Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 378
| in hailing the entrance of government upon a new field full of great possibilities, said editorially, “In the most quiet and unobtrusive manner, President Roosevelt has done a very big thing, and an entirely new thing.” |
| He alone knew at what cost. Invalid, undergoing daily agony as the doctors scraped the bone of his injured leg, he wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts, who sent him “the thanks of every man, woman, and child in the country”: |
| “Yes, we have put it through. But, heavens and earth! it has been a struggle.” |
| It was the nearest I ever knew him to come to showing the strain he had been under. |
| The story of the strike, and of how it was settled by the President’s commission, none of us has forgotten. That commission did not make permanent peace between capital and labor, but it took a longer stride toward making a lasting basis for such a peace than we had taken yet; and I can easily understand the President’s statement to me that, if there were nothing else to his credit, he would be content to go out of office upon that record alone. For it was truly a service to render. I had supposed |