like Irons to obtain supreme leadership and mastery over many
thousands of intelligent American working men.

When Roosevelt was president of the Police Board of New York he was almost
as greatly concerned about a strike involving the tailors,
garment-cutters, and others whose employment was with the needle,
sewing-machine, or shears, as if he himself was of their vocation. The
poverty of the strikers had been extreme, their wages being barely
sufficient to pay for a loaf of bread and a bit of meat once a week, and
for the narrowest and most squalid kind of tenement in which to sleep. He
learned that these conditions had been somewhat improved through the
formation of the garment-workers into a labor-union. He was greatly
interested in one Barondess, a man of crude and yet real force, who had
skilfully perfected their organization.

So it was at all times when there were important strikes or agitations
that Roosevelt displayed the keenest interest in the individual. The
creation of one or another labor-union by some man of original native
force of mind was sure to inspire him with a desire to know something of
the new leader. He has always seemed to be far more interested in the
personality, the temperament, and the intellectual gifts of those who
have emerged from the ranks of working men, and have taken leadership
among their fellows, than in the achievements of those who have built
railroads, concentrated industrial organizations of vast capital, or
mastered the secrets of nature by means of inventive apparatus.

His Belief in Individualism.

In nothing that President Roosevelt has said or done since he entered
public life has he so firmly and impressively illustrated his faith in
individualism, so to call it, as in his relations to the labor
organizations. He looks upon them as no more than a means to an individual
end. He has scant patience with those who dream of a grand socialism of
labor, with every man standing upon an equality.

The President is in entire sympathy with the efforts of the labor-unions
to secure agreement with all employers that eight hours shall constitute a
day's work. But he is fearful that any restriction of the amount of labor
that a man is permitted to do in one day is an economic blunder. He holds
that it runs counter to individuality, and will ultimately prove to impair
the fine opportunities for advancement and benefit which wisely managed
labor-unions will always have.

Preside