An Authoritative Statement of the President's Views Upon the Greatest
Industrial Question of the Day.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
In the unseasonable heat of Labor Day, 1898, a committee, small in
numbers, but somewhat self-conscious and of impressive dignity, ventured
to Montauk Point that it might discuss with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, of
the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, the expediency of nominating
him on an independent ticket for Governor of New York.
As these perspiring committeemen, who were followed by other politicians,
mounted the sand-dunes beyond which lay the camp of the Rough Riders, they
saw, silhouetted against a sky whose horizon is the sea, the commander of
that historic regiment.
A Commander of Men.
Roosevelt stood before his tent, not heeding the approach of these friends
and politicians. With eager eyes, and through a strangely unfamiliar pair
of spectacles, of polished steel or nickeled frame, he was watching the
movement of his troopers, who were moving over the sandy plain not more
than a quarter of a mile distant.
There came from Colonel Roosevelt quick and hearty ejaculations, as if he
was so rejoiced at the steady, disciplined marching of his regiment that
he could find no better way to express his joy than by fervent expressions
of "Good!" or, again, "Well done!"
The hot sun of that unusually heated September week caused a sort of
mirage--a quivering, visible movement of the atmosphere arising by
reflection from the sand, so that the Rough Riders seemed to be observed
as through a glass.
After a few moments of enthusiastic inspection of the distant regiment,
Colonel Roosevelt received his visitors cordially, and motioned them to
the open tent, which was furnished with the rigorous simplicity of a true
campaigner, yet offered abundant hospitality. As his friends were entering
the tent, he stopped for a moment, and, turning toward his regiment, said:
"There is perfect order, perfect discipline, and yet every man of that
regiment thinks!"
The Golden Rule Paraphrased.
In this comment there is to be discovered President Roosevelt's view of
what the wise and beneficial combination of men into labor organizations
may ultimately become. Years before, he had reasoned out what he believed
to be the true philosophy of the labor-unions. He did not fully accept the
familiar motto, "One for all and all for one." Instead, he formulated for
himself another, which was after all merely a paraphrase of the golden
rule:
"All for all, and every one for the best of which he is capable--the best
morally, mentally, and physically."
Roosevelt came into active life at a time when the labor-unions, under
sincerely well-meant leadership, were emerging from a period of struggle
and disorder. Their dominant idea, as it seemed to many observers, was to
use the weapon that is called the strike, and to intensify the power of
that weapon by acts of violence. He had just entered Harvard when the
anarchy and devastation that accompanied the railroad strikes of the
summer of 1877 spread terror throughout the country. He was deeply
interested in the progress of that fierce industrial conflict. He felt
even then that men who labored could not be brought to such a condition
of desperation that they were willing to use the torch unless they had
some sense of unjust treatment. On the other hand, the torch and the
shooting and the roll of drums and march of troops most gravely impressed
the college student, and led him to give much thought to the question of
the labor organizations.
Roosevelt and the Railway Men.
His attention was specially fixed upon the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers. He was persistent and insistent in his inquiries of all who
could give him information as to the philosophy upon which this body based
its organization. He was greatly interested in the personality of Mr.
Arthur, and of others who assisted Arthur in the creation of the
brotherhood.
Later, when he had become a member of the New York Legislature, he was
present at a State convention held in Utica. He was one of a considerable
number of delegates and politicians who went from Albany to Utica on a
cold and stormy winter afternoon. The train made its way against the
winter tempest with some difficulty. When it rolled into the station at
Utica, Roosevelt parted for a moment from his associates, and they saw him
making his way, with characteristic quick and decisive steps, to the
engine. Reaching up, he grasped the hands of the engineer and the fireman,
and gave them a hearty word of thanks, in which he conveyed his sense of
what they were as men and skilled artisans, and of what they had done that
afternoon.
Many have thought that President Roosevelt's custom of shaking hands with
the locomotive engineer and the fireman at the end of a journey was of
recent adoption, but he began it as long ago as the time when he entered
public life. Possibly, and it may be unconsciously to himself, in this
kindly courtesy he reflected his sense of the intellectual and economic
triumph which characterizes the perfecting of the organization of the
Locomotive Engineers.
His Interest In Labor's Battles.
