orty I was rated as a prosperous young man. This gave me a great
confidence in myself and in the institutions of this country. A land
where a boy can enter the mills at eleven, learn two trades, acquire a
sound business education and make a competence in his thirties is not
such a bad country as the hot-headed Reds would have us believe. I was
now launched on a business career and my investments were paying me
much larger revenues than I could earn at my trade. It was a rule of the
union that when a man ceased to work in the iron, steel or tin trades
he forfeited his membership. However, the boys thought that Mahlon M.
Garland--a puddler who went to Congress--and myself had done noteworthy
service to the labor cause, and they passed a resolution permitting us
to remain in the organization. Mr. Garland served six years in Congress
and died during his term of office. I still carry my membership and pay
my dues.

I was in France when the great Hindenburg offensive in the spring of
1916 overwhelmed the Allies. The French soldiers I met were worried
and asked what word I brought them from America. I said: "I am an iron
worker and can speak for the workers. Their hearts are in this cause.
They will work as one man until all the iron in the mountains of America
is hurled into the belly of the Huns."

The war was an iron war. The kaiser had the steel and the coal that move
armies. France lacked these, and the Germans thought she was doomed.
They cut the French railroads that would have brought the troops and
munitions to defend Verdun. Then the Germans attacked this point in
overwhelming numbers. But the French troops went to Verdun without
the aid of railroads. The Germans did not dream that such a thing was
possible. But America had given the world a new form of transportation,
trains that run without rails and with-out coal. Motor-trucks, driven by
gasoline, carried the troops and munitions to Verdun. And so, after all,
the genius of America was there smiting the crown prince to his ruin
long before the first American doughboy could set foot in France.

For years the names of oil king and iron master have been a hissing and
a byword among the hot-heads in America. Yet oil king and iron master
filled a world with motor lorries. The blessings these have brought to
every man are more than he can measure. We mention this as one: They
stopped the Germans at Verdun and saved our civilization. It was an iron
war and our iron won.