They, too, should have justice, and they had it.
He never intended to coddle laborers or to make them feel that,
having a grievance, as they alleged, they must be specially
favored. Since Labor is, or should be, common to all men,
Roosevelt believed that every laborer, whether farmer or
mechanic, employer or employee, merchant or financier, should
stand erect and look every other man straight in the eyes, and
neither look up nor down, but with level gaze, fearless,
uncringing, uncondescending. The laws he proposed, the
adjustments he arranged, had the self-respect, the dignity, of
the individual, for their aim. He knew that nothing could be more
dangerous to the public, or more harmful to the laboring class
itself, than to make of it a privileged class, absolved from the
obligations, and even from the laws, which bound the rest of the
community. By this ideal he set a great gulf between himself and
the demagogues who fawned upon Labor and corrupted it by granting
its unjust demands.
He had always present before him a vision of the sacred Oneness
of the body politic.
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