and his statesmanlike sense of what is 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 a corral. Now, to "stand the ground" 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 that I am speaking of my own experience not only but of 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 haven't had a chance. But in order to clear the atmosphere and come down to business everybody on both sides has got to transact business, and the settlement is never impossible when both sides want to do the square and right thing. Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties can be brought face to face. I can differ with a man much more radically when he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the room, because then the awkward thing is that he can come back at me and answer what I say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. And, therefore, we must insist in every instance that the parties come into each other's presence and there discuss the issues between them, and not separately in places which have no communication with each other. I always like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an Englishman of a past generation, Charles Lamb. He was with a group of friends and he spoke very harshly of some man who was not present. I ought to say that Lamb stuttered a little. And one of his friends said, "Why, Charles, I didn't know that you knew so and so?" "O," he said, "I don't. I can't hate a man I know." There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleasant human nature, in that saying. It is hard to hate a man you know. I must admit, parenthetically, that there are some politicians whose methods I do not believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politics with me I would love to be with them. And so it is all along the line in serious matters and things less serious. We are all of the same clay and spirit and we can get together if we desire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this: Let us show ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go off in separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to coöperate with all other classes and all other groups in a common enterprise which is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up as the final test of an American. That is the meaning of democracy. 5 I have been very much distressed, my fellow citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently. The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country. I have sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men that take their punishment into their own hands; and I want to say to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy of the free institutions of the United States. There are some organizations in this country whose object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myself a partner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their purposes as much as any man, but I respect the ancient processes of justice and I would be too proud not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. And 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 coöperate in any form of orderly 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 of the manifestations of the unwillingness to coöperate, and 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 shall not go on. There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary substitution of labor and 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 into this some instrumentality of coöperation 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 to have such an instrumentality originated upon that occasion, if necessary. And so, my fellow citizens, the reason that I came away from Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there. There are so many people in Washington who know things that are not so, and there are so few people in Washington who know anything about what the people of the United States are thinking, I have to come away to get reminded of the rest of the country; I have to come away and talk to men who |