 CHAPTER XII. One of the vital questions, with which, as President, I had to deal, was the attitude of the nation toward the great corporations. Men who understand and practice the deep, underlying philosophy of the Lincoln School of American Political Thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient national government, and Jeffersonian in their belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the welfare of the people as the end of government. The men who first applied the extreme democratic theory in American life were, like Jefferson, ultra-individualists, for at that time what was demanded by our people was the largest liberty for the individual. During the century that had elapsed since Jefferson became President, the need had been exactly reversed. There had been in our country a riot of individualistic materialism, under which complete freedom for the individual, that ancient license which President Wilson, a century after the term was excusable, has called the new freedom, turned out, in practice, to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak. The total absence of governmental control had led to a pretentious growth in the financial and industrial world, both of natural individuals and of artificial individuals, that is, corporations. In no other country in the world had such enormous fortunes been gained. In no other country in the world was such power held by the men who had gained these fortunes, and these men almost always worked through, and by means of, the giant corporations which they controlled. The power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the methods of controlling them, or checking abuses by them, on the part of the people, through the government, remained archaic, and therefore practically impotent. The courts, not unnaturally, but most regrettably, and to the grave detriment of the people, and of their own standing, had for a quarter of a century been on the whole the agents of reaction, and by conflicting decisions which, however, in their sum, were hostile to the interests of the people, had left both the nation and the several states well nigh impotent to deal with the great business combinations. Sometimes they forbade the nation to interfere, because such interference trespassed on the rights of the states. Sometimes they forbade the states to interfere, and often they were wise in this, because to do so would trespass on the rights of the nation, or, well nigh always, their action was negative action against the interests of the people, ingeniously devised to limit their power against wrong, instead of affirmative action giving to the people power to right wrong. They had rendered these decisions, sometimes, as upholders of property rights against human rights, being especially zealous in securing the rights of the men who were the most competent to take care of themselves, and sometimes, in the name of liberty, in the name of the so-called new freedom, in reality the old, old freedom, which secured to the powerful the freedom to pray on the poor and the helpless. One of the main troubles was the fact that the men who saw the evils and who tried to remedy them attempted to work in two wholly different ways, and the great majority of them in a way that offered little promise of real betterment. They tried, by the Sherman Law Method, to bolster up an individualism already proved to be both futile and mischievous, to remedy, by more individualism, the concentration that was the inevitable result of the already existing individualism. They saw the evil done by the big combinations, and sought to remedy it by destroying them and restoring the country to the economic conditions of the middle of the nineteenth century. This was a hopeless effort, and those who went into it, although they regarded themselves as radical progressives, really represented a form of sincere, rural, tourism. They confounded monopolies with big business combinations, and in the effort to prohibit both alike, instead of where possible prohibiting one and drastically controlling the other, they succeeded merely in preventing any effective control of either. On the other hand, a few men recognized that corporations and combinations had become indispensable in the business world, that it was folly to try to prohibit them, but that it was also folly to leave them without thoroughgoing control. These men realized that the doctrines of the old laissez-faire economists, of the believers in unlimited competition, unlimited individualism, were in the actual state of affairs false and mischievous. They realized that the government must now interfere to protect labor, to subordinate the big corporation to the public welfare, and to shackle cunning and fraud exactly as centuries before it had to interfere to shackle the physical force, which does wrong by violence. The big reactionaries of the business world and their allies and instruments among politicians and newspaper editors took advantage of this division of opinion, and especially of the fact that most of their opponents were on the wrong path and fought to keep matters absolutely unchanged. These men demanded for themselves an immunity from governmental control which, if granted, would have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil men. Many others were just as good men, as were some of these same barons, but they were as utterly unable as any medieval castle owner to understand what the public interest really was. There have been aristocracies which have played a great and beneficent part at stages in the growth of mankind, but we had come to the stage where, for our people, what was needed was a real democracy, and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy. When I became president the question as to the method by which the United States government was to control the corporations was not yet important. The absolutely vital question was whether the government had power to control them at all. This question had not yet been decided in favor of the United States government. It was useless to discuss methods of controlling big business by the national government until it was definitely settled that the national government had the power to control it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that the national government had not the power. This decision I caused to be annulled by the court that had rendered it, and the present power of the national government to deal effectively with the trust is due solely to the success of the administration in securing this reversal of its former decision by the Supreme Court. The Constitution was formed very largely because it had to become imperative to give some central authority the power to regulate and control interstate commerce. At that time when corporations were in their infancy and big combinations unknown there was no difficulty in exercising this power granted. In theory the right of the nation to exercise this power continued unquestioned, but changing conditions obscured the matter in the side of the people as a whole, and the conscious and the unconscious advocates of an unlimited and uncontrollable capitalism gradually secured the whittling away of the national power to exercise this theoretical right of control until it practically vanished. After the Civil War with the pretentious growth of industrial combinations in this country came a period of reactionary decisions by the courts which, as regards corporations, originated in what is known as the Knight Case. The Sherman Antitrust Law was enacted in 1890 because the formation of the Tobacco Trust and the Sugar Trust, the only two great trusts then in the country, aside from the Standard Oil Trust, which was a gradual growth, had awakened a popular demand for legislation to destroy monopoly and curb industrial combinations. This demand the Antitrust Law was intended to satisfy. The administrations of Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cleveland evidently construed this law as prohibiting such combinations in the future, not as condemning those which had been formed prior to its enactment. In 1895, however, the Sugar Trust, whose output originally was about 55 percent of all sugar produced in the United States, obtained control of three other companies in Philadelphia by exchanging its stock for theirs, and thus increased its business until it controlled 98 percent of the entire product. Under Cleveland the government brought proceedings against the Sugar Trust, invoking the Antitrust Law to set aside the acquisition of these corporations. The Test Case was on the absorption of the Knight Company. The Supreme Court of the United States, with but one dissenting vote, held adversely to the government. They took the ground that the power conferred by the Constitution to regulate and control interstate commerce did not extend to the production or manufacture of commodities within a state, and that nothing in the Sherman Antitrust Law prohibited a corporation from acquiring all the stock of other corporations through exchange of its stock for theirs, such exchange not being commerce in the opinion of the court, even though by such acquisition the corporation was enabled to control the entire production of a commodity that was a necessary of life. The effect of this decision was not merely the absolute nullification of the Antitrust Law, so far as industrial corporations were concerned, but was also in effect a declaration that, under the Constitution, the national government could pass no law really effective for the destruction or control of such combinations. This decision left the national government, that is, the people of the nation, practically helpless to deal with the large combinations of modern business. The courts in other cases asserted the power of the federal government to enforce the Antitrust Law, so far as transportation rates by railways engaged in interstate commerce were concerned. But so long as the trusts were free to control the production of commodities without interference from the general government, they were well content to let the transportation of commodities take care of itself, especially as the law against rebates was at that time a dead letter, and the court, by its decision in the night case, had interdicted any interference by the president or by Congress with