When making his thorough inspection of the great Panama Canal work, President Roosevelt lost no detail of the stupendous undertaking.

reply to these opponents and assailants was given in similarly volcanic terms in a 1908 message to Congress. Some of his opponents had gone so far as to hint that he was insane, his mind obsessed by a delusion "that those who disagreed with and opposed him were criminals banded together in a conspiracy." Judge Gaynor of Brooklyn (now Mayor of New York) replied, "Theodore Roosevelt is safe and sane enough for the most of us." Here is Roosevelt's personal response to the assault upon his sanity:

"The attacks by these great corporations on the Administration's actions have been given a wide circulation throughout the country by those writers and speakers who, consciously or unconsciously, act as the representatives of predatory wealth, of the wealth accumulated upon a grand scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wage-workers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition and to defrauding the public by stockjobbing and the manipulation of securities.

"The apologists of successful dishonesty always declaim against any effort to punish or prevent it, on the ground that any such effort will 'unsettle business.' It is they who by their acts have unsettled business. The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in business and in politics is well expressed in brazen protests against any effort for the moral regeneration of the business world, on the ground that it is unnatural, unwarranted and injurious, and that business panic is the necessary penalty for such effort to secure business honesty. 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.

"The methods by which the Standard Oil people and those engaged in the other combinations of which I have spoken have achieved great fortunes, can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which would also justify every form of criminality on the part of a labor union, and every form of violence, corruption, and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballot-box stuffing in politics."

Here is a different tone from that with which President Roosevelt opened the campaign in 1901. Evidently he had become "mad

through and through. He refers to the hard fighters of the Civil War and says: "Their spirit should be our spirit, as we strive to bring nearer the day when greed and trickery and cunning shall be trampled under foot by those who fight for the righteousness that exalteth a nation. And he expresses his final opinion in the finely optimistic words: "There is no nation so absolutely sure of ultimate success as ours.

There is warrant for this optimism. On all sides the birds of prey are flying to cover. This phase of the Roosevelt policy has had its results in purifying the air of the business world and in aiding the moral uplift of the nation, and President Taft is still fighting on the same lines, with different weapons, but with hopeful indications of further success.

CHAPTER XII.

Relations of Capital and Labor and Arbitration of Labor Disputes.

N that advocacy of a square deal for all men, rich or poor, black

IN

or white, which ranks among the most constantly reiterated Roosevelt doctrines, the relations of capital and labor are deeply involved, and the interests of these great concerns of the community find place in every annual message. While combinations of capital are recognized as inevitable, in the development of business conditions, combinations of labor are equally inevitable. The manufacturing association and the labor union face each other like two armies, with weapons in one hand, olive branches in the other, ready to strike or to clasp hands as occasion demands, hostile to every show of injustice yet finding their best interests in amity, and usually ending each outbreak of war with a treaty of peace.

President Roosevelt thus states the Government's attitude towards this subject in his message to Congress of December, 1904:

"The consistent policy of the National Government, so far as it has the power, is to hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee; but to refuse to weaken individual initiative or to hamper or cramp the industrial development of the country. We recognize that this is an era of federation and combination, in which great capitalistic corporations and labor unions have become factors of tremendous importance in all industrial centers. Hearty recognition is given the far-reaching, beneficent work which has been accomplished through both corporations and unions, and the line as between different corporations, as between different unions, is drawn as it is between individuals; that is, it is drawn on conduct, the effort being to treat both organized capital and organized labor alike; asking nothing save that the interest of each shall be brought into harmony with the interest of the general public, and that the

conduct of each shall conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to law, of individual freedom, and of justice and fair dealing towards all.

"Whenever either corporation, labor union, or individual disregards the law or acts in a spirit of arbitrary and tyrannous interferences with the rights of others, whether corporations or individuals, then where the Federal Government has jurisdiction it will see to it that misconduct is stopped, paying not the slightest heed to the position or power of the corporation, the union or the individual, but only to one vital fact-that is, the question whether or not the conduct of the individual or aggregate of individuals is in accordance with the law of the land. Every man must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do as he likes with his property or his labor, so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others. No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor. We have cause as a nation to be thankful for the steps that have been so successfully taken to put these principles into effect. The progress has been by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical has been done; the action has been both moderate and resolute. Therefore the work will stand."

In President Roosevelt's final message to Congress, that of December, 1908, he returns to this subject and gives his views in regard to the just care of the wage-worker in case he becomes injured or worn out as a result of his labor in any occupation. We quote his

views:

"Our present system, or rather no system, works dreadful wrong, and is of benefit to only one class of people—the lawyers. When a workman is injured what he needs is not an expensive and doubtful lawsuit, but the certainty of relief through immediate administrative action. The number of accidents which result in the death or crippling of wage-workers, in the Union at large, is simply appalling; in a very few years it runs up a total far in excess of the aggregate of the dead and wounded in any modern war. No academic theory about 'freedom of contract' or 'constitutional liberty to contract' should be permitted to interfere with this and similar movements.