body has a right to stop the processes of labor until
all the methods of conciliation and settlement have been exhausted,
and I might as well say right here that I am not talking to you
alone. You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but there are others
who do the same. I am speaking of my own experience when I say that
you are reasonable in a larger number of cases than the capitalists.

I am not saying these things to them personally yet, because I
haven't had a chance. But they have to be said, not in any spirit of
criticism.

But, in order to clear the atmosphere and come down to business,
everybody on both sides has got to transact business, and the
settlement is never impossible when both sides want to do the square
and right thing. Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when
the parties can be brought face to face. I can differ with a man much
more radically when he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the
room, because then the awkward thing is that he can come back at me
and answer what I say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the
floor entirely to himself. And, therefore, we must insist in every
instance that the parties come into each other's presence and there
discuss the issues between them, and not separately in places which
have no communication with each other.

I like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an Englishman of a
past generation, Charles Lamb. He was with a group of friends and he
spoke harshly of some man who was not present. I ought to say that
Lamb stuttered a little bit. And one of his friends said, "Why,
Charles, I didn't know that you knew So-and-so?" "Oh," he said, "I
don't. I can't hate a man I know."

There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleasant human nature,
in that saying. It is hard to hate a man you know. I may admit,
parenthetically, that there are some politicians whose methods I do
not at all believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they
would not talk the wrong kind of politics with me I would love to be
with them. And 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.

AMERICANS MUST CO-OPERATE

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 co-operate with all other classes
and a