the production of commodities. It was on the authority of this case that practically all the big trusts in the United States, accepting those already mentioned, were formed. Usually they were organized as holding companies, each one acquiring control of its constituent corporations by exchanging its stock for theirs, an operation which the Supreme Court had thus decided could not be prohibited, controlled, regulated, or even questioned by the federal government. Such was the condition of our laws when I acceded to the presidency. Just before my accession, a small group of financiers, desiring to profit by the governmental impotence to which we had been reduced by the night decision, had arranged to take control of practically the entire railway system in the northwest, possibly as the first step toward controlling the entire railway system of the country. This control of the northwestern railway systems was to be affected by organizing a new holding company, and exchanging its stock against the stock of the various corporations engaged in railway transportation throughout that vast territory, exactly as the Sugar Trust had acquired control of the night company and other concerns. This company was called the Northern Securities Company. Not long after I became president, on the advice of the Attorney General, Mr. Knox, and through him, I ordered proceedings to be instituted for the dissolution of the company. As far as could be told by their utterances at that time, among all the great lawyers in the United States, Mr. Knox was the only one who believed that this action could be sustained. The defense was based expressly on the ground that the Supreme Court, in the night case, had explicitly sanctioned the formation of such a company as the Northern Securities Company. The representatives of privilege intimated, and sometimes asserted outright, that in directing the action to be brought I had shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue by a vote of eight to one. Mr. Justice White, then on the Court, and now Chief Justice, set forth the position that the two cases were in principle identical with incrovertible logic. In giving the views of the dissenting minority on the action I had brought, he said, The parallel between the two cases, the night case and the Northern Securities case, is complete. The one corporation acquired the stock of other and competing corporations in exchange for its own. It was conceded for the purposes of the case, that in doing so monopoly had been brought about in the refining of sugar, that the sugar to be produced was likely to become the subject of interstate commerce, and indeed that part of it would certainly become so. But the power of Congress was decided not to extend to this subject, because the ownership of the stock and the corporations was not itself commerce. Mr. Justice White was entirely correct in this statement. The cases were parallel. It was necessary to reverse the night case in the interest of the people against monopoly and privilege, just as it had been necessary to reverse the Dred Scott case in the interest of the people against slavery and privilege. Just as later it became necessary to reverse the New York Bake Shop case in the interest of the people against that form of monopolistic privilege which put human rights below property rights where wage workers were concerned. By a vote of five to four the Supreme Court reversed its decision in the night case, and in the northern securities case sustained the government. The power to deal with industrial monopoly and suppress it and to control and regulate combinations, of which the night case had deprived the federal government, was thus restored to it by the northern securities case. After this later decision was rendered, suits were brought by my direction against the American Tobacco Company and the Standard Oil Company. Both were judged criminal conspiracies and their dissolution ordered. The night case was finally overthrown. The vicious doctrine it embodied no longer remains as an obstacle to obstruct the pathway of justice when it assails monopoly. Messers Knox, Moody, and Bonaparte, who successively occupied the position of Attorney General under me, were profound lawyers and fearless and able men, and they completely established the newer and more wholesome doctrine under which the federal government may now deal with monopolistic combinations and conspiracies. The decisions rendered in these various cases brought under my direction constitute the entire authority upon which any action must rest that seeks, through the exercise of national power, to curb monopolistic control. The men who organized and directed the northern securities company were also the controlling forces in the Steel Corporation, which has since been prosecuted under the act. The proceedings against the Sugar Trust for corruption and connection with the New York Custom House are sufficiently interesting to be considered separately. From the standpoint of giving complete control to the national government over big corporations engaged in interstate business, it would be impossible to overestimate the importance of the northern securities decision and of the decision afterwards rendered in line with it in connection with the other trusts whose dissolution was ordered. The success of the northern securities case definitely established the power of the government to deal with all great corporations. Without this success the national government must have remained in the impotence to which it had been reduced by the night decision as regards the most important of its internal functions. But our success in establishing the power of the national government to curb monopolies did not establish the right method of exercising that power. We had gained the power. We had not devised the proper method of exercising it. Monopolies can, although in rather cumbersome fashion, be broken up by lawsuits. Great business combinations, however, cannot possibly be made useful instead of noxious, industrial agencies merely by lawsuits, and especially by lawsuits supposed to be carried on for their destruction and not for their control and regulation. I at once began to urge upon Congress the need of laws supplementing the antitrust law, for this law struck at all big business, good and bad alike, and as the event proved was very inefficient in checking bad big business and yet was a constant threat against decent businessmen. I strongly urged the inauguration of a system of thoroughgoing and drastic governmental regulation and control over all big business combinations engaged in interstate industry. Here I was able to accomplish only a small part of what I desired to accomplish. I was opposed, both by the foolish radicals who desired to break up all big business, with the impossible ideal of returning to mid-nineteenth-century industrial conditions, and also by the great privileged interests themselves, who used these ordinarily, but sometimes not entirely, well-meaning stool-pigeon progressives to further their own cause. The worst representatives of big business encouraged the outcry for the total abolition of big business, because they knew that they could not be heard in this way, and that such an outcry distracted the attention of the public from the really efficient method of controlling and supervising them, in just but masterly fashion, which was advocated by the sane representatives of reform. However, we succeeded in making a good beginning by securing the passage of a law, creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, and with it the erection of the Bureau of Corporations. The first head of the Department of Commerce and Labor was Mr. Kortelyou, later Secretary of the Treasury. He was succeeded by Mr. Oscar Strauss. The first head of the Bureau of Corporations was Mr. Garfield, who was succeeded by Mr. Herbert Knox Smith. No four better public servants from the standpoint of the people as a whole could have been found. The Standard Oil Company took the lead in opposing all this legislation. This was natural, for it had been the worst offender in the amassing of enormous fortunes by improper methods of all kinds, at the expense of business rivals and of the public, including the corruption of public servants. If any man thinks this condemnation extreme, I refer him to the language officially used by the Supreme Court of the Nation in its decision against the Standard Oil Company. Through their counsel, and by direct telegrams and letters to senators and congressmen from various heads of the Standard Oil Organization, they did their best to kill the bill providing for the Bureau of Corporations. I got hold of one or two of these telegrams and letters, however, and promptly published them. And as generally happens in such a case, the men who were all-powerful as long as they could work in secret and behind closed doors became powerless as soon as they were forced into the open. The bill went through without further difficulty. The true way of dealing with monopoly is to prevent it by administrative action before it grows so powerful that even when courts condemn it they shrink from destroying it. The Supreme Court, in the tobacco and Standard Oil cases, for instance, used very vigorous language in condemning these trusts, but the net result of the decision was of positive advantage to the wrongdoers, and this has tended to bring the whole body of our law into disrepute in quarters where it is of the very highest importance that the law be held in respect and even in reverence. My effort was to secure the creation of a Federal Commission, which should neither excuse nor tolerate monopoly, but prevent it when possible and uproot it when discovered, and which should in addition effectively control and regulate all big combinations, and should give honest business certainty as to what the law was and security as long as the law was obeyed. Such a commission would furnish a steady expert control, a control adapted to the problem, and dissolution is neither control nor regulation but is purely negative, and negative remedies are of little permanent avail. Such a commission would have complete power to examine into every big corporation engaged or proposing to engage in business between the states. It would have the power to discriminate sharply between