Stronger, however, than his sympathy for any individual, and
especially for those who suffered without redress, was his love
of justice. This he put in a phrase which he invented and made
current, a phrase which everybody could understand: "the labor
unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have
a square deal." At another time he expressed the same idea, by
saying that the rich man should have justice, and that the poor
man should have justice, and that no man should have more or
less.
Time soon brought a test for his devotion to social justice. In
the summer of 1902 the coal-miners of Pennsylvania stopped
working. Early in September the public awoke with a start to the
realization that a coal famine threatened the country. In the
Eastern States, in New York, and Pennsylvania, and in some of the
Middle Western States, a calamity threatened, which would be
quite as terrible as the invasion of an enemy's army. For not
only would lack of fuel cause incalculable hardship and distress
from cold, but it would stop transportation, and all
manufacturing by machinery run by coal.
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