“And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and of the whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor!  How empty were all their professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the face of the simple and unpretentious achievements of the President!  In his own straightforward fashion he inflicted upon capital in one short hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Bryan could have visited upon it in a century.  He is the leader of the labor unions of the United States.  Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above the Constitution, because for him they are the American people.” [This last, I need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation.]

Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following my leaving the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows: 

“Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully.  He has ruled his party to a large extent against its will.  He has played a large part in the world’s work, for the past seven years.  The activities of his remarkably forceful personality have been so manifold that it will be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race.  He is said to think that the three great things done by him are the undertaking of the construction of the Panama Canal and its rapid and successful carrying forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending around the world of the fleet.

“These are important things, but many will be slow to think them his greatest services.  The Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in operation; and the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine.  But no one can say whether this project will be a gigantic success or a gigantic failure; and the task is one which must, in the nature of things, have been undertaken and carried through some time soon, as historic periods go, anyhow.  The Peace of Portsmouth was a great thing to be responsible for, and Roosevelt’s good offices undoubtedly saved a great and bloody battle in Manchuria.  But the war was fought out, and the parties ready to quit, and there is reason to think that it was only when this situation was arrived at that the good offices of the President of the United States were, more or less indirectly, invited.  The fleet’s cruise was a strong piece of diplomacy, by which we informed Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we please.  It worked out well.

“But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with some of Roosevelt’s other achievements.  Perhaps he is loath to take credit as a reformer, for he is prone to spell the word with question marks, and to speak disparagingly of ‘reform.’