law affecting contracts in restraint of trade. It was a well-known doctrine of the common law that the validity of contracts restricting competition was to be determined by the reasonableness of the restriction, and hence contracts made for a legal purpose, which were not unreasonably injurious to the public welfare, and which imposed no heavier restraint on trade than the interest of the favored party required, were, as a rule, held to be valid, both before and for a time after the passage of the Sherman Act.

In March, 1897, in the Trans-Missouri case, to which I have referred, the Supreme Court placed the construction upon the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (at least it was generally so understood) that all contracts affecting interstate commerce which in any way restrained trade, whether reasonable or not, were invalid, the conclusion of a majority of the court being that "Congress has, so far as its jurisdiction extends, prohibited all contracts or combinations in the form of trusts entered into for the purpose of restraining trade and commerce."

This decision was, as a matter of course, followed by the lower courts, and the trade combinations which before the decision had been held to be legal were by it made illegal. This construction of the act led, as we all remember, to much disturbance because business men, acting in good faith in entering into trade agreements for the control of prices to prevent disastrous competition, agreements which were very common in the business world, made themselves liable to criminal prosecution.

The gravity of the situation was widely recognized not only by lawyers and business men, but by publicists and all thoughtful men interested in public affairs. Such, in brief, was the condition of this matter when Roosevelt came to the Presidency, and for this he sought a remedy.

In 1902, he received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard, which President Eliot conferred in these words: —

Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, from his youth a member of this Society of Scholars, now in his prime, a true type of the sturdy gentleman and high-minded public servant in a democracy.
At this time Secretary Hay, in a letter to Roosevelt, referring to the Alumni Dinner, wrote: "President Eliot, when he sat down, said: 'What a man! Genius, force, and courage, and such evident honesty!"
In Roosevelt's message of December, 1902, he asked for a special appropriation to enforce the Anti-Trust Act and condemned the reduction of the tariff as a means for reaching the trusts. He demanded fair treatment for both capital and labor, and said: —
Exactly as business men find that they must often work through corporations, ... so it is often necessary for laboring men to work in federation. Both kinds of federation, capitalistic and labor, can do much good, and, as a necessary corollary, they can both do evil . . . attack should be made not upon either form, but upon what may be bad in both.
In response to the President's recommendation, Congress, in February, 1903, created the Department of Commerce and Labor, including the Bureau of Corporations, with authority to secure proper publicity.

It may be said here that Roosevelt pressed to a hearing, in 1904, the case of the Northern Securities Company, which involved the validity of an agreement between the majority owners in the Great Northern Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railroad to consolidate their interests in a holding company. The relief sought in the courts was an injunction against the perfecting of the arrangement and its disruption so far as it might have been effected, the allegation being that this was such a combination in restraint of trade as was inhibited by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The court sustained the contention and held that this was an arrangement to avoid competition and to monopolize transportation in the territory affected. This effectually fixed the jurisdiction of the Government over this class of transactions and was the purpose which Roosevelt had in view in pressing the suit. Some doubt upon this point had existed because of the Knight case, decided in January, 1895. This involved the purchase, by the American Sugar Refining Company, of the stock of four corporations engaged in the refining and sale of sugar in Philadelphia. The court held that the acquisition of the stock did not bring the case within the provisions of the Sherman Act, and evidently disregarded the purpose, which was to effect a monopoly in the sale of sugar. It will be noticed that this narrow construction of the act, which was thought at the time to defeat the purpose of the Sherman Act, was practically abandoned in the decision of the case of the Northern Securities Company.

In a speech made at the Union League Club, February 3, 1904, Elihu Root said of the President: "You say he is an unsafe man. I tell you he is really the great conservator of property and of rights." And in support of this assertion Mr. Root spoke of the President's attitude toward labor unions and toward trusts, forbidding, on the one hand, the unionizing of government employment, and, on the other hand, the pressing of the Northern Securities case which checked speculation aftd avoided a panic.

Speaking of the Northern Securities case, Roosevelt once said to me: —

I talked over the matter in full with Knox. He believed that the Knight case would not have been decided over again as it actually was decided, and that if we could differentiate the Northern Securities case from it, we could secure what would be in fact (although not in name) a reversal of it. This I felt it imperative to secure. The Knight case practically denied the Federal Government power over corporations, because it whittled to nothing the meaning of "commerce between the States." It had to be upset or we could not get any efficient control by the National Government.

