I should not for one moment hesitate to put the knife to the cancer.  On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each day’s livelihood by that day’s sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing as between man and man.  We are striving for the right in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln when he said: 

“Fondly do we hope—­fervently do we pray—­that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away.  Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ’The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON.  CHARLES J. BONAPARTE.  Attorney-General.

CHAPTER XIII

SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE

By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment of living and working conditions among the mass of the people.  I felt that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of the workingman.  For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the government could do in the interest of labor should be done.  The Federal Government can rarely act with the directness that the State governments act.  It can, however, do a good deal.  My purpose was to make the National Government itself a model employer of labor, the effort being to make the per diem employee just as much as the Cabinet officer regard himself as one of the partners employed in the service of the public, proud of his work, eager to do it in the best possible manner, and confident of just treatment.  Our aim was also to secure good laws wherever the National Government had power, notably in the Territories, in the District of Columbia, and in connection with inter-State commerce.  I found the eight-hour law a mere farce, the departments rarely enforcing it with any degree of efficiency.  This I remedied by executive action.  Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government servants often proved to be the prime offenders so far as the enforcement of the eight-hour law was concerned, because in their zeal to get good work done for the Government they became harsh taskmasters, and declined to consider