_Mr. Shea_:
We are here as a committee to present to you a statement stating our
position in this controversy between the Employers’ Association and the
Teamsters’ Association. We have understood that they had asked your aid
for bringing troops into Chicago. We want to present our position to
you. Mr. Quinn has the memorial.
_Mr. Quinn_:
It will take about ten minutes to read this. Perhaps we had better
leave it with you.
_The President_, after reading the memorial:
Mr. Shea, Mr. Quinn, and Gentlemen:
I have read the petition you have presented to me, the conclusion of
which is a request for a hearing before any action be taken by the
Federal President, relating to the Chicago strike situation. As yet no
suggestion of any kind has come to me from any source that I should
take any action. Of the merits of the case I am wholly ignorant. I have
no knowledge of what the situation is, or of what steps should properly
be taken to end it. I feel, however, that in view of one statement, or
series of statements, in your letter, I ought to say this: I regret
that you should have in the letter spoken at all of the use of the
Federal army as you have there spoken. No request has been made to me
for action by the Federal Government, but at the same time, Mr. Shea,
as you have in this communication to me brought up that fact, I want to
say one thing with all the emphasis in my power. In upholding law and
order, in doing what he is able to do to suppress mob violence in any
shape or way, the Mayor of Chicago, Mayor Dunne, has my hearty support.
I am glad to be able to say this to you gentlemen before I say it to
any other body. Now let me repeat that I know nothing of the facts of
the situation. I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the points at
issue. What I have to say is based purely upon what I regard as the
unfortunate phrasing of a letter presented to the President of the
United States. I have not been called upon to interfere in any way,
but you must not misunderstand my attitude. In every effort of Mayor
Dunne to prevent violence by mobs or individuals, to see that the laws
are obeyed and that order is preserved, he has the hearty support of
the President of the United States, and in my judgment he should have
that of every good citizen of the United States.
Now, gentlemen, it has been a great pleasure to see you, and I am glad
to have had the chance to say this to you.
_Mr. Quinn_:
Mr. President, what prompted us to come to you with this statement is
that for the past two or three weeks there has been a continual howl
for the Federal army. I have known you long enough to know that you
would not respond to a one-sided demand, that you will not respond
until you have thoroughly investigated the case.
_The President_:
Mr. Quinn, as yet the Mayor has not made any appeal to the Governor,
and therefore, of course, the Governor has made none to me; and as yet
nothing in the situation has demanded action by me.
_Mr. Shea_:
Let me explain that. The Governor has been requested by the committee
of the employers to demand Federal troops. The statement has been made
in the papers. I immediately telegraphed Governor Deneen that we would
allow him to appoint a commission.
Regardless of that I want to make our position known to you in regard
to mob violence. Every time a mob congregates, every act of violence
performed by either a union man or a sympathizer, it reacts to our
detriment. I believe that we are skilled workmen enough in our
particular craft to demonstrate to our business men of Chicago that
it is to their interest to employ us. There is nothing at stake but
the re-employment of citizens of Chicago who have been forced out of
their positions. Acts of violence meet with the condemnation of the
officials, both local and national, of our organization. It does not
meet with the sympathies of our organization. I simply want to say that
we want to be fair, to preserve the business interests of Chicago,
realizing that the prosperity of our employers is our prosperity.
_The President_:
Mr. Shea, I can only repeat what I have said. I am a believer in
unions. I am an honorary member of one union. But the union must obey
the law just as the corporation must obey the law, just as every man,
rich or poor, must obey the law. As yet no action whatever has been
called for by me, and most certainly if action is called for by me I
shall try to do exact justice under the law to every man, so far as
I have power. But the first essential is the preservation of law and
order, the suppression of violence by mobs or individuals.
AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF GENERAL HENRY W. SLOCUM,
BROOKLYN, N. Y., MAY 30, 1905
_Mr. Mayor, Mr. Commissioner, and you, my Fellow Citizens, and, above
all, you who took part in the great war in which the man whose statue
is raised to-day won for himself and his country renown and honor_:
Day before yesterday I listened to a sermon in which the preacher,
dwelling upon the exercises to be held throughout the Union to-day,
preached on the text which tells of the altar raised by command of
Moses to commemorate the victory gained by the children of Israel over
the wild tribes of the desert who sought to bar their march toward
the promised land. Amalek came out against Israel and they fought all
day, while Aaron and Hur upheld the hands of Moses until as night fell
the sun went down on Israel’s triumph. Then they raised an altar to
“Jehovah is my banner”; to Jehovah, who stood as the exponent of the
principle for which Israel warred. They raised it to the principle of
righteousness, which alone can justify any war or any struggle. Mr.