In his message of December, 1905, the President reiterated his views about corporations and said that during the previous four years the Department of Justice had devoted more time to the enforcement of the Anti-Trust Law than to anything else, and added: —

I do not believe in the Government interfering with private business more than is necessary. I do not believe in the Government undertaking any work which can with propriety be left in private hands. But neither do I believe in the Government flinching from overseeing any work when it becomes evident that abuses are sure to obtain therein unless there is government supervision.
In his message of January, 1908, he said, what he had so often said in substance before: —

The law should correct that portion of the Sherman Act which prohibits all combinations of the character above described, whether they be reasonable or unreasonable, but this should be done only as part of a general scheme to provide for this effective and thoroughgoing supervision by the Government of all the operations of the big interstate business concerns.
In his special message of March, 1908, the President said: —
This Anti-Trust Act was a most unwisely drawn statute. ... It is mischievous and unwholesome to keep upon the statute book, unmodified, a law like the Anti-Trust Law, which, while in practice only partially effective against vicious combinations, has nevertheless in theory been construed so as sweep-ingly to prohibit every combination for the transaction of modern business. . . . The Congress cannot afford to leave it on the statute books in its present shape.
And he added that a bill had been presented to remedy the situation. So far as business combinations were concerned, this bill provided that any party to a contract or combination might file a copy of such contract with the Commissioner of Corporations, whereupon the commissioner, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, might, with or without a hearing, enter an order declaring that in his judgment such contract or combination is in unreasonable restraint of trade. If no such order should be made within thirty days after filing such contract, no prosecution by the United States should lie unless the same be in unreasonable restraint of trade among the several States or foreign nations. However, the United States might institute a suit on account of any contract or combination of which a copy should not have been filed or as to which an order should have been entered as provided.

This bill was considered by a subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary, but was never reported. It will be noticed that none of the legal questions were avoided in this bill. The duty of determining whether a contract is or is not in unreasonable restraint of trade was in the first instance merely shifted from the court to the Commissioner of Corporations. This was not a very good remedy for the defects in the Sherman Act, and I told the President so at the time. "You may be right," he said; "we may have to try something else." He had no personal pride in any particular bill; what he wanted was a remedy. I am emphasizing here his readiness to deal with the question in a constructive and not a destructive manner, and the entire absence on his part of hostility to combined capital as such, but merely to the attendant evils.
In the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases, decided in 1911, the Supreme Court adopted the "rule of reason" in the interpretation of the Sherman Act. Just how far it will extend is uncertain, as these cases involved monopolies.

The uncertainty as to the scope of the decision must probably remain until a case is decided involving the control of a considerable percentage, say, fifty per cent, or less, of a business into which others are free to enter or in which they are actually engaged. The case of the United States Steel Corporation, recently decided in the District Court of New Jersey, favorably to the corporation, and the pending Harvester Case are of this sort.

•A wise construction of the Sherman Act would seem to be that no combination required by the business necessities of those entering it should, where the monopoly feature is absent, and where the business is one into which others are free to enter, be held to be a contract in restraint of trade within the terms of the Sherman Act.

The Sherman Act as applied to railroads involves a somewhat different question, and concerning this President Roosevelt said in 1908:—
The railways of the country should be put completely under the Interstate Commerce Commission and removed from the domain of the Anti-Trust Law. The power of the Commission should be made thoroughgoing, so that it could exercise complete supervision and control over the issue of securities as well as over the raising and lowering of rates. As regards rates, at least, this power should be summary. The power to investigate the financial operations and accounts of the railways has been one of the most valuable features in recent legislation. Power to make combinations and traffic agreements should be explicitly conferred upon the railroads, the permission of the Commission being first gained and the combination or agreement being published in all its details.