corporations that are doing well and those that are doing ill, and the distinction between those who do well and those who do ill would be defined in terms so clear and unmistakable that no one could misapprehend them. Where a company is found seeking its profits through serving the community by stimulating production, lowering prices or improving service, while scrupulously respecting the rights of others, including its rivals, its employees, its customers and the general public, and strictly obeying the law, then no matter how large its capital or how great the volume of its business would be encouraged to still more abundant production or better service by the fullest protection that the government could afford it. On the other hand, if a corporation were found seeking profit through injury or oppression of the community by restricting production through trick or device, by plot or conspiracy against competitors or by oppression of wage workers, and then extorting high prices for the commodity it had made artificially scarce, it would be prevented from organizing if its nefarious purpose could be discovered in time, or pursued and suppressed by all the power of the government whenever found in actual operation. Such a commission, with the power I advocate, would put a stop to abuses of big corporations and small corporations alike. It would draw the line on conduct and not on size. It would destroy monopoly and make the biggest businessmen in the country conform squarely to the principles laid down by the American people, while at the same time giving fair play to the little man and certainty of knowledge as to what was wrong and what was right, both to big man and little man. Although under the decision of the courts the national government had power over the railways, I found, when I became president, that this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. Aldean scrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity, and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves under penalty of being beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the fault of these decent railway men, it was the fault of the government. Thanks to a first-class railway man, Paul Morton of the Santa Fe, son of Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture, I was able completely to stop the practice. Mr. Morton volunteered to aid the government in abolishing rebates. He frankly stated that he, like everyone else, had been guilty in the matter, but he insisted that he uttered the sentiments of the decent railway men of the country when he said that he hoped the practice would be stopped, and that, if I would really stop it and not merely make believe to stop it, he would give the testimony which would put into the hands of the government the power to put a complete check to the practice. Finally he testified, and on the information which he gave us we were able to take such action through the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Department of Justice, supplemented by the necessary additional legislation that the evil was absolutely eradicated. He thus rendered of his own accord, at his own personal risk, and from purely disinterested motives, an invaluable service to the people, a service which no other man who was able to render was willing to render. As an immediate sequel, the world-old alliance between Bluefell and Black George was immediately revived against Paul Morton. In giving rebates he had done only what every honest railwayman in the country had been obliged to do because of the failure of the government to enforce the prohibition as regards to dishonest railwaymen. But unlike his fellows he had then shown the courage and sense of obligation to the public which made him come forward and without evasion or concealment state what he had done, in order that we might successfully put an end to the practice and put an end to the practice we did, and we did it because of the courage and patriotism he had shown. The unscrupulous railwaymen, whose dishonest practices were thereby put a stop to, and the unscrupulous demagogues who were either under the influence of these men or desirous of gaining credit with thoughtless and ignorant people no matter who was hurt, joined in vindictive clamor against Mr. Morton. They actually wished me to prosecute him, although such prosecution would have been a piece of unpardonable ingratitude and treachery on the part of the public toward him, for I was merely acting as the steward of the public in this matter. I need hardly say that I stood by him, and later he served under me as Secretary of the Navy, and a capital secretary he made too. We not only secured the stopping of rebates, but in the Hepburn Rate Bill we were able to put through a measure which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission for the first time real control over the railways. There were two or three amusing features in the contest over this bill. All of the great business interests which objected to governmental control banded to fight it, and they were helped by the honest men of ultra-conservative type who always dread change, whether good or bad. We finally forced it through the House. In the Senate it was referred to a committee in which the Republican majority was under the control of Senator Aldrich, who took the lead in opposing the bill. There was one Republican on the committee, however, whom Senator Aldrich could not control, Senator Dulliver of Iowa. The leading Democrat on the committee was Senator Tillman of South Carolina, with whom I was not on good terms, because I had been obliged to cancel an invitation to him to dine at the White House on account of his having made a personal assault in the Senate chamber on his colleague from South Carolina, and later I had to take action against him on account of his conduct in connection with certain land matters. Senator Tillman favored the bill. The Republican majority in the committee under Senator Aldrich, when they acted adversely on the bill, turned it over to Senator Tillman, thereby making him its sponsor. The object was to create what it was hoped would be an impossible situation in view of the relations between Senator Tillman and myself. I regarded the action as simply childish. It was a curious instance of how able and astute men sometimes commit blunders because of sheer inability to understand intensity of disinterested motive in others. I did not care a wrap about Mr. Tillman's getting credit for the bill, or having charge of it. I was delighted to go with him or with any one else just so long as he was travelling in my way, and no longer. CHAPTER XII PART II OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THEATRE ROSEVELT This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL PART II There was another amusing incident in connection with the passage of the bill. All the wise friends of the effort to secure governmental control of corporations must know that this government control must be exercised through administrative and not judicial officers if it is to be effective. Everything possible should be done to minimise the chance of appealing from the decisions of the administrative officer to the courts. But it is not possible constitutionally, and probably would not be desirable anyhow, completely to abolish the appeal. Unwise zealots wish to make the effort totally to abolish the appeal in connection with the Hepburn Bill. Representatives of the special interests wish to extend the appeal to include what it ought not to include. Between stood a number of men whose votes would mean the passage of, or the failure to pass the bill, and who were not inclined towards either side. We are four substantially identical amendments were proposed, and we then suddenly found ourselves face to face with an absurd situation. The good men who were willing to go with us but had conservative misgivings about the ultra-radicals would not accept a good amendment if one of the latter proposed it, and the radicals would not accept their own amendment if one of the conservatives proposed it. Each side got so wrought up as to be utterly unable to get matters into proper perspective, each prepared to stand on unimportant trifles, each announced with hysterical emphasis, the reformers, just as hysterically as the reactionaries, that the decision as regards each unimportant trifle determined the worth or worthlessness of the measure. Gradually we secured a measurable return to saying appreciation of the essentials. Finally, both sides reluctantly agreed to accept the so-called Allyson amendment, which did not, as a matter of fact, work any change in the bill at all. The amendment was drawn by Attorney General Moody after consultation with the Interstate Commerce Commission and was forwarded, by me, to Senator Dolliver. It was accepted and the bill became law. Thanks to this law and to the way in which the Interstate Commerce Commission was backed by the administration, the commission, under men like Proudy, Lane, and Clark, became a most powerful force for good. Some of the good that we had accomplished was undone after the close of my administration by the unfortunate law creating a commerce court, but the major part of the immense advance we had main remained. There was one point on which I insisted, and upon which it was necessary always to insist. The commission cannot do permanent good unless it does justice to the corporations precisely as it exacts justice from them. The public, the shippers, the stock and bondholders, and the employees all have their rights, and none should be allowed unfair privileges at the expense of the others. Stockwatering and swindling of any kind should, of course, not only be stopped but punished. When, however, a road is managed fairly and honestly, and when it renders a real and needed service, then the government must not see that it is not so burdened as to make it impossible to run it a profit. There is much wise legislation necessary for the safety of the public, or, like Workman's compensation, necessary to the well-being of the employee, which nevertheless imposes such a burden on the road that the burden must be distributed between the general public and the corporation, or there will be no dividends. In such cases it may be the highest duty of the commissioners to raise