Mayor, that is the thought that you developed in the excellent address
to which we have just listened; that we meet to-day to commemorate
a great victory, the triumph of the cause of union and liberty, not
primarily because it was a mere victory, but because it was a victory
for righteousness and for the peace and liberty and eternal spiritual
welfare of mankind.
I see before me here men who won high honor serving as comrades in arms
of General Slocum, and I know that there exists in the Union no men who
will appreciate more the fact that now, forty years after the war, the
crowning triumph of what they did is to be found in the fact that we
have a genuinely reunited country, a country in which the man who wore
the blue stretches out the hand of loyal friendship to his erstwhile
foe, his now devoted friend and fellow-countryman, the man who wore
the gray. A short while ago I passed through the great State of Texas.
Wherever I stopped in that great State I was greeted by representatives
of the Grand Army marching side by side with or intermingled with men
clad in the gray uniform that showed that they had fought in the armies
of the Confederacy. They had tested one another’s worth on the stricken
fields, they knew each that the other had been ready when the hour of
supreme appeal came to show his truth by his endeavors. Now these men,
now you and those like you, now the men in blue and the men in gray,
know that they leave to their children and their children’s children as
a heritage of honor forever the memory of the great deeds done alike by
those who fought under Grant and by those who fought under Lee; for we,
because of the very fact that the Union triumphed now have the right
to feel a like pride in the valor and devotion of those who valiantly
fought against the stars in their courses, no less than of those who
finally saw their efforts and their sufferings crowned by triumph.
Think of it, my fellow-countrymen! Think of what a thrice-blessed
fortune is ours, that the greatest war that the nineteenth century
saw after the close of the Napoleonic struggles has left, not as most
wars inevitably do and must leave, memories of bitterness and anger
and shame to offset the memories of glory, memories which make the men
of one side hang their heads because the men of the other side walk
exultingly; that it has left not such dreadful memories, but instead
to victor and vanquished alike, after the temporary soreness is over,
the same right to feel the proudest satisfaction in the fact that the
Union was saved, and the utmost pride in the honor, the gallantry, the
devotion to the right as each side had given it the light to see the
right, shown alike by those who warred under one banner and by those
who warred under the other.
I congratulate the people of Brooklyn, not primarily upon raising
this statue, because that they ought to do, but upon the opportunity,
upon the chance of having it to raise. I congratulate them upon the
good fortune of having a fellow-citizen who in war and in peace alike
served his people so well as to make it their duty, not so much to
him as to themselves, to erect this statue that it might serve as a
lesson for the generations to come. And, my fellow-citizens, I am sure
we all realize the peculiar appropriateness of having the statue of
General Slocum received on behalf of the city of New York by its chief
magistrate, whose father was General Slocum’s illustrious commander.
Surely there is need for me to say but little in emphasis of what has
been set forth before I began to speak as to the prime significance
of General Slocum’s career. He was a fine soldier, a gallant and able
commander. Once the war was over he turned as whole-heartedly to
the pursuits of peace as he had during the war turned to the strife
of arms. General Slocum was one of those men on whose career we are
fortunately able to dwell in its entirety. We do not have to dwell
with emphasis on part of it because we do not care to speak of another
part of it. We are able to point to General Slocum as the type of what
a decent American citizen should be, as a man who was an example in
his family life, an example in his business relations, an honest and
upright public servant, no less than a tried and fearless soldier.
Now I want our people to remember the two sides of the lesson taught
by General Slocum’s life. A successful war for unrighteousness is the
most dreadful of all things; it is the thing that sets back more than
aught else the course of civilization. But no people worth preserving
ever existed or will exist that was not able to fight well if the
need arose. So it is with the individual. The man who possesses great
ability and great courage unaccompanied by the moral sense, a courage
and ability unguided by the stern purpose to do what is just and
upright, that man is rendered by the very fact of his courage and
ability only so much the greater menace to the community in which he
unfortunately dwells. We can not afford as a people ever to forget for
one moment that ability, farsightedness, iron resolution, perseverance,
willingness to do and dare, are qualities to be admired only if they
are put at the service of the right, at the service of decency and of
justice. The man who possesses those qualities and does not shape his
course by a fundamental and underlying moral principle is a menace to
each and all of us; and thrice foolish, thrice wicked is the other man
who condones his moral shortcomings because of his intellectual or
physical strength and prowess.