This seems to me entirely sound. The fact is that in the Trans-Missouri cases, in 1897, the minority opinion raised the question as to whether the provisions of the Act of 1890 were intended to apply to contracts between interstate carriers, entered into for the purpose of securing fairness in their dealings with each other, and tending to protect the public against improper discrimination and sudden changes in rates, and whether that statute was intended to abrogate the power of railway companies to make contracts that were expressly sanctioned by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. It was pointed out that the Interstate Commerce Act was intended to regulate interstate commerce transported by railway carriers, and that the Act of 1890 was a general law not referring to carriers of interstate commerce. The minority opinion, concurred in by four justices of the court, was, that there was no intention on the part of Congress to abrogate, in whole or in part, the provisions of the Act of 1887 by the general Act of 1890, and that the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 expressed the purpose of Congress to deal with a complicated, particular subject requiring special legislation, and that the act was an initiation of a policy by Congress looking to the development and working-out of a harmonious system to regulate interstate transportation. There is grave doubt as to whether Congress ever intended that contracts for the transportation of persons or property from one State to another should be covered by the provisions of the Sherman Act of 1890.

It may fairly be added that the power now possessed by the office of the Attorney-General over interstate transportation is one that should not exist. Under the penal section of the Sherman Act, the Attorney-General is practically given the power to compel the readjustment of the ownership of railroad properties under threat of criminal prosecution of individuals. This power, rightly exercised by one Administration, might be wrongly exercised by another, and two individuals holding the office of Attorney-General might reach different conclusions upon the same state of facts. Our railroad systems should not be at the mercy of any individual, but should be under the absolute control of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and once under such control should be free from the harassment and great expense both to them and to the Government of suits under the Sherman Act which can only confuse the situation, already sufficiently complex. The transportation business should be and must be, if efficient, a government-regulated monopoly.
Roosevelt and the Negro
Several incidents in Roosevelt's Administration brought the race question into great prominence.
In October, 1901, he invited Booker Washington to dine at the White House. The South uttered angry protests and many people in the North condemned the act.

The Memphis "Commercial Appeal" said: "President Roosevelt has committed a blunder that is worse than a crime."

The New Orleans "Statesman" said that "his action was little less than a studied insult to the South."

The Memphis "Scimiter" said that it was "the most damnable outrage that has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States."

On Memorial Day in 1902, Roosevelt, in his address, condemned lynching, which the South regarded as a sectional utterance.

The President appointed Dr. Crum, a Negro, Collector of the Port of Charleston. A great protest was made, and Republican Senators asked him to withdraw the appointment, which he refused to do, saying that if the matter were not acted upon he would make a recess appointment. This he did.

In a letter to a citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, who protested against the appointment of Dr. Crum, the President stated his general principle as follows:'
I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I cannot consent to take the position that the doorway of hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my contentions, be fundamentally wrong. If, as you hold, the great bulk of the colored people are not yet fit in point of character and influence to hold such positions, it seems to me that it is worth while putting a premium upon the effort among them to achieve the character and standing which will fit them.

An article by John J. Vertrees in the June, 1903, number of the "Olympian," a magazine then published in Nashville, Tennessee, contained the following comment on Roosevelt's negro appointments: —

Mr. McKinley appointed Negroes to office because they were negroes — thus making, as all perceived, a mere political play which was expected as a matter of course, and therefore gave no concern, but Mr. Roosevelt appoints regardless of race and because negroes are equal men — thus revealing a. faith in that "solidarity" which Anglo-Saxons know can come only through the mongrelizing of their race. This is the reason why the negro looks to the President as a deliverer and the people of the South turn from him as one recreant and irresponsive to the instincts and appeals of his own blood and race.
Commenting on this, the Nashville "American" said: —
Mr. Vertrees has admirably given expression to the Southern sentiment on the Negro question.

It was suggested at the time that Hanna never affronted Southern sentiment and angered a Republican machine in the South by naming educated and independent Negroes for office, and that what inflamed the South was not Negro appointments, but high-class Negro appointments.

Roused by the prevalence of lynching in the South, the President wrote a letter on the subject to Governor Durbin, of Indiana, upon which the "Nation" made the following comment:—

President Roosevelt has put us all in his debt. From his letter to Governor Durbin there might well date a new patriotic and civilizing impulse, leading honest men everywhere to unite, in word and deed, and with every instrument of persuasion and of power, to put down those lawless bands that are today our greatest national danger as they are our deepest disgrace.