rates, and the commission, when satisfied that the necessity exists, in order to do justice to the owners of the road, should no more hesitate to raise rates than under other circumstances to lower them. So much for the big stick in dealing with the corporations when they went wrong. Now for a sample of the Square Deal. In the fall of 1907 there were several business disturbances on financial stringency, culminating in a panic which arose in New York and spread over the country. The damage actually done was great, and the damage threatened was incalculable. Thanks largely to the action of the government, the panic was stopped before, instead of being merely a serious business check, it became a frightful and nationwide calamity, a disaster fraught with untold misery and woe to all our people. For several days the nation trembled on the brink of such a calamity, of such a disaster. During these days both the Secretary of the Treasury and I personally were in hourly communication with New York, following every change in the situation and trying to anticipate every development. It was the obvious duty of the administration to take every step possible to prevent appalling disaster by checking the spread of the panic before it grew so that nothing could check it. And events moved with such speed that it was necessary to decide and to act on the instant, as each successive crisis arose if the decision and action were to accomplish anything. The Secretary of the Treasury took various actions, some on his own initiative, some by my direction. Late one evening I was informed that two representatives of the Steel Corporation wished to see me early the following morning, the precise object not being named. Next morning while at breakfast I was informed that Messers Frick and Gary were awaiting at the office. I at once went over and as the Attorney General, Mr. Bonaparte, had not yet arrived from Baltimore, where he had been passing the night, I sent a message asking the Secretary of State, Mr. Root, who was also a lawyer, to join us, which he did. Before the close of the interview and in the presence of the three gentlemen named, I dictated a note to Mr. Bonaparte, setting forth exactly what Messers Frick and Gary had proposed, and exactly what I had answered, so that there might be no possibility of misunderstanding. This note was published in a Senate document while I was still President. It runs as follows. The White House, Washington, November 4, 1907. My dear Mr. Attorney General, Judge E. H. Gary and Mr. H. C. Frick on behalf of the Steel Corporation have just called upon me. They state that there is a certain business firm, the name of which I have not been told, but which is of real importance in New York business circles, which will undoubtedly fail this week if help is not given. Among its assets are a majority of the securities of the Tennessee Coal Company. Application has been urgently made to the Steel Corporation to purchase this stock as the only means of avoiding a failure. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed me that as a mere business transaction they do not care to purchase the stock, that under ordinary circumstances they would not consider purchasing the stock, because but little benefit will come to the Steel Corporation from the purchase. That they are aware that the purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them on the ground that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the business and prevent competition. Not that this would represent what could honestly be said, but what might recklessly and untruthfully be said. They further informed me that, as a matter of fact, the policy of the company has been to decline to acquire more than sixty percent of the steel properties, and that this purpose has been persevered in for several years past with the object of preventing these accusations. And as a matter of fact, their proportion of steel properties has slightly decreased, so that it is below this sixty percent, and the acquisition of the property in question will not raise it above sixty percent. But they feel that it is immensely to their interest, as to the interest of every responsible businessman, to try to prevent a panic in general industrial smash-up at this time, and that they are willing to go into this transaction, which they would not otherwise go into, because it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express judgment in New York, that it will be an important factor in preventing a break that might be ruinous, and that this has been urged upon them by the combination of the most responsible bankers in New York, who are now thus engaged in endeavouring to save the situation. But they asserted that they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be done. I answered that, while, of course, I could not advise them to take the action proposed, I felt it no public duty of mine to interpose any objections. Sincerely yours, signed Theodore Roosevelt. Honourable Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney General. Mr. Bonaparte received this note in about an hour, and that same morning he came over, acknowledged its receipt, and said that my answer was the only proper answer that could have been made, having regard both to the law and to the needs of the situation. He stated that the legal situation had been in no way changed, and that no sufficient ground existed for prosecution of the Steel Corporation. But I acted purely on my own initiative, and the responsibility for the act was solely mine. I was intimately acquainted with the situation in New York. The word panic means fear, unreasoning fear. To stop a panic it is necessary to restore confidence, and at the moment the so-called Morgan interests were the only interests which retained a full hold on the competence of the people of New York. Not only the business people, but the immense mass of men and women who owned small investments, or had small savings in the banks and trust companies. Mr. Morgan and his associates were of course fighting hard to prevent the loss of confidence, and the panic distressed from increasing to such a degree as to bring any other big financial institutions down, for this would probably have been followed by a general, and very likely a worldwide crash. The Knickerbocker Trust Company had already failed, and runs had begun on, or were threatening as regards to other big trust companies. These companies were now on the fighting line, and it was to the interest of everybody to strengthen them, in order that the situation might be saved. It was a matter of general knowledge and belief that they, or the individuals prominent in them, held the securities of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which securities had no market value and were useless as a source of strength in the agency. The Steel Corporation securities, on the contrary, were immediately marketable, their great value being known and admitted all over the world, as the event showed. The proposal of Messers Frick and Gary was that the Steel Corporation should at once acquire the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, and thereby substitute among the assets of the threatened institutions, which, by the way, they did not name to me, securities of great and immediate value for securities which at the moment were of no value. It was necessary for me to decide on the instant, before the stock exchange opened, for the situation in New York was such that any hour might be vital, and failure to act for even an hour might make all subsequent effort to act utterly useless. From the best information at my disposal I believed what was actually the fact that the addition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Property would only increase the proportion of the Steel Company's holdings by about four percent, making them about sixty-two percent instead of about fifty-eight percent of the total value in the country, an addition which, by itself, in my judgment, concurred in, not only by the Attorney General, but by every competent lawyer, worked no change in the legal status of the Steel Corporation. The diminution in the percentage of holdings and production has gone on steadily, and the percentage is now about ten percent less than it was ten years ago. The action was emphatically for the general good. It offered the only chance for arresting the panic, and it did arrest the panic. I answered Mr. Frick and Gary as set forth in the letter quoted above, to the effect that I did not deem it my duty to interfere, that is, to forbid the action which more than anything else in actual fact saved the situation. The result justified my judgment. The panic was stopped, public confidence in the solvency of the threatened institution being at once restored. Business was vitally helped by what I did. The benefit was not only for the moment, it was permanent. Particularly was this the case in the South. Three or four years afterwards I visited Birmingham. Every man I met, without exception, who was competent to testify, informed me voluntarily that the results of the action taken had been of the utmost benefit to Birmingham, and therefore to Alabama, the industry having profited to an extraordinary degree, not only from the standpoint of the business, but from the standpoint of the community at large and out of the wage workers, by the change in ownership. The results of the action I took were beneficial from every standpoint, and the action itself, at the time when it was taken, was vitally necessary to the welfare of the people of the United States. I would have been derelict in my duty. I would have shown myself a timid and unworthy public servant, if in that extraordinary crisis I had not acted precisely as I did act. In every such crisis the temptation to indecision, to non-action, is great. Your excuses can always be found for non-action, and action means risk and the certainty of blame to the man who acts. But if the man is worth his salt he will do his duty. He will give the people the benefit of the doubt, and act in any way which their interest demands, and which is not affirmatively prohibited by law, unheeding the likelihood that he himself, when the crisis is over in the danger past, will be assailed for what he has done. Every step I took in this matter was open as the