A year before Roosevelt was candidate for mayor of New York, he being then
in his twenty-eighth year, there broke out the dangerous agitation that
has passed into history as the Missouri Pacific strike. The details of
this affair were eagerly sought by Roosevelt. He would stop whatever work
he had in hand in order to gather from any one who was well informed not
merely the incidents of the strike, but the characteristics of the leader
of the strikers, Martin Irons, and of his associates.
At that time, Roosevelt spoke with emphasis in deploring the acts of
violence which the greatly inflamed employees committed. He looked upon
the destruction of life and of property as not merely criminal in itself,
but as sure, if persisted in, to do harm to all labor organizations. But
he seemed to be attracted by the skill and energy, the personal force, the
power of discipline and of leadership, which had enabled a railway
mechanic like Irons to obtain supreme leadership and mastery over many
thousands of intelligent American working men.
When Roosevelt was president of the Police Board of New York he was almost
as greatly concerned about a strike involving the tailors,
garment-cutters, and others whose employment was with the needle,
sewing-machine, or shears, as if he himself was of their vocation. The
poverty of the strikers had been extreme, their wages being barely
sufficient to pay for a loaf of bread and a bit of meat once a week, and
for the narrowest and most squalid kind of tenement in which to sleep. He
learned that these conditions had been somewhat improved through the
formation of the garment-workers into a labor-union. He was greatly
interested in one Barondess, a man of crude and yet real force, who had
skilfully perfected their organization.
So it was at all times when there were important strikes or agitations
that Roosevelt displayed the keenest interest in the individual. The
creation of one or another labor-union by some man of original native
force of mind was sure to inspire him with a desire to know something of
the new leader. He has always seemed to be far more interested in the
personality, the temperament, and the intellectual gifts of those who
have emerged from the ranks of working men, and have taken leadership
among their fellows, than in the achievements of those who have built
railroads, concentrated industrial organizations of vast capital, or
mastered the secrets of nature by means of inventive apparatus.
His Belief in Individualism.
In nothing that President Roosevelt has said or done since he entered
public life has he so firmly and impressively illustrated his faith in
individualism, so to call it, as in his relations to the labor
organizations. He looks upon them as no more than a means to an individual
end. He has scant patience with those who dream of a grand socialism of
labor, with every man standing upon an equality.
The President is in entire sympathy with the efforts of the labor-unions
to secure agreement with all employers that eight hours shall constitute a
day's work. But he is fearful that any restriction of the amount of labor
that a man is permitted to do in one day is an economic blunder. He holds
that it runs counter to individuality, and will ultimately prove to impair
the fine opportunities for advancement and benefit which wisely managed
labor-unions will always have.
President Roosevelt's philosophy of life, of its obligations and its
opportunities, is that each individual should develop as perfectly as is
possible whatever his native talent may be. To do that, in his view,
involves struggle, and struggle always entails leadership. And it has
seemed to him that in this process of high development of native gifts the
man who is obliged to work for wages, whether he be a skilled artisan or a
humble mechanic, must look to his fellows for help. Therefore, inevitably,
there have sprung up associations of those who are engaged in the
production of like articles.
Roosevelt and the Mine-Workers.
Of all the addresses and writings in which the President has expounded his
philosophy of labor, he probably best epitomized his opinions when he
delivered his speech to the miners at Wilkes-Barre, last October.
"I strongly believe," he said, "in trade-unions wisely and justly
handled, in which the rightful purpose to benefit those connected with
them is not accompanied by a desire to do injustice or wrong to others. I
believe in the duty of capitalists and wage-workers to try to seek one
another out, to understand one another's point of view, and to endeavor to
show broad and kindly human sympathy one with the other."
That philosophy is entirely consistent with the President's strong faith
in what may be called individualism. In his view, the labor-union serves
its chief purpose when it makes possible the highest development of the
gifts bestowed upon each individual by his Creator.
With this understanding it is easy to explain the personal interest
President Roosevelt has in all of those who are leaders in labor
organizations. The energy, the far-reaching understanding, the tact, and
the frequent use of somewhat imperious power, all of which were necessary
to bring the army of mine-workers into one compact organization, and all
of which have been exemplified by John Mitchell, were sure to appeal very
strongly to Theodore Roosevelt.
