n, driven home by Roosevelt
with all his usual vigor and fire: "Let not him who is houseless pull
down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one
for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from
violence when built."

In these three sayings, Roosevelt declared, Lincoln "showed the proper
sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of
human rights and property rights." Roosevelt's own most famous statement
of the matter was made in an address which he delivered before the
Sorbonne in Paris, on his way back from Africa: "In every civilized
society property rights must be carefully safeguarded. Ordinarily, and
in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are
fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears
that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the
upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property."

Several times it happened to Roosevelt to be confronted with the
necessity of meeting with force the threat of violence on the part of
striking workers. He never refused the challenge, and his firmness never
lost him the respect of any but the worthless among the workingmen.
When he was Police Commissioner, strikers in New York were coming into
continual conflict with the police. Roosevelt asked the strike leaders
to meet him in order to talk things over. These leaders did not know
the man with whom they were dealing; they tried to bully him. They
truculently announced the things that they would do if the police
were not compliant to their wishes. But they did not get far in that
direction. Roosevelt called a halt with a snap of his jaws. "Gentlemen!"
he said, "we want to understand one another. That was my object in
coming here. Remember, please, that he who counsels violence does the
cause of labor the poorest service. Also, he loses his case. Understand
distinctly that order will be kept. The police will keep it. Now,
gentlemen!" There was surprised silence for a moment, and then smashing
applause. They had learned suddenly what kind of a man Roosevelt was.
All their respect was his.

It was after he became President that his greatest opportunity occurred
to put into effect his convictions about the industrial problem. In
1909. there was a strike which brought about a complete stoppage of work
for several months in the anthracite coal regions. Both operators and
workers w