day, and was known in detail at the moment to all people. The press contained full accounts of the visit to be of Messers Frick and Gary, and heralded widely and with acclamation the results of that visit. At the time the relief and rejoicing over what had been done were well nigh universal. The danger was too eminent and too appalling for me to be willing to condemn those who were successful in saving them from it. But I fully understood and expected that when there was no longer danger, when the fear had been forgotten, attack would be made upon me, and as a matter of fact, after a year had elapsed the attack was begun, and has continued at intervals ever since, my ordinary assailant being some politician of rather cheap type. If I were on a sailboat I should not ordinarily meddle with any of the gear, but if a sudden squall struck us and the main sheet jammed, so that the boat threatened to capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main sheet, even though I were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful to me at the moment for having saved his life, would a few weeks later, when he had forgotten his dangerous fear, decide to sue me for the value of the cut robe. But I would feel a hearty contempt for the owner who so acted. There were many other things that we did in connection with the corporations. One of the most important was the passage of the Mead Inspection Law because of scandalous abuses shown to exist in the great packing-houses in Chicago and elsewhere. There was a curious result of this law, similar to what occurred in connection with the law providing for effective railway regulation. The big beef men bitterly opposed the law, just as the big railway men opposed the Hepburn Act. Yet three or four years after these laws had been put on the statute books, every honest man, both in the beef business and the railway business, came to the conclusion that they worked good and not harm to the decent business concerns. They hurt only those who were not acting as they should have acted. The law providing for the inspection of the packing-houses and the Pure Food and Drugs Act were also extremely important, and the way in which they were administered was even more important. It would be hard to overstate the value of the service rendered in all these cases by such cabinet officers as Moody and Bonaparte, and their outside assailants of the stamp of Frank Kellogg. It would be useless to enumerate all the suits we brought. Some of them I have already touched upon. Others, such as the suits against the Harriman Railway Corporations, which were successful, and which had been rendered absolutely necessary by the grossly improper actions of the corporations concerned, offered no special points of interest. The sugar trust proceedings, however, may be mentioned as showing just the kind of thing that was done, and the kind of obstacle encountered and overcome in prosecutions of this character. It was on the advice of my secretary, William Loeb, Jr., afterward, head of the New York Custom House, that the action was taken which started the uncovering of the frauds perpetrated by the sugar trust and other companies in connection with the importing of sugar. Loeb had, from time to time, told me that he was sure there was fraud in connection with the importations by the sugar trust through the New York Custom House. Finally, some time toward the end of 1904, he informed me that Richard Parr, a sampler at the New York Appraisers' Stores, whose duties took him almost continually on the docks in connection with the sampling of merchandise, had called on him, and had stated that in his belief the sugar companies were defrauding the government in the matter of weights, and had stated that if he could be made an investigating officer of the Treasury Department, he was confident that he could show there was wrongdoing. Parr had been a former school fellow of Loeb in Albany, and Loeb believed him to be loyal, honest, and efficient. He thereupon laid the matter before me and advised the appointment of Parr as a special employee of the Treasury Department, for the specific purpose of investigating the alleged sugar-frauds. I instructed the Treasury Department accordingly, and was informed that there was no vacancy in the force of special employees, but that Parr would be given the first place that opened up. Early in the spring of 1905, Parr came to Loeb again, and said that he had received additional information about the sugar-frauds, and was anxious to begin the investigation. Loeb again discussed the matter with me, and I notified the Treasury Department to appoint Parr immediately. On June 1, 1905, he received his appointment, and was assigned to the Port of Boston for the purpose of gaining some experience as an investigating officer. During the month he was transferred to the Maine district, with headquarters at Portland, where he remained until March 1907. During his service in Maine he uncovered extensive wool-smuggling frauds. At the conclusion of the wool case he appealed to Loeb to have him transferred to New York, so that he might undertake the investigation of the sugar-underweighing frauds. I now called the attention of Secretary Kortulou personally to the matter, so that he would be able to keep a check over any subordinates who might try to interfere with Parr, for the conspiracy was evidently widespread, the wealth of the offenders great, and the corruption in the service far reaching. While, moreover, as always happens with respectable offenders, there were many good men who sincerely disbelieved in the possibility of corruption on the part of men of such high financial standing. Parr was assigned to New York early in March 1907, and at once began an active investigation of the conditions existing on the sugar-dogs. This terminated in the discovery of a steel spring in one of the scales of Habermeyer and Elder Docks in Brooklyn, November 20th, 1907, which enabled us to uncover what were probably the most colossal frauds ever perpetrated in the customs service. From the beginning of his active work in the investigation of the sugar-frauds in March 1907 to March 4th, 1909, Parr, from time to time, personally reported to Loeb at the White House the progress of his investigations, and Loeb in his turn kept me personally advised. On one occasion there was an attempt made to shunt Parr off the investigation and substitute another agent of the Treasury, who was suspected of having some relations with the sugar companies under investigation. But Parr reported the facts to Loeb, I sent for Secretary Courtauld and Secretary Courtauld promptly took charge of the matter himself, putting Parr back on the investigation. During the investigation, Parr was subjected to all sorts of harassments, including an attempt to bribe him by Spitzer, the dock superintendent of the Habermeyer and Elder Refinery, for which Spitzer was convicted and served determined prison. Brzezinski, a special agent who was assisting Parr, was convicted of perjury and also served determined prison, he having changed his testimony in the trial of Spitzer for the attempted bribery of Parr from that which he gave before the grand jury. For his extraordinary services in connection with this investigation, Parr was granted an award of one hundred thousand dollars by the Treasury Department. District Attorney Stimson of New York, assisted by Denison, Frank Futter, Wise, and other employees of the Department of Justice, took charge of the case and carried on both civil and criminal proceedings. The trial and the action against the sugar trust for the recovery of duties on the cargo of sugar, which was being sent over the scales at the time of the discovery of the steel spring by Parr, was begun in 1908. Judgment was rendered against the defendants on March 5, 1909, the day after I left office. Over four million dollars were recovered and paid back into the United States Treasury by the sugar companies which had perpetrated the various forms of fraud. These frauds were unearthed by Parr, Loeb, Stimson, Frank Futter, and the other men mentioned and their associates, and it was to them that the people owed the refunding of the huge sum of money mentioned. We had already secured heavy fines from the sugar trust and from various big railways and private individuals, such as Edwin Earl, for unlawful rebates. In the case of the Chief Offender, the American Sugar Refining Company, the Sugar Trust, criminal prosecutions were carried on against every living man whose position was such that he would naturally know about the fraud. All of them were indicted, and the biggest and most responsible ones were convicted. The evidence showed that the President of the Company, Henry O. Havemeier, virtually ran the entire company and was responsible for all the details of the management. He died two weeks after the fraud was discovered just as proceedings were being begun. Next to him in importance was the Secretary and Treasurer, Charles R. Hike, who was convicted. Various other officials and employees of the trust and various government employees were indicted and most of them convicted. Ernest W. Gerbrocht, the superintendent of one of the refineries, was convicted, but his sentence was commuted to a short jail imprisonment because he became a government witness and greatly assisted the government in the suits. Hike's sentence was commuted so as to excuse him from going to the Penitentiary. Just as the Penitentiary sentence of Morse, the big New York banker, who was convicted of gross fraud and misapplication of funds, was commuted. Both commutations were granted long after I left office. In each case the commutation was granted because, as was stated, of the prisoner's age and state of health. In Morse's case the President originally refused the request, saying that Morse had exhibited fraudulent and criminal disregard of the trust imposed upon him, that he was entirely unscrupulous as to the methods he adopted, and that he seemed at times to be absolutely heartless with regard to the consequences to others. And he showed great shrewdness in obtaining large sums of money from the bank, without adequate security and without making himself personally liable, therefore. The two cases may be considered in connection with the announcement in the public press that on May 