The President was rebuked by a Democratic Senator for having precipitated the race issue, and was reported to have said that if he could be sure of reelection on condition of turning his back on the principles of Abraham Lincoln, he would be incapable of making the bargain and that he would be unfit to be President if he could think of doing such a thing. And yet he retained some friends in the South. Upon the occasion of his Southern tour in 1905, the Birmingham "Age Herald" said: —
The man whom the people came from all parts of Alabama to honor yesterday is emphatically an American who stands for all regardless of social lines or the size of pocket-books. A man of heartier American spirit and impulses has never occupied the presidential chair. He is an American from the ground up, a true type of the best aspirations of the Republic; the first citizen of this glorious land of liberty.

The Southern Democratic newspapers generally expressed a change of attitude toward him and said that he was more popular than any of his Republican predecessors.

In 1906, three companies of colored soldiers were discharged from the United States Army without honor because of the shooting-up by some of them of Brownsville, Texas. The guilty men could not be individually determined, — there was a "conspiracy of silence" among their comrades to protect them, — and so the President 'discharged all and said of his action, "If any organization of troops, white or black, is guilty of similar conduct in the future, I shall follow precisely the same course." This incident aroused a great deal of criticism and led to an investigation and prolonged debate in the Senate. The matter was finally disposed of in 1909. A commission was appointed to determine what members of the battalion were eligible for reenlistment.

I mention these incidents to demonstrate that Roosevelt's conduct was not affected by any feeling of race prejudice. It was fair play and justice which the President was striving for. In one case it enraged the whites of the South; in the other, it provoked the hostility of the Negroes North and South. He may have been wrong in one or in both, or in neither, but certainly no one can fairly question the honesty of his purpose.
Roosevelt and Labor
Roosevelt always showed sympathetic interest in the welfare of the wage-earner, but never failed to condemn the excesses of labor unions. In his first message to Congress, he
said: —

Not only must our labor be protected by the tariff, but it should also be protected so far as it is possible from the presence in this country of any laborers brought over by contract, or of those who, coming freely, yet represent a standard of living so depressed that they can undersell our men in the labor market and drag them to a lower level.
The most vital problem with which this country, and, for that matter, the whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has for one side the betterment of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and for another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions which we group together when we speak of "labor."

He speaks of the enforcement of the eight-hour law, the protection of women and children from excessive and unreasonable hours for work, under unsanitary conditions, and then says: —

When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else, yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself; and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all.

Subsequently, he said in another message: —

In the vast and complicated mechanism of our modern civilized life, the dominant note is the note of industrialism, and the relations of capital and labor, and especially of organized capital and organized labor, to each other and to the public at large, come second in importance only to the intimate questions of family life.

He recognized organized labor as a necessity, but insisted that it must not seek to attain its ends by improper means, and said: —

There is no objection to employees of the Government forming or belonging to unions; but the Government can neither discriminate for nor discriminate against non-union men who are in its employment.
He recognized the necessity both of organized capital and organized labor under proper supervision: —

The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored as long as it does good, but each should be sharply checked where it acts against law and justice.

   He believed that the rule of contributory negligence should be abolished and that the loss in industrial accidents should fall on the employer. Is it not reasonable that the human machine, in its relations with capital, should be placed at least on terms of equality with the inanimate machine the entire cost and maintenance of which is met by the employer ? Theoretically, of course, no one will dispute that a man should be able to earn enough through the bread-winning period, say from twenty to sixty, to carry him through life, the difficulty, of course, being in the number of factors — illness, bad habits, unemployment and the like — affecting the efficiency of the man which do not touch the inanimate machine. In the case of the latter, the prudent owner fixes a fair period of life for the machine, and then charges off enough each year, in addition to the cost of maintenance, to pay for the machine within the period. The same rule should, as far as feasible, apply to the human machine.

Roosevelt regarded his intervention in the coal strike, in the spring of 1902, as his most important act in connection with the labor question. It also illustrated his theory that when action is necessary, the Executive should do everything not prohibited by law which he considers for the public welfare, and that any doubt should be resolved in favor of action.

