Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| that we all understood until I ran up against a capitalistic friend of the “irreconcilable” stripe. He complained bitterly of the President’s mixing in; had he kept his hands off, the strike would have settled itself in a very little while; the miners would have gone back to work. I said that I saw no sign of it. |
| No, he supposed not; but it was so, all the same. “We had their leaders all bought,” said he. |
| He lied, to be plain about it, for John Mitchell and his men had proved abundantly that they were not that kind. And, besides, he could not speak for the mine-operators; he was not one of them. But the thing was not for whom he spoke, but what it was he said, with such callous unconcern. Think of it for a moment and tell me which was, when all is said and done, the greater danger: the strike, with all it might have stood for, or the cynicism that framed that speech? The country might outlive the horrors of a coal-famine in mid-winter, but this other thing would kill as sure as slow poison. Mob-rule was not to be feared like that. |
| There comes to my mind, by contrast, something |