17, 1913 the President commuted the sentence of Louis A. Banks, who was serving a very long Penitentiary sentence for an attack on a girl in the Indian territory. The reason for the commutation, which is set forth in the press, being that Banks is in poor health. CHAPTER XII. It is no easy matter to balance the claims of justice and mercy in such cases. In these three cases, all of which I had personal cognizance, I disagreed radically with the views my successors took, and with the views which many respectable men took, who in these and similar cases, both while I was in office and afterwards, urged me to show, or asked others to show, clemency. It then seemed to me, and it now seems to me, that such clemency is from the larger standpoint a gross wrong to the men and women of the country. One of the former special assistants of the District Attorney, Mr. W. Cleveland Runyon, in commenting bitterly on the release of Hike and Morse on account of their health, pointed out that their health apparently became good when once they themselves became free men, and added, the commutation of these sentences amounts to a direct interference with the administration of justice by the courts. Hike got a twenty-five thousand dollar salary and has escaped his imprisonment. But what about the six eighteen dollar week checkers, who were sent to jail, one of them a man of more than sixty? It is cases like this that create discontent and anarchy. They make it seem plain that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor man, and I for one will protest. In dealing with Hike the individual, or Morse, or any other individual, it is necessary to emphasize the social aspects of his case. The moral of the Hike case, as has been well said, is how easy it is for a man in modern corporate organizations to drift into wrongdoing. The moral restraints are loosened in the case of a man like Hike, by the insulation of himself from the sordid details of crime, through industrially coerced intervening agents. Professor Ross has made the penetrating observation that distance disinfects dividends. It also weakens individual responsibility, particularly on the part of the very managers of large business, who should feel it most acutely. One of the officers of the Department of Justice, who conducted the suit, and who inclined to the side of mercy in the matter, nevertheless writes, Hike is a beautiful illustration of mental and moral obscuration in the business life of an otherwise valuable member of society. Hike had an ample share in the guidance of the affairs of the American Sugar Company, and we are apt to have a foreshortened picture of his responsibility, because he operated from the easy coin of vantage of executive remoteness. It is difficult to say to what extent he did directly or indirectly profit by the sordid practices of his company. But the social damage of an individual in his position may be just as deep, whether merely the zest of the game or hard cash be his dominant motive. I have coupled the cases of the Big Banker and the Sugar Trust Official and the case of the man convicted of a criminal assault on a woman. All of the criminals were released from penitentiary sentences on grounds of ill health. The offenses were typical of the worst crimes committed at the two ends of the social scale. One offense was a crime of brutal violence. The other offenses were crimes of astute corruption. All of them were offenses which, in my judgment, were of such a character that clemency towards the offender worked grave injustice to the community as a whole, injustice so grave that its effects might be far reaching in their damage. Every time that rape or criminal assault on a woman is pardoned, and anything less than the full penalty of the law exacted, a premium is put on the practice of lynching such offenders. Every time a big money defender who naturally excites interest in sympathy and who has many friends is excused from serving a sentence which a man of less prominence and fewer friends would have to serve, justice is discredited in the eyes of plain people. And to undermine faith in justice is to strike at the foundation of the Republic. As for ill health it must be remembered that few people are as healthy in prison as they would be outside, and there should be no discrimination among criminals on this score, either all criminals who grow unhealthy should be let out, or none. Pardons must sometimes be given in order that the cause of justice may be served, but in cases such as these I am considering, while I know that many amiable people differ from me, I am obliged to say that in my judgment the pardons work far reaching harm to the cause of justice. Among the big corporations themselves, even where they did wrong, there was a wide difference in the moral obliquity indicated by the wrongdoer. There was a wide distinction between the offenses committed in the case of the Northern Securities Company and in the offenses because of which the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the Standard Oil Trust were successfully prosecuted under my administration. It was vital to destroy the Northern Securities Company, but the men creating it had done so in an open and above-board fashion, acting under what they, and most of the members of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme Court in the Night Sugar Case. But the Supreme Court, in its decree dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the severest language for moral turpitude, and an even severer need of condemnation should be visited on the Sugar Trust. However, all the trusts in big corporations against which we proceeded, which included in their directorates practically all the biggest financiers in the country, joined in making the bitterest assaults on me and on my administration. Of their actions I wrote as follows to Attorney General Bonaparte, who had been a peculiarly close friend and adviser through the period covered by my public life in high office, and who, together with Attorney General Moody, possessed the same understanding sympathy with my social and industrial program that was possessed by such officials as Strauss, Garfield, H. K. Smith, and Peasho. The Letter Runs. January 2, 1908. My dear Bonaparte. I must congratulate you on your admirable speech at Chicago. You said the very things it was good to say at this time. What you said bore a special weight because it represented what you had done. You have shown, by what you have actually accomplished, that the law is enforced against the wealthiest corporation and the richest and most powerful manager or manipulator of that corporation, just as resolutely and fearlessly as against the humblest citizen. The Department of Justice is now, in very fact, the Department of Justice, and justice is meted out with an even hand to great and small, rich and poor, weak and strong. Those who have denounced you in the action of the Department of Justice are either misled, or else are the very wrongdoers and the agents of the very wrongdoers who have for so many years gone scot-free and flouted the laws with impunity. Above all, you are to be congratulated upon the bitterness felt and expressed towards you by the representatives and agents of the great, law-defying corporations of immense wealth, who, until within the last half-dozen years, have treated themselves and have expected others to treat them as being beyond and above all possible check from the law. It was time to say something for the representatives of predatory wealth, of wealth accumulated on a giant scale by iniquity, by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swindling, by oppressing wage-workers, by manipulating securities, by unfair and unwholesome competition and by stock-jobbing, in short, by conduct abhorrent to every man of ordinary decent conscience, have during the last few months made it evident that they are banded together to work for a reaction, to endeavor to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, and to secure a return to the days when every unscrupulous wrongdoer could do what he wished, unchecked, provided he had enough money. They attack you because they know your honesty and fearlessness, and dread them. The enormous sums of money these men have at their control enabled them to carry on an effective campaign. They find their tools in a portion of the public press, including especially certain of the great New York papers. They find their agents in some men in public life, now and then occupying or having occupied positions as high as senator or governor. In some men in the pulpit, and most melancholy of all, in a few men on the bench. By gifts to colleges and universities they are occasionally able to subsidize in their own interests some head of an educational body, who, save only a judge, should of all men be most careful to keep his skirts clear from the taint of such corruption. There are ample material rewards for those who serve with fidelity the mammon of unrighteousness, that they are dearly paid for by that institution of learning, whose head, by example in precept, teaches the scholars who sit under him that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. The amount of money the representatives of the great moneyed interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent publication broadcast throughout the papers of this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific of huge advertisements attacking with inventive bitterness the administration's policy of warring against successful dishonesty, advertisements that must have cost enormous sums of money. This advertisement, as also a pamphlet called the Roosevelt Panic and one or two similar books and pamphlets, are written especially in the interest of the standard oil and haremine combinations, but also defend all the individuals and corporations of great wealth that have been guilty of wrongdoing. From the railroad rate law to the pure food law, every measure for honesty and business that has been pressed during the last six years has been opposed by these men on its passage and in its administration with every resource that bitter and unscrupulous craft could suggest, and the command of an almost unlimited money secure. These men do not themselves speak a right, they hire others to do their bidding. Their spirit and