United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
So it is all along the line, in serious matters and things less serious.
We are all of the same clay and spirit, and we can get together if we
desire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this: Let us
show ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go off in
separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to cooeperate
with all other classes and all other groups in the common enterprise
which is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. I would be
willing to set that up as the final test of an American. That is the
meaning of democracy. I have been very much distressed, my
fellow-citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently. The
mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country. I have
no sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with
the men who take their punishment into their own hands; and I want to
say to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him as
worthy of the free institutions of the United States. There are some
organizations in this country whose object is anarchy and the
destruction of law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myself
partner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their purposes as much
as any man, but I respect the ancient processes of justice; and I would
be too proud not to see them done justice, however wrong they are.
MUST OBEY COMMON COUNSEL
So I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of the
spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gentlemen, look
what it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic people in the
world, and democracy means first of all that we can govern ourselves. If
our men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that great
thing which we call democratic government. A man who takes the law into
his own hands is not the right man to cooeperate in any formation or
development of law and institutions, and some of the processes by which
the struggle between capital and labor is carried on are processes that
come very near to taking the law into your own hands. I do not mean for
a moment to compare them with what I have just been speaking of, but I
want you to see that they are mere gradations in this manifestation of
the unwillingness to cooeperate, and that the fundamental lesson of the
whole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but that
we must yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of the
instrumentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the very
near future new instrumentalities may be organized by which we can see
to it that various things that are now going on ought not to go on.
There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary
substitution of labor and the bidding in distant markets and unfairly
upsetting the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on. I
mean now on the part of employers, and we must interject some
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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