While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, that
labor is free; and that means a number of interesting things. It means
not only that we must do what we have declared our purpose to do, see
that the conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous by the war,
but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities by which the
conditions of labor are improved are not blocked or checked. That we
must do. That has been the matter about which I have taken pleasure in
conferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and if I
may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his
patriotic courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what
has to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how
to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be
put in corral.
Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt the processes of
our energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided without the
absolute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely, that means this:
Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until all the methods
of conciliation and settlement have been exhausted. And I might as well
say right here that I am not talking to you alone. You sometimes stop
the courses of labor, but there are others who do the same, and I
believe I am speaking from my own experience not only, but from the
experience of others when I say that you are reasonable in a larger
number of cases than the capitalists. I am not saying these things to
them personally yet, because I have not had a chance, but they have to
be said, not in any spirit of criticism, but in order to clear the
atmosphere and come down to business. Everybody on both sides has now
got to transact business, and a settlement is never impossible when both
sides want to do the square and right thing.