purpose are made clear alike by the editorials of the papers owned in or whose policy is dictated by Wall Street, and by the speeches of public men who, as senators, governors, or mayors, have served these their masters to the cost of the plain people. At one time one of their riders or speakers attacks the rate law as the cause of the panic. He is, whether in public life or not, usually a clever corporation lawyer, and he is not so foolish a being as to believe in the truth of what he says. He has too closely represented the railroads not to know well that the Hepburn rate bill has helped every honest railroad, and has hurt only the railroads that regarded themselves as above the law. At another time one of them assails the administration for not imprisoning people under the Sherman anti-trust law, for declining to make what he well knows in view of the actual attitude of juries, as shown in the tobacco trust cases and in San Francisco in one or two of the cases brought against corrupt businessmen, would have been the futile endeavor to imprison defendants whom we are actually able to find. He raises the usual clamor raised by all who object to the enforcement of the law, that we are finding corporations instead of putting the heads of the corporations in jail, and he states that this does not really harm the chief offenders. Were this statement true, he himself would not be found attacking us. The extraordinary violence of the assault upon our policy contained in speeches like these, in the articles in the subsidized press, in such huge advertisements and pamphlets as those above referred to, and the enormous sums of money spent in these various ways, give a fairly accurate measure of the anger and terror which our actions have caused the corrupt men of vast wealth to feel in the very marrow of their being. The man thus attacking us is usually, like so many of his fellows, either a great lawyer or a paid editor who takes his commands from the financiers and his arguments from their attorneys. If the former he has defended many malifactors, and he knows well that, thanks to the advice of lawyers like himself, a certain kind of modern corporation has been turned into an admirable instrument by which to render it well nigh impossible to get at the really guilty man, so that in most cases the only way of punishing the wrong is by finding the corporation or by proceeding personally against some of the minor agents. These lawyers and their employers are the men mainly responsible for this state of things, and their responsibility is shared with the legislators who ingeniously oppose the passing of just and effective laws, and with those judges whose one aim seems to be to construe such laws so that they cannot be executed. Nothing is sillier than this outcry on behalf of the innocent stockholders in the corporations. We are besought to pity the Standard Oil Company for a fine relatively far less great than the fines every day inflicted in the police courts upon multitudes of push cart peddlers and other petty offenders, whose woes never extort one word from the men whose withers are wrung by the woes of the mighty. The stockholders have the control of the corporation in their own hands. The corporation officials are elected by those holding the majority of the stock, and can keep office only by having behind them the goodwill of these majority stockholders. They are not entitled to the slightest pity if they deliberately choose to resign into the hands of great wrongdoers the control of the corporations in which they own the stock. Of course, innocent people have become involved in these big corporations and suffer because of the misdeeds of their criminal associates. Let these innocent people be careful not to invest in corporations where those in control are not men of probity, men who respect the laws. Above all, let them avoid the men who make it their one effort to evade or defy the laws. But if these honest innocent people are in the majority in any corporation, they can immediately resume control and throw out of the directory the men who misrepresent them. Does any man for a moment suppose that the majority stockholders of the standard oil are others than Mr. Rockefeller and his associates themselves and the beneficiaries of their wrongdoing? When the stock is watered so that the innocent investors suffer, a grave wrong is indeed done to those innocent investors as well as to the public. But the public men, lawyers, and editors to whom I refer, do not under these circumstances express sympathy for the innocent. On the contrary, they are the first to protest with frantic vehemence against our efforts by law to put a stop to overcapitalization and stock watering. The apologists of successful dishonesty always declaim against any effort to punish or prevent it on the ground that such effort will unsettle business. It is they who by their acts have unsettled business and the very men raising this cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by speech, editorial, book, or pamphlet, the defense by misstatement of what they have done. And yet when we correct their misstatements by telling the truth, they declaim against us for breaking silence lest values be unsettled. They have hurt honest businessmen, honest working men, honest farmers, and now they clamor against the truth being told. The key note of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in business and in politics is expressed in a recent speech in which the speaker stated that prosperity had been checked by the effort for the moral regeneration of the business world, an effort which he denounced as unnatural, unwarranted, and injurious, and for which he stated the panic was the penalty. The morality of such a plea is precisely as great as if made on behalf of the men caught in a gambling establishment when that gambling establishment is raided by the police. If such words mean anything, they mean that those whose sentiments they represent stand against the effort to bring about a moral regeneration of business which will prevent a repetition of the insurance, banking, and street railroad scandals in New York, a repetition of the Chicago and Alton deal, a repetition of the combination between certain professional politicians, certain professional labor leaders, and certain big financiers from the disgrace of which San Francisco has just been rescued, a repetition of the successful efforts by the standard oil people to crush out every competitor, to overall the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly which treats the public with the contempt which the public deserves so long as it permits men like the public men of whom I speak, to represent it in politics, men like the heads of colleges to whom I refer to educate its youth. The outcry against stopping dishonest practices among the very wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised against every effort for cleanliness and decency in city government because, forsooth, it will hurt the business. The same outcry is made against the Department of Justice for prosecuting the heads of colossal corporations that is made against the men who, in San Francisco, are prosecuting with impartial severity the wrongdoers among businessmen, public officials, and labor leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two cases. Just as the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the public stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood money of the gambling house, the saloon, and the brothel. Moreover, both kinds of corruption in the last analysis are far more intimately connected than would at first appear. The wrongdoing is at the bottom the same. Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react, with ever increasing debasement, one on the other. The rebate taker, the franchise trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and protector of vice, the blackmailing ward boss, the ballot box stuffer, the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully and man-killer, all alike work at the same web of corruption, and all alike should be abhorred by honest men. The business which is hurt by the movement for honesty is the kind of business which, in the long run, it pays the country to have hurt. It is the kind of business which has tended to make the very name high finance a term of scandal, to which all honest American men of business should join in putting an end. One of the special pleaders for business dishonesty, in a recent speech, in denouncing the administration for enforcing the law against the huge and corrupt corporations which have defied the law, also denounced it for endeavoring to secure a far-reaching new law making employers liable for injuries to their employees. It is meat and fit that the apologists for corrupt wealth should oppose every effort to relieve weak and helpless people from crushing misfortune brought upon them by injury in the business from which they gain a bare livelihood in their employer's fortunes. It is hypocritical baseness to speak of a girl who works in a factory where the dangerous machinery is unprotected as having the right, freely, to contract to expose herself to dangers to life and limb. She has no alternative but to suffer want, or else to expose herself to such dangers, and when she loses a hand or is otherwise maimed or disfigured for life, it is a moral wrong that the burden of the risk necessarily incidental to the business should be placed with crushing weight upon her weak shoulders, and the man who has profited by her work escapes scot-free. This is what our opponents advocate, and it is proper that they should advocate it, for it rounds out their advocacy of those most dangerous members of the criminal class, the criminals of vast wealth, the men who can afford best to pay for such championship in the press and on the stump. It is difficult to speak about the judges, for it behooves us all to treat with the utmost respect the high office of judge, and our judges as a whole are brave and upright men. But there is need that those who go wrong should not be allowed to feel that there is no condemnation of their wrongdoing. A judge who on the bench either trickles to the mob or bows down before a corporation, or who, having left the bench to become a corporation lawyer, seeks to aid his clients