This case has been cited all over the United States by counsel for workmen injured through the failure of their employers to furnish the protection required by statute for their safety. Perhaps a majority of the State courts follow the New York case, and say that protective legislation intended for the benefit of working men at work is of no legal value to them if they stay at work. The legal theory on which the workman assumes the risks of personal injury need not here be discussed. Judge Taft, however, decided that when a law is made applying to a dangerous business, in which four thousand men are killed and sixty-five thousand are injured every year, the intention was that the railroads should obey that law, and it should not be nullified "by construction." In this conclusion he does not lack judicial support of high character. This, in substance, is Taft's labor record so far as his judicial career is concerned. Its consideration by the general public can be useful but for one purpose, which is this: A country like ours cannot afford to elect a class president. It cannot afford to elect a president in whose mind the distinction between lawlessness and personal rights is not clear and distinct; who to please one class will weaken the foundations of the liberty and peace of a whole nation. It can still less afford to elect a president to whom the working people are but pawns on the chess-board, and to whom prosperity means peace at any price by the sacrifice of the rights of the working people, so long as the mills are at work and property is secure in the possessions which it has somehow acquired. The enemies of our democracy are at both extremes. The Socialists attacked Roosevelt with greater bitterness than any president who had preceded him, because he had not been a class president, and because he had not ignored the interests and rights of the working people and thereby helped still further to increase the constantly growing "class-conscious" body of dissatisfied men marching under the Socialists' banner. That section of the press which supports lawless property has attacked him because he has disturbed "values" and "vested interests." There is no sure protection for property but justice. Suppression of the labor organizations will not insure it; they should not and cannot be suppressed. Nor is there on the other hand any protection for the public if at the demands of a class, no matter how large its voting strength, the peace of the whole country is to be jeopardized by weakening the foundations of law which impose just limitations on industrial warfare. We need for president a man who will recognize and protect the just rights of both rich and poor and thereby protect American democracy against its class enemies. By these standards Mr. Taft must be judged. Footnotes.