Twice since he became President he has had executive opportunity for
showing, not merely by word but in deed, exactly what is his understanding
of labor organizations and of their rights and limitations. To this day
the world does not accurately measure Roosevelt's action at the time of
the portentous struggle between the anthracite coal-miners and their
employers. At that crisis, when there was danger of something like civil
war, or at least of industrial anarchy and suffering, he seemed to be
impelled by precisely the same motives as those that actuated him in
bringing about the conference for peace between Russia and Japan. After
confidential communication with ex-President Cleveland, who warmly
approved his proposed plan, he offered to open the door for a settlement
of the desperate struggle between the miners and the mine-owners. As his
correspondence with ex-President Cleveland shows, he did not consider,
except incidentally, the rights and limitations of the labor organizations
on the one hand, or, upon the other, the legal position of those who
control capital, credit, transportation, and mines. He spoke for the
much-suffering public. He realized that no other than he could with any
prospect of success offer to serve as mediator.
No Respecter of Persons.
When the representatives of capital first met the President, they were
under the delusion that he had invited them to meet him because he fully
sympathized with the miners' labor organization. But at that first meeting
these kings of finance and of transportation and of the mining industry
perceived that Roosevelt gloried in his sense of manhood, and that his
courtesy to John Mitchell, and his recognition of John Mitchell's
leadership, were in no way diminished by the presence of men possessed of
immense capital and consequently of great power.
Capital was mistaken, however, in its presumption that Roosevelt was its
enemy. It was learned in the course of the several interviews with the
President that he had as firm a conviction of the necessity of
combinations of capital and credit as he had in the imperative need that
those who work with the hand should also combine for common benefit.
In private, President Roosevelt has expressed his unbounded admiration for
the courage of that business statesmanship which, within a generation, has
so mastered the West as to make its prairies rich in harvests and its
population continuous and thriving between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
But he has quite as much admiration for the native qualities, and for the
stern training and disciplining of those qualities, whereby a coal-miner
succeeded in organizing for a common purpose a vast army of men whose toil
is hidden from the sunlight, and whose faces are blackened as they come,
with lanterns on their caps, from the dismal caverns where they delve.
Mr. George W. Perkins has spoken to his friends of the impression made by
the President upon the capitalists whom he met at these interviews in
which the way was prepared for a settlement of the anthracite coal strike.
Mr. Roosevelt made it clear that he was no respecter of persons by reason
of the incidental power any one might possess, but was only a respecter
and admirer of manhood.
The second of the executive opportunities came when a demand was made that
none but a member of the labor organization should be employed in one of
the government departments. The President's reply was emphatic. The
government as a government could not, he said, recognize either labor
organizations as against an individual or an individual as against a labor
organization. At one meeting between Mr. Roosevelt and some of those who
were of the labor world, he declared that no combination, whether of
capital, or of credit, or any wherein the bond of union is a common kind
of labor, can in the long run prosper if it forgets the rights of the
individual. He has over and over again inculcated the doctrine of
individual right of judgment, deeming that to contain the very spirit of
American institutions.
The Enjoyment in Labor.
The President is quoted by his friends as having recently expressed his
confident belief that the labor organizations are coming to see the wisdom
of the view that the right to exercise individual judgment must not be
forgotten or ignored. He has no doubt that ultimately, if wisely and
justly handled, they will give the fullest opportunity for the perfection
of the individual morally, intellectually, and physically.
The time, he thinks, is not far distant when the sense of individuality
may be sufficient to teach the lesson that in every kind of labor the
laborer may find enjoyment--the florist and the harvester in the mystery
of the growth and coloring of the products of the field, the
granite-worker in the tracings of geology, the carpenter in the beauty of
geometry and in the fine penciling which nature has left in the native
wood. Work undertaken in this spirit is no longer mere mercenary drudgery,
but partakes of the inspiration that follows high appeal to the
intellectual and moral faculty of the worker.
To give a final summing up of President Roosevelt's view of trade-unions
and labor organizations, it may be said that he believes in them because
he sees in such combinations the greater opportunity for each individual
to develop the best that is in him.
A Descent Into the Maelstroem.