All of this is a preface to the conference that I have referred to with regard to what we are going to do.  If we are true friends of freedom, our own or anybody else’s, we will see that the power of this country and the productivity of this country is raised to its absolute maximum, and that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it.  When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the way I do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the Government but by the power of the American spirit.  Our duty, if we are to do this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be—­the greatest hope and energy of the world—­is to stand together night and day until the job is finished.

LABOR MUST BE FREE

While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, that labor is free; and that means a number of interesting things.  It means not only that we must do what we have declared our purpose to do, see that the conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous by the war, but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities by which the conditions of labor are improved are not blocked or checked.  That we must do.  That has been the matter about which I have taken pleasure in conferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done.  I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness.  The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in corral.

Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt the processes of our energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided without the absolute invasion of freedom.  To put it concretely, that means this:  Nobody 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, and I believe I am speaking from my own experience not only, but from the experience of others 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 have not 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 now got to transact business, and a settlement is never impossible when both sides want to do the square and right thing.

SETTLEMENT HARD TO AVOID