Speech 21
THE COAL STRIKE COMMISSION

FROM      AN      ADDRESS      DELIVERED      IN      OMAHA, NEBRASKA,   APRIL   27,   1903

I HAVE spoken of the homage we should pay to the memory of Grant.  It is the homage we should pay to the memory of Lincoln, the homage we should pay to all of our fellow countrymen who have at any time rendered great service to the Republic, and it can be rendered in most efficient form not by merely praising them for having dealt with problems which now we do not have to face, but by facing our problems in the same spirit in which they faced theirs.  Nothing was more noteworthy in all of Lincoln's character than the way in which he combined fealty to the loftiest ideal with a thoroughly practical capacity to achieve that ideal by practical methods.  He did not war with phantoms; he did not struggle among the clouds; he faced facts; he endeavored to get the best results he could out of the warring forces with which he had to deal.  When he could not get the best he was forced to content himself, and did content himself, with the best possible.  What he did in his day we must do in ours.  It is not possible to lay down any rule of conduct so specific that it will enable us to meet each particular issue as it arises.  All that can be done is to lay down certain general rules, and then to try, each man for himself, to apply those general rules to the specific cases that come up.

Our complex industrial civilization has not only been productive of much benefit, but has also brought us face to face with many puzzling problems; problems that are puzzling, partly because there are men that are wicked, partly because there are good men who are foolish or short sighted.  There are many such today — the problems of tabor and capital, the problems which we group together rather vaguely when we speak of the problems of the trusts, the problems affecting the farmers on the one hand, the railroads on the other.  It would not be possible in any one place to deal with the particular shapes which these problems take at that time and in that place.  And yet, there are certain general rules which can be laid down for dealing with them, and those rules are the immutable rules of justice, of sanity, of courage, of common sense.  Six months ago it fell to my lot to appoint a commission to investigate into and conclude about matters connected with the great and menacing strike in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania.  On that commission I appointed representatives of the church, of the bench, of the army, a representative of the capitalists of the region, and a representative of organized labor.  They published a report which was not only of the utmost moment because of dealing with the great and vital problem with which they were appointed to deal, but also because in its conclusions it initiated certain general rules in so clear and masterful a fashion that I wish most earnestly it could receive the broadest circulation as a tract wherever there exists or threatens to exist trouble in any way akin to that with which those commissioners dealt.

If I might give a word of advice to Omaha, I should like to see your daily press publish in full the concluding portion of that report of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, signed by all the members thereof, by those in a special sense the champion of the wage worker, and by those in a special sense identified with capital, organized or unorganized; because, men and women of Omaha, those people did not speak first as capitalist or as laborer, did not speak first as judge, as army man, as church man, but all of them signed that report as American citizens anxious to see right and justice prevail.  No one quality will get us out of any difficulty.  We need more than one; we need a good many.  We need, as I said, the power first of each man's honestly trying to look at the problem from his fellow's standpoint.  Capitalist and wage worker alike should honestly endeavor each to look at any matter from the other's standpoint, with a freedom on the one hand from the contemptible arrogance which looks down upon the man of less means, and on the other, from the no less contemptible envy, jealousy and rancor, which hates another because he is better off.  Each quality is the supplement of the other, and in point of baseness there is not the weight of a finger to choose between them.  Look at the report signed by those men; look at it in the spirit in which they wrote it, and if you can only make yourselves, make this community, approach the problems of today in the spirit that those men, your fellows, showed in approaching the problem of yesterday, your problems will be solved.

Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainty that class's own worst enemy.  In the long run, and as a whole, we are going to go up or go down together.  Of course there will be individual exceptions, small, local exceptions, exceptions in kind, exceptions in place; but as a whole, if the commonwealth prospers some measure of prosperity comes to all of us.  If it is not prosperous, then the adversity, though it may fall unequally upon us, will weigh more or less upon all.  It lies with us ourselves to determine our own fate.  I can not too often say that the wisest law, the best administration of the law, can do naught more than give us a fair field in which to work out that fate aright.  If as individuals, or as a community, we mar our future by our own folly, let us remember that it is upon ourselves that the responsibility must rest.