idual employee
standing alone.

Speaking of the great coal strike which occurred while he was President,
he developed the idea in this way:

"The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which employed
their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the services of any
particular miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, could
not dispense with the companies. He needed a job; his wife and children
would starve if he did not get one. What the miner had to sell--his
labor--was a perishable commodity; the labor of today--if not sold today
was lost forever. Moreover, his labor was not like most commodities--a
mere thing; it was a part of a living, human being. The workman saw, and
all citizens who gave earnest thought to the matter saw that the labor
problem was not only an economic, but also a moral, a human problem.
Individually the miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wage
contract with the great companies; they could make fair terms only by
uniting into trade unions to bargain collectively. The men were forced
to cooperate to secure not only their economic, but their simple human
rights. They, like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions
under which they lived to unite in unions of their industry or trade,
and those unions were bound to grow in size, in strength, and in power
for good and evil as the industries in which the men were employed grew
larger and larger." *

* Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 471-78.

He was fond of quoting three statements of Lincoln's as expressing
precisely what he himself believed about capital and labor. The first of
these sayings was this: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and
deserves much the higher consideration."

This statement, Roosevelt used to say, would have made him, if it had
been original with him, even more strongly denounced as a communist
agitator than he already was! Then he would turn from this, which the
capitalist ought to hear, to another saying of Lincoln's which the
workingman ought to hear: "Capital has its rights, which are as worthy
of protection as any other rights.. .. Nor should this lead to a war
upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor;... property
is desirable; it is a positive good in the world."

Then would come the final word from Lincol