But it is equally important to remember that no amount of good
intention, no amount of sweetness and light, no amount of appreciation
of decency avails in the least in the rough work of the world as we
find it, unless back of the honesty of purpose, back of the decency
of life and thought, lies the power that makes a man a man. This is
true of the individual and it is true of the Nation. It is absolutely
essential that this Nation, if it is to hold the position in the future
that it has held in the past, must act not only within but without
its own borders in a spirit of justice and of large generosity toward
all other peoples. We owe this as an obligation to ourselves, we owe
it as an obligation to all mankind. More and more as we increase in
strength I hope to see a corresponding increase in the sober sense
of responsibility which shall prevent us either injuring or insulting
any other people. You may notice that I said “insulting” as well as
“injuring.” If there is one quality sometimes shown among us which
is not commendable it is the habit of speaking loosely about foreign
powers, foreign races. You do not need any of you to be told that
in private life you will often resent an insult quite as much as an
injury; and our public speakers and writers need to steadily keep
before their minds the thought that no possible good can come to us by
speaking offensively of any one else; while trouble may come.
It has been well said that the surest way for a nation to invite
disaster is to be opulent, aggressive, and unarmed. Now, we are
opulent, and I hope we shall remain so. I trust that we shall never be
aggressive unless aggression is not merely justified, but demanded;
demanded either by our own self-respect or by the interests of mankind.
But above all, let us remember that to be aggressive in speech or act,
and not to be armed, invites not merely disaster, but the contempt of
mankind.
Brooklyn not only furnished valiant soldiers to the Civil War, but it
furnished in time of peace a most excellent Secretary of the Navy of
the United States, General Tracy. If our navy is good enough, we have
a long career of peace before us. The only likelihood of trouble ever
coming to us as a nation will arise if we let our navy become too small
or inefficient. A first-class navy—first-class in point of size, above
all first-class in point of efficiency of the individual units acting
as units and in combination—is the surest and the cheapest guarantee
of peace. I should think that any man looking at what is happening and
what has happened abroad and in our own history during the past few
years, must be indeed blind if he can not read that lesson clearly.
General Slocum did his first great public service when the crisis
called not primarily for the softer and milder, but for the sterner and
harder virtues; and we can not afford in this day of material luxury,
in this day when civilization tends to make life easy, to ignore those
hard and stern virtues. In the workaday world as it is, not only in
war, but in private life and in public life alike, a man has to have
toughness of fibre or he can not put into effect even the best of
intentions. We can not afford to let the generation that is coming grow
up with the feeling that any quality will serve as a substitute for the
old, essential qualities of manliness in a man and womanliness in a
woman.
Much, very much, has been done in this country by education. No one
can overstate the debt that this country is under to the educators;
but in taking advantage of all the improved methods let us not forget
that there are certain qualities which are not new, which are eternal
because they are eternally true, the failure to develop which will
cause a loss that can not be offset by any merely intellectual or
mental gain. A sound body is a first-class thing, a sound mind is
an even better thing, but the thing that counts for most in the
individual as in the Nation is character—the sum of those qualities
which make a man a good man and a woman a good woman. You men of the
Civil War, you men to whom this country owes more than to any others,
no matter how great the service of those others may be (because to you
this country owes its life), you won the place you did, you won for
this country its salvation, because you had in you those qualities
which in the aggregate we know by the name of character, the qualities
which made you put material gain, material well-being, not merely
below, but immeasurably below devotion to an ideal, when the crisis
called for showing your manhood.
You went to the war leaving those behind who would make more money, but
carrying with you in your hearts the honor and the future of a mighty
Nation. You had, in the first place, the right spirit, and then you had
the quality of making that spirit evident in the time of need. If you
had not had patriotism, devotion to the country and to the flag, you
could have done nothing. But you could not have done much more if your
patriotism, your devotion to the flag, had not been backed up by the
power to show that your metal rang true in battle.
You showed in times that tried men’s souls what this country has a
right to expect from its sons. You had the supreme good fortune to test
your manhood in one of the two great crises of the Nation’s history,
the great crisis in which the Nation was born in the days of 1776, and
the no less great crisis in which the Nation was saved by the men of
1861. You have left us not merely a reunited country, but you have
left us the glorious heritage of the memory of the exploits, of the
qualities by which the country was left reunited.
Our days have fallen, for our good fortune, in times of peace. We have
not had to show the qualities that you showed in the dark years that
closed in the sunburst of Appomattox; but if we are to leave undimmed
to our children the heritage that you left to us, we must show in
peace, and, should the need ever arise, in war also, the qualities that
you showed; the qualities that make it now the pleasantest of all tasks
for a public servant who appreciates the greatness of America to come
on an occasion like this and see the people of a great city dedicate
a monument in honor of a great citizen, who, at every point of his
career, illustrated what the name American should be when it is used in
its highest, its deepest, and its best significance.