er, of the nation. He was without legal or
constitutional power to interfere, but his position as President of the
United States gave him an influence, a leadership, as first citizen
of the republic, that enabled him to appeal to the patriotism and good
sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral
coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then
existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country.
He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers
to which I have alluded.

"So far from interfering or infringing upon property rights, the
Presidents' action tended to conserve them. The peculiar situation, as
regards the anthracite coal interest, was that they controlled a natural
monopoly of a product necessary to the comfort and to the very life of a
large portion of the people. A prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of
this necessary of life would have tended to precipitate an attack upon
these property rights of which you speak; for, after all, it is vain
to deny that this property, so peculiar in its conditions, and which
is properly spoken of as a natural monopoly, is affected with a public
interest.

"I do not think that any President ever acted more wisely, courageously
or promptly in a national crisis. Mr. Roosevelt deserves unstinted
praise for what he did."

They would doubtless have acted precisely as they acted as regards the
acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 1903, and the stoppage of
the panic of 1907 by my action in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company
matter. Nothing could have made the American people surrender the canal
zone. But after it was an accomplished fact, and the canal was
under way, then they settled down to comfortable acceptance of the
accomplished fact, and as their own interests were no longer in
jeopardy, they paid no heed to the men who attacked me because of what I
had done--and also continue to attack me, although they are exceedingly
careful not to propose to right the "wrong," in the only proper way if
it really was a wrong, by replacing the old Republic of Panama under the
tyranny of Colombia and giving Colombia sole or joint ownership of
the canal itself. In the case of the panic of 1907 (as in the case
of Panama), what I did was not only done openly, but depended for its
effect upon being done and with the widest advertisement. Nobody in
Congress ventured to make an objection at the