STRIKES AS A LAST RESORT.
Strikes are not favored by Mr. Gompers except under certain circumstances and as a last resort. During the great Chicago strike, the most intense pressure was brought to bear upon him to issue an order calling out all the workingmen in the country. It took high moral courage to resist the many strenuous appeals, but Samuel Gompers possessed this courage and the country was saved from an experience which might have proved most calamitous.
“I firmly believe in arbitration,” said Mr. Gompers, “but to arbitrate, the power must be equal, or nearly so, on both sides; therefore labor must be strongly organized.”
I asked him to what he attributed his success in his life-work.
“Well,” he answered slowly, “I learned both to think and to act, and to feel strongly enough on these great questions of labor to be willing to sacrifice my personal convenience for my aims. I have felt great devotion to the common cause of the manual workers, and I can say nothing better to young men than,—‘Be devoted to your work.’”
When I asked a very intelligent workingman why Samuel Gompers is so highly respected by the workers, he replied:—
“Why, because,—because he’s Sam Gompers,—but that doesn’t explain much, does it? Well, I will say because he has done more for labor than any other man in this country, because we can trust him down to the ground, and because he’s in his work heart and soul.”
XV
A Puny Boy, by Physical Culture, Becomes the Most Vigorous of American Presidents.
THE way to study a man, I find, is at close range, when he is not on the platform or under the limelight. Better than any other is his vacation time, when the armor has been laid aside and the man himself stands forth. My card of introduction proved a ready passport to the country seat of Theodore Roosevelt, near Oyster Bay, Long Island. As I drove up, one bright July morning, the shore of this sequestered inlet was framed in a background of heavy green. No painter could do justice to the mirrored loveliness of the water, or the graceful line of sailboats lazily floating over it. The beach was a silver mat in an emerald frame, and every tree on the opposite shore was inverted in the clear depths. The Roosevelt house stands on a hill overlooking a magnificent view of Long Island Sound. It is three miles away from the railway station, just the sort of place one would choose for complete rest. The dreamy beauty of the scene was conducive to indolence, and so, sure enough, I found Mr. Roosevelt in outing attire, surrounded by his children and entering with zest into their out-door sports.
Little Theodore was prancing up and down the road on his favorite black pony, a genuine rough rider in horsemanship, brown as a berry, and an unmistakable cadet of the Roosevelt house. The president’s war-horse, “Texas,” whose right ear was clipped by a Spanish “Mauser,” was out for an airing. Over the veranda flared a pair of great antlers, a trophy of the chase, while in the big reception hall were other antlers. The sword worn by Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba has found a resting-place across the mantel mirror, its leathern strap all ready to be buckled on again should a military emergency arise. The overcoat is there, too, with the hat and boots.
I found him averse to politics as a topic for discussion, but I hinted that I would be pleased to quote his views on young men in politics,—their chances and their duties.