by denouncing his enemies of property all those who seek to stop the abuses of the criminal rich. Such a man performs an even worse service to the body politic than the legislator or executive who goes wrong. In no way can respect for the courts be so quickly undermined as by teaching the public, through the action of a judge himself, that there is reason for the loss of such respect. The judge who, by word or deed, makes it plain that the corrupt corporation, the law-defying corporation, the law-defying rich man, has in him a sure and trustworthy ally, the judge who by misuse of the process of injunction makes it plain that in him the wage worker has a determined and unscrupulous enemy, the judge who, when he decides in an employer's liability or a tenement house factory case, shows that he has neither sympathy for nor understanding of those fellow citizens of his house who most need his sympathy and understanding. These judges work as much evil as if they pander to the mob, as if they shrank from sternly repressing violence and disorder. The judge who does his full duty well stands higher and renders a better service to the people than any other public servant. He is entitled to great respect, and if he is a true servant of the people, if he is upright, wise, and fearless, he will unhesitatingly disregard even the wishes of the people if they conflict with the eternal principles of right as against wrong. He must serve the people, but he must serve his conscience first. All honor to such a judge, and all honor cannot be rendered to him if it is rendered equally to his brethren who fall immeasurably below the high ideals for which he stands. There should be a sharp distinction against such judges. They claim immunity from criticism, and the claim is heatedly advanced by men and newspapers like those of whom I speak. Most certainly they can claim immunity from untruthful criticism, and their champions, the newspapers and the public men I have mentioned, exquisitely illustrate by their own actions mendacious criticism in its most flagrant and iniquitous form. But no servant of the people has a right to expect to be free from just and honest criticism. It is the newspapers and the public men whose thoughts and deeds show them to be most alien to honesty and truth, who themselves loudly object to truthful and honest criticism of their fellow servants of the great moneyed interests. We have no quarrel with the individuals, whether public men, lawyers, or editors to whom I refer. These men derive their soul power from the great, sinister offenders who stand behind them. They are but puppets, who move as the strings are pulled by those who control the enormous masses of corporate wealth, which if itself left uncontrolled threatens dire evil to the republic. It is not the puppets, but the strong, cunning men and the mighty forces working for evil behind and to a certain extent through the puppets, with whom we have to deal. We seek to control law-defying wealth in the first place to prevent its doing evil, and in the next place to avoid the vindictive and dreadful radicalism which if left uncontrolled it is certain in the end to arouse. Sweeping attacks upon all property, upon all men of means, without regard to whether they do well or ill, would sound the death knell of the republic, and such attacks become inevitable if decent citizens permit rich men whose lives are corrupt and evil to domineer in a swollen pride unchecked and unhindered over the destinies of this country. We act in no vindictive spirit, and we are no respecters of persons. If a labor union does what is wrong, we oppose it as fearlessly as we oppose a corporation that does wrong, and we stand with equal stoutness for the rights of the man of wealth and for the rights of the wage workers, just as much so for one as for the other. We seek to stop wrongdoing, and we desire to punish the wrongdoer only so far as is necessary in order to achieve this end. We are the staunch upholders of every honest man, whether businessman or wage worker. I do not for a moment believe that our actions have brought on business distress, so far as this is due to local and not worldwide causes, and to the actions of any particular individuals. It is due to the speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great wealth, who now seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own wrongdoings by ascribing its result to the actions of those who have sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing. But if it were true that to cut out rottenness from the body politic meant a momentary check to an unhealthy seeming prosperity, I should not for one moment hesitate to put the knife to the cancer. On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each day's livelihood by that day's sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things, upon just and fair dealing as between man and man. We are striving for the right in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln when he said, fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the last shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt. The Honourable Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney General. CHAPTER XIII 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 working man. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the government could do in the interest of labour 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 labour, 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 the territories in the District of Columbia and in connection with interstate 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's 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 labour 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. Neal, the head of the Labour 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 hard-working. We passed a good law protecting the lives and health of minors in the territories, and other laws providing for the supervision of the 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 workman's compensation 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 women 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 interstate 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 interstate 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 Huynh. 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 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 employer's liability law affecting interstate 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 labour 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 defensive labour on interstate 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 wealth-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 labour 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 labourer when compared with the profit of the men 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 labour 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 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 bitumist 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 in 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, Carol 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 Interstate 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 here and after 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 engineering 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 property 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 an 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 a Tweedle dumb, yet if I would call it Tweedle D, 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 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 Interstate 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, Illinois, one of the very best men to be found in the entire country. The man whom the operators had expected me to appoint as a sociologist was Carol 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 noteworthy work, and its report is a monument in the history of the relations of labour 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 Carol Wright, I appointed as assistant recorders to the commission Charles P. Neal, whom I afterward made labour-commissioner, to succeed Wright himself, and Mr. Edward A. Mosley. Wilts Bar was the center of the strike, and the man in Wilts Bar, 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 staunch 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 co-operators and all of the class of big property 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 themselves and to avert, not only for their sakes, but for the sake of the country, de-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 nationwide and even a worldwide business, had taken the name 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 magnets who controlled the anthracite industry and the one hundred and fifty thousand men who worked in their minds, 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 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 a 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 as, 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 labour, was a perishable commodity. The labour of today, if not sold today, was lost forever. Moreover, his labour was not like most commodities. A mere thing, it was part of a living, breathing human being. The workmen saw, and all the citizens who gave earnest thought to the matter saw, that the labour problem was not only an economic, but also a moral human problem. Individually the miners were impotent when they saw 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 and 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 the 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 co-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 in 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 the 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 nonetheless decisively, have taken a step which would have brought down upon my head the excretions of many of the captains of industry, as well as of sundry respectable newspapers who dutifully take their clue 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 wrought, 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 expedience 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 birth 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. End of Chapter 13, Part 1