It taught several other
lessons also; it taught, for instance, that great combinations of
Labor may be as dangerous as those of Capital, and as heedless of
everything except their own selfish control. It taught that the
people of the States and of the Nation could not go on forever
without taking steps to put an end to the already dangerous
hostility between Capital and Labor, and that that end must be
the establishment of justice for all. An apologist of the "coal
barons" might have pleaded that they held out not merely for
their private gain on that occasion, but in order to defeat the
growing menace of Labor. Their stubbornness might turn back the
rising flood of socialism.
Respecters of legal precedent, on the other hand, criticised the
President. They acknowledged his good intentions, but they
pointed out that his extra-legal interference set an ominously
bad example. And some of them would have preferred to go cold all
winter, and even to have had the quarrel sink into civil war,
rather than to have had the constitutional ideals of the Nation
distorted or obscured by the President's good-natured endeavor.
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