God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in."

Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE. Attorney-General.

CHAPTER XIII

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity
of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification
largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment
of living and working conditions among the mass of the people. I felt
that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the
first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of
the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the
government could do in the interest of labor should be done. The Federal
Government can rarely act with the directness that the State governments
act. It can, however, do a good deal. My purpose was to make the
National Government itself a model employer of labor, the effort being
to make the per diem employee just as much as the Cabinet officer regard
himself as one of the partners employed in the service of the public,
proud of his work, eager to do it in the best possible manner, and
confident of just treatment. Our aim was also to secure good laws
wherever the National Government had power, notably in the Territories,
in the District of Columbia, and in connection with inter-State
commerce. I found the eight-hour law a mere farce, the departments
rarely enforcing it with any degree of efficiency. This I remedied
by executive action. Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government
servants often proved to be the prime offenders so far as the
enforcement of the eight-hour law was concerned, because in their zeal
to get good work done for the Government they became harsh taskmasters,
and declined to consider the needs of their fellow-employees who served
under them. The more I had studied the subject the more strongly I had
become convinced that an eight-hour day under the conditions of