glimpse into one corner of the mighty brains of these “captains of industry.”  In order to carry the great and vital point and secure agreement by both parties, all that was necessary for me to do was to commit a technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn face.  This I gladly did.  I announced at once that I accepted the terms laid down.  With this understanding, I appointed the labor man I had all along had in view, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors, calling him an “eminent sociologist”—­a term which I doubt whether he had ever previously heard.  He was a first-class man, whom I afterward put on the Inter-State Commerce Commission.  I added to the Arbitration Commission, on my own authority, a sixth member, in the person of Bishop Spalding, a Catholic bishop, of Peoria, Ill., one of the very best men to be found in the entire country.  The man whom the operators had expected me to appoint as the sociologist was Carroll Wright—­who really was an eminent sociologist.  I put him on as recorder of the Commission, and added him as a seventh member as soon as the Commission got fairly started.  In publishing the list of the Commissioners, when I came to Clark’s appointment, I added:  “As a sociologist—­the President assuming that for the purposes of such a Commission, the term sociologist means a man who has thought and studied deeply on social questions and has practically applied his knowledge.”

The relief of the whole country was so great that the sudden appearance of the head of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors as an “eminent sociologist” merely furnished material for puzzled comment on the part of the press.  It was a most admirable Commission.  It did a noteworthy work, and its report is a monument in the history of the relations of labor and capital in this country.  The strike, by the way, brought me into contact with more than one man who was afterward a valued friend and fellow-worker.  On the suggestion of Carroll Wright I appointed as assistant recorders to the Commission Charles P. Neill, whom I afterward made Labor Commissioner, to succeed Wright himself, and Mr. Edward A. Moseley.  Wilkes-Barre was the center of the strike; and the man in Wilkes-Barre who helped me most was Father Curran; I grew to know and trust and believe in him, and throughout my term in office, and afterward, he was not only my stanch friend, but one of the men by whose advice and counsel I profited most in matters affecting the welfare of the miners and their families.

I was greatly relieved at the result, for more than one reason.  Of course, first and foremost, my concern was to avert a frightful calamity to the United States.  In the next place I was anxious to save the great coal operators and all of the class of big propertied men, of which they were members, from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would have brought on them if I had not acted; and one of the exasperating things was that they were so blinded that they could not see that I was trying to save them from themselves and to avert, not only for their sakes, but for the sake of the country, the excesses which would have been indulged in at their expense if they had longer persisted in their conduct.