It will be remembered that the strike began early in the spring of 1902 and continued through the summer and early autumn. Winter was approaching and a coal famine was imminent. The mines were located in the State of Pennsylvania, and the President had no power to act directly unless requested to do so by the state authorities, on the ground that, as commander-in-chief of the army, he must intervene to keep order. Meantime, he had caused the situation to be thoroughly investigated, and after somewhat prolonged negotiations, secured an agreement between the miners and operators to abide by the decision of a commission of arbitration which the President appointed — in the month of October — and the trouble was over. Had this method of settling the dispute not been agreed to, the President was ready to deal with the matter in drastic fashion. He has said that he would have requested the Governor of Pennsylvania to ask him to keep order, and that he would have then instructed the general in command to protect those who wanted to work from the strikers, to dispossess the operators, and run the mines as a receiver.

When the Employers' Liability Act relating to common carriers was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, on the ground that it applied to intra-state commerce, the President, in his special message of March, 1908, suggested that it be reenacted to meet the objections of the court, and that a further law be enacted to provide government employees with compensation for injury or death incurred in service. He also urged that child labor should be prohibited throughout the nation and that a model child-labor law should be passed for the District of Columbia.

He recommended that in injunctions in labor disputes —

No temporary restraining order should be issued by any court without notice; and the petition for a permanent injunction upon which such temporary restraining order has been issued should be heard by the court issuing the same within a reasonable time — say, not to exceed a week or thereabouts from the date when the order was issued . . . the issue should be decided by another judge than the one issuing the injunction except where the contempt is committed in the presence of the court or in other case of urgency.
Elsewhere he expressed condemnation of labor leaders who demand that in a labor dispute no injunction should issue except to protect a property right and that the right to carry on a business should not be construed as a property right; that in a labor dispute any act or agreement between two or more persons should be legal if not unlawful when done by a single person, thus legalizing blacklisting and boycott, and that there should be a trial by jury in contempt cases.

The President summarized his views as follows : —

The right of employers to combine and contract with one another and with their employees should be explicitly recognized; and so should the right of the employees to combine and to contract with one another and with the employers, and to seek peaceably to persuade others to accept their views, and to strike for the purpose of peaceably obtaining from employers satisfactory terms for their labor. Nothing should be done to legalize either a blacklist or a boycott that would be illegal at common law; this being the type of boycott denned and condemned by the Anthracite Strike Commission.

The President, in harmony with the doctrine he had always preached, ordered the reinstatement (1903) of Miller, who had been expelled from his union and in consequence dismissed from the Government Printing Office. In addressing a note to several departments about union and non-union men, the President called attention to the findings of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, "that no person shall be refused employment or in any way discriminated against on account of membership or non-membership in any labor organization"; and declared that it is "mere elementary decency to require that the government departments shall be handled in accordance with the principles thus clearly and fearlessly enunciated."

In an interview with Samuel Gompers, James Duncan, John Mitchell, and other members of the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, in regard to the Miller case, the President said: —

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 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, or a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him.
The "Nation" said, "the President has shown courage and statesmanship in refusing to let the unions hope for a moment that the nation will aid them in coercing unwilling workmen into the ranks of organized labor."

In 1903, the President made a Labor Day address at Syracuse in which he spoke of the community of interests among all Americans, and said: —

We can keep our Government on a sane and healthful basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. . . .

The line of cleavage between good and bad citizenship lies, not between the man of wealth who acts squarely by his fellows and the man who seeks each day's wage by that day's work, wronging no one and doing his duty by his neighbor; nor yet does this line of cleavage divide the unscrupulous wealthy man who exploits others in his own interest from the demagogue, or from the sullen and envious being who wishes to attack all men of property, whether they do well or ill. On the contrary, the line of cleavage between good citizenship and bad citizenship separates the rich man who does well from the rich man who does ill, the poor man of good conduct from the poor man of bad conduct. This line of cleavage lies at right angles to any such arbitrary line of division as that separating one class from another, one locality from another, or men with a certain degree of property from those of a less degree of property.
And on another occasion, referring to the lawlessness of some labor leaders, the President said: —
I urge my fellow citizens, the American men and women who earn their livelihood as wage-workers, to see that their leaders stand for honesty and obedience to law, and to set their faces like flint against any effort to identify the cause of organized labor, directly or indirectly, with any movement which in any shape or way benefits by the commission of crimes or lawless and murderous violence.
I think I have said enough to demonstrate that Roosevelt's attitude toward labor was perfectly fair, and that, while recognizing fully its right to organize, and while active in his support of legislation to remove from the back of labor every unnecessary burden, he was unsparing in his denunciation of lawless or unfair practices.