Later, when he had become a member of the New York Legislature, he was present at a State convention held in Utica. He was one of a considerable number of delegates and politicians who went from Albany to Utica on a cold and stormy winter afternoon. The train made its way against the winter tempest with some difficulty. When it rolled into the station at Utica, Roosevelt parted for a moment from his associates, and they saw him making his way, with characteristic quick and decisive steps, to the engine. Reaching up, he grasped the hands of the engineer and the fireman, and gave them a hearty word of thanks, in which he conveyed his sense of what they were as men and skilled artisans, and of what they had done that afternoon.
Many have thought that President Roosevelt's custom of shaking hands with the locomotive engineer and the fireman at the end of a journey was of recent adoption, but he began it as long ago as the time when he entered public life. Possibly, and it may be unconsciously to himself, in this kindly courtesy he reflected his sense of the intellectual and economic triumph which characterizes the perfecting of the organization of the Locomotive Engineers.
His Interest In Labor's Battles.
A year before Roosevelt was candidate for mayor of New York, he being then in his twenty-eighth year, there broke out the dangerous agitation that has passed into history as the Missouri Pacific strike. The details of this affair were eagerly sought by Roosevelt. He would stop whatever work he had in hand in order to gather from any one who was well informed not merely the incidents of the strike, but the characteristics of the leader of the strikers, Martin Irons, and of his associates.
At that time, Roosevelt spoke with emphasis in deploring the acts of violence which the greatly inflamed employees committed. He looked upon the destruction of life and of property as not merely criminal in itself, but as sure, if persisted in, to do harm to all labor organizations. But he seemed to be attracted by the skill and energy, the personal force, the power of discipline and of leadership, which had enabled a railway mechanic like Irons to obtain supreme leadership and mastery over many thousands of intelligent American working men.
When Roosevelt was president of the Police Board of New York he was almost as greatly concerned about a strike involving the tailors, garment-cutters, and others whose employment was with the needle, sewing-machine, or shears, as if he himself was of their vocation. The poverty of the strikers had been extreme, their wages being barely sufficient to pay for a loaf of bread and a bit of meat once a week, and for the narrowest and most squalid kind of tenement in which to sleep. He learned that these conditions had been somewhat improved through the formation of the garment-workers into a labor-union. He was greatly interested in one Barondess, a man of crude and yet real force, who had skilfully perfected their organization.
So it was at all times when there were important strikes or agitations that Roosevelt displayed the keenest interest in the individual. The creation of one or another labor-union by some man of original native force of mind was sure to inspire him with a desire to know something of the new leader. He has always seemed to be far more interested in the personality, the temperament, and the intellectual gifts of those who have emerged from the ranks of working men, and have taken leadership among their fellows, than in the achievements of those who have built railroads, concentrated industrial organizations of vast capital, or mastered the secrets of nature by means of inventive apparatus.
His Belief in Individualism.
In nothing that President Roosevelt has said or done since he entered public life has he so firmly and impressively illustrated his faith in individualism, so to call it, as in his relations to the labor organizations. He looks upon them as no more than a means to an individual end. He has scant patience with those who dream of a grand socialism of labor, with every man standing upon an equality.
The President is in entire sympathy with the efforts of the labor-unions to secure agreement with all employers that eight hours shall constitute a day's work. But he is fearful that any restriction of the amount of labor that a man is permitted to do in one day is an economic blunder. He holds that it runs counter to individuality, and will ultimately prove to impair the fine opportunities for advancement and benefit which wisely managed labor-unions will always have.