So I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of the
spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gentlemen, look
what it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic people in the
world, and democracy means first of all that we can govern ourselves. If
our men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that great
thing which we call democratic government. A man who takes the law into
his own hands is not the right man to cooeperate in any formation or
development of law and institutions, and some of the processes by which
the struggle between capital and labor is carried on are processes that
come very near to taking the law into your own hands. I do not mean for
a moment to compare them with what I have just been speaking of, but I
want you to see that they are mere gradations in this manifestation of
the unwillingness to cooeperate, and that the fundamental lesson of the
whole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but that
we must yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of the
instrumentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the very
near future new instrumentalities may be organized by which we can see
to it that various things that are now going on ought not to go on.
There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary
substitution of labor and the bidding in distant markets and unfairly
upsetting the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on. I
mean now on the part of employers, and we must interject some
instrumentality of cooeperation by which the fair thing will be done all
around. I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be devised,
but whether they are or not, we must use those that we have and upon
every occasion where it is necessary have such an instrumentality
originated upon that occasion.
So, my fellow-citizens, the reason I came away from Washington is that I
sometimes get lonely down there. So many people come to Washington who
know things that are not so, and so few people who know anything about
what the people of the United States are thinking about. I have to come
away and get reminded of the rest of the country. I have to come away
and talk to men who are up against the real thing, and say to them, "I
am with you if you are with me." And the only test of being with me is
not to think about me personally at all, but merely to think of me as
the expression for the time being of the power and dignity and hope of
the United States.