By Albert J. Bev Ri Recognized and the Community Spirit Was Very Frail

10 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST .Rpril 5,1919 HE URING the Presidential campaign of 1900 than of collective effort. Social ideals were scarcely Theodore Roosevelt and I spent a Sunday By Albert J. Bev ri recognized and the community spirit was very frail. D together in Kansas City. I had been elected The first manifestation of the cooperative idea to the Senate and he was candidate for Vice President. country and for all of the immigrants from other lands. came in the form of great business organizations and the This was our first opportunity for extended conversation Indeed the necessity for labor was so great that manufac- consolidation of railroad companies owning parts of the since the outbreak of the war with Spain. During the turing and other industries that suddenly took on immense same lines into large corporations, controlling and operat- afternoon we took a long horseback ride into Kansas. Even proportions resorted to every expedient—some of them ing long and unified systems. All this was natural and then I was very much in favor of Colonel Roosevelt's very bad—to bring cheap European labor to America. inevitable. Indeed the very necessities of the people them- nomination by the Republican Party to succeed President For a long time, however, there was no labor conges- selves called for and created these great economic units. McKinley when his second term should expire, and told tion—first because there was so much work to be done, and Without them it was impossible to supply promptly and him so. I had no doubt that McKinley and Roosevelt secondly because free land constantly drew people away from adequately the needs of the people. For instance, the in- would be elected. Colonel Roosevelt was very frank about industrial centers. Free land was an outlet for discontent. crease of what is called the laboring population—those it and talked of the probabilities employed in other industries than with the utmost unreserve. Among agriculture—required food sup- other things he pointed out the plies, the preparation and dis- economic and social problems that tribution of which could be were sure to arise, and said that accomplished only by immense the proper solution of them meant organizations. Speaking by and that the ruling politicians of the large, the same was true of course nation, the older and more eminent of other forms of industry. men of the country and great This economic evolution went financial interests would likely be forward, however, under the indi- against him. I thought so, too, vidualist principles which an en- but said that it would be the hard- tirely different state of things had muscled men of the country and created. In short, while natural the young fellows who would make forces had totally revolutionized him President. industry the old ideals still pre- "By George," said he, "that's vailed, though they no longer so. That's just it. What you call applied to the existing facts of these ' hard-muscled ' men feel the life. We had emerged into a new situation even if they do not un- period, but we still clung to ancient derstand it, and the young people formulas of thinking. see what is coming and are already getting themselves into shape to Labor Conditions meet it. Right here round us as we ride we see the reason for the WAS in this wise that the new period which the nation is 1I heads of great business organiza- entering. Not so very long ago tions insisted upon running them all this country was unoccupied. according to ancient individualist Land was practically free, but maxims. The courts of course con- now nearly all of it is taken up. tinued to decide controversies aris- In a few years there won't be an ing from these new conditions by acre left." old rules which no longer fitted them. e, No More Free Land No matter how great a business anization became, no matter e.• 'org FTER the war Colonel Roose- how extensive its dealings with the A velt chafed a good deal. "He people, no matter how dependent - • t.'4 • ^. 4,40, ' I millions of human beings were is always in a state of mind," Presi- • • f t , dent McKinley remarked to me one ,t.• upon these organizations, the man- day. Colonel Roosevelt was then agers of these mammoth concerns Ake - to conducted them as though the governor of New York. The cause ■ of his chafing was the economi c con- ON .'7111, concerns themselves were individ- ditions of the country, to which he uals. No moral legal duty to the was extremely sensitive. He be- public was admitted—a fact which, lieved that the nation was ap- recent though it is, is hard now for proaching an economic and social us to realize. crisis. When, therefore, upon the A great packing plant, for ex- assassination of President McKin- ample, did its business with the ley, he suddenly found himself in public on precisely the same eco- the Presidential chair he had a good nomic principles as an individual idea of the new period upon which butcher dealing with individual the country was entering, and in a customers. Immense railroad sys- general way of the laws and policies tems did the transporting of the which that new period required. nation upon the same legal basis America had reached the point that an old-time wagoner or a where a transition from an out- stagecoach owner hauled small worn to a modern economic and parcels of merchandise or carried a social order was indispensable. To few passengers. The kind of service rendered, the rates fixed, the qual- effect this transition was the great COPYRIGHT, 1905, ST WILLIAM R. PAU, PHILADELPHIA work of Theodore Roosevelt's life, The Inaugural Address of President Roosevelt. March 4. 1905 ity of food and the manner of its and it is the accomplishment of preparation and the prices charged that fundamental change that makes his career epochal. Finally this outlet was closed. Free land was all gone. for it were held to be none of the people's business, but solely He became President of the United States just after one The human tide had reached its last frontier, the Pacific the affair of etriliceapnproducing business and ca companies. of the most serious developments in American history. This Ocean, and was turned back upon itself. Such was the Thus American obsessed of a frenzy for development was the disappearance of free land. Until beginning of those economic and social conditions that gain. The spirit of greed ruled American industry. This that point of time which marks the beginning of what had developed by the time Colonel Roosevelt had become showed itself in shocking form in many other ways than always will be called "The Roosevelt Period" anybody President. These conditions were indicated by labor trou- the illustrations already given. Hundreds of thousands— could get a farm and a home of his own by the simple bles growing out of industrial congestion and by a general millions, in fact—of children were put to work in factories, process of taking up substantially free land and living unrest among the masses of the people. It became neces- mines and sweat shops at a period in their lives when such upon it. This process indeed had been going on since sary for the nation to adjust itself to an entirely new situa- labor meant their physical and intellectual ruin. before the Revolution. Those who were in debt or felt tion which the disappearance of free land had brought about. Moreover, labor was regarded as a commodity. The eco- the pressure of taxes or who wanted to own the land they Not only had millions upon millions of unoccupied acres nomic theories of Adam Smith governed the treatment of tilled simply moved out into the wilderness or settled prevented those industrial blood clots which old and thickly workingmen by employers. Labor conditions therefore upon the prairies. So it was that such a thing as industrial settled countries always had experienced, and thus created became worse as industrial congestion increased. The pressure, in the sense we now understand that term, did an economic and social state of things peculiar to America human element of the problem of labor received less and not exist. and entirely abnormal; but this fact, continuing through less consideration; indeed the "humanities" were not rec- Moreover, immediately after the Civil War there was a more than a century, had also built up an individualism ognized by the ancient economic philosophy upon which prodigious outburst of constructive energy. A great part such as the world never had seen before. modern industry still continued to be operated. of the continent still was to be occupied. Railroads were Men thought and acted solely from the viewpoint of what Thus is revealed the vast, complicated and delicate prob- to be built; bridges to be constructed; cities erected. they believed to be their personal advantage. The common lem, national in its scope, which required solution when There was more than enough work for everybody in this talk was of rights rather than of duties, of individual rather (Continued on Page 49) THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 49 (Concluded from Page 46) and his scalp had been cut by glass. Mrs. Ark 410. ).• 1■••L b. ••• And now once more he found himself Davenport had fared better, escaping with 4A■ swiftly traversing great black spaces, im- hardly more than a severe shaking up. The pelled by an awful inexorable force. This chauffeur had been thrown against the steer- A time, however, it was more like falling.

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