Chapter 3

Roosevelt stood before his tent, not heeding the approach of these friends and politicians. With eager eyes, and through a strangely unfamiliar pair of spectacles, of polished steel or nickeled frame, he was watching the movement of his troopers, who were moving over the sandy plain not more than a quarter of a mile distant.

There came from Colonel Roosevelt quick and hearty ejaculations, as if he was so rejoiced at the steady, disciplined marching of his regiment that he could find no better way to express his joy than by fervent expressions of "Good!" or, again, "Well done!"

The hot sun of that unusually heated September week caused a sort of mirage--a quivering, visible movement of the atmosphere arising by reflection from the sand, so that the Rough Riders seemed to be observed as through a glass.

After a few moments of enthusiastic inspection of the distant regiment, Colonel Roosevelt received his visitors cordially, and motioned them to the open tent, which was furnished with the rigorous simplicity of a true campaigner, yet offered abundant hospitality. As his friends were entering the tent, he stopped for a moment, and, turning toward his regiment, said:

"There is perfect order, perfect discipline, and yet every man of that regiment thinks!"

The Golden Rule Paraphrased.

In this comment there is to be discovered President Roosevelt's view of what the wise and beneficial combination of men into labor organizations may ultimately become. Years before, he had reasoned out what he believed to be the true philosophy of the labor-unions. He did not fully accept the familiar motto, "One for all and all for one." Instead, he formulated for himself another, which was after all merely a paraphrase of the golden rule:

"All for all, and every one for the best of which he is capable--the best morally, mentally, and physically."

Roosevelt came into active life at a time when the labor-unions, under sincerely well-meant leadership, were emerging from a period of struggle and disorder. Their dominant idea, as it seemed to many observers, was to use the weapon that is called the strike, and to intensify the power of that weapon by acts of violence. He had just entered Harvard when the anarchy and devastation that accompanied the railroad strikes of the summer of 1877 spread terror throughout the country. He was deeply interested in the progress of that fierce industrial conflict. He felt even then that men who labored could not be brought to such a condition of desperation that they were willing to use the torch unless they had some sense of unjust treatment. On the other hand, the torch and the shooting and the roll of drums and march of troops most gravely impressed the college student, and led him to give much thought to the question of the labor organizations.

Roosevelt and the Railway Men.

His attention was specially fixed upon the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. He was persistent and insistent in his inquiries of all who could give him information as to the philosophy upon which this body based its organization. He was greatly interested in the personality of Mr. Arthur, and of others who assisted Arthur in the creation of the brotherhood.

Later, when he had become a member of the New York Legislature, he was present at a State convention held in Utica. He was one of a considerable number of delegates and politicians who went from Albany to Utica on a cold and stormy winter afternoon. The train made its way against the winter tempest with some difficulty. When it rolled into the station at Utica, Roosevelt parted for a moment from his associates, and they saw him making his way, with characteristic quick and decisive steps, to the engine. Reaching up, he grasped the hands of the engineer and the fireman, and gave them a hearty word of thanks, in which he conveyed his sense of what they were as men and skilled artisans, and of what they had done that afternoon.

Many have thought that President Roosevelt's custom of shaking hands with the locomotive engineer and the fireman at the end of a journey was of recent adoption, but he began it as long ago as the time when he entered public life. Possibly, and it may be unconsciously to himself, in this kindly courtesy he reflected his sense of the intellectual and economic triumph which characterizes the perfecting of the organization of the Locomotive Engineers.

His Interest In Labor's Battles.

A year before Roosevelt was candidate for mayor of New York, he being then in his twenty-eighth year, there broke out the dangerous agitation that has passed into history as the Missouri Pacific strike. The details of this affair were eagerly sought by Roosevelt. He would stop whatever work he had in hand in order to gather from any one who was well informed not merely the incidents of the strike, but the characteristics of the leader of the strikers, Martin Irons, and of his associates.

At that time, Roosevelt spoke with emphasis in deploring the acts of violence which the greatly inflamed employees committed. He looked upon the destruction of life and of property as not merely criminal in itself, but as sure, if persisted in, to do harm to all labor organizations. But he seemed to be attracted by the skill and energy, the personal force, the power of discipline and of leadership, which had enabled a railway mechanic like Irons to obtain supreme leadership and mastery over many thousands of intelligent American working men.

When Roosevelt was president of the Police Board of New York he was almost as greatly concerned about a strike involving the tailors, garment-cutters, and others whose employment was with the needle, sewing-machine, or shears, as if he himself was of their vocation. The poverty of the strikers had been extreme, their wages being barely sufficient to pay for a loaf of bread and a bit of meat once a week, and for the narrowest and most squalid kind of tenement in which to sleep. He learned that these conditions had been somewhat improved through the formation of the garment-workers into a labor-union. He was greatly interested in one Barondess, a man of crude and yet real force, who had skilfully perfected their organization.

So it was at all times when there were important strikes or agitations that Roosevelt displayed the keenest interest in the individual. The creation of one or another labor-union by some man of original native force of mind was sure to inspire him with a desire to know something of the new leader. He has always seemed to be far more interested in the personality, the temperament, and the intellectual gifts of those who have emerged from the ranks of working men, and have taken leadership among their fellows, than in the achievements of those who have built railroads, concentrated industrial organizations of vast capital, or mastered the secrets of nature by means of inventive apparatus.

His Belief in Individualism.

In nothing that President Roosevelt has said or done since he entered public life has he so firmly and impressively illustrated his faith in individualism, so to call it, as in his relations to the labor organizations. He looks upon them as no more than a means to an individual end. He has scant patience with those who dream of a grand socialism of labor, with every man standing upon an equality.

The President is in entire sympathy with the efforts of the labor-unions to secure agreement with all employers that eight hours shall constitute a day's work. But he is fearful that any restriction of the amount of labor that a man is permitted to do in one day is an economic blunder. He holds that it runs counter to individuality, and will ultimately prove to impair the fine opportunities for advancement and benefit which wisely managed labor-unions will always have.

President Roosevelt's philosophy of life, of its obligations and its opportunities, is that each individual should develop as perfectly as is possible whatever his native talent may be. To do that, in his view, involves struggle, and struggle always entails leadership. And it has seemed to him that in this process of high development of native gifts the man who is obliged to work for wages, whether he be a skilled artisan or a humble mechanic, must look to his fellows for help. Therefore, inevitably, there have sprung up associations of those who are engaged in the production of like articles.

Roosevelt and the Mine-Workers.

Of all the addresses and writings in which the President has expounded his philosophy of labor, he probably best epitomized his opinions when he delivered his speech to the miners at Wilkes-Barre, last October.

"I strongly believe," he said, "in trade-unions wisely and justly handled, in which the rightful purpose to benefit those connected with them is not accompanied by a desire to do injustice or wrong to others. I believe in the duty of capitalists and wage-workers to try to seek one another out, to understand one another's point of view, and to endeavor to show broad and kindly human sympathy one with the other."

That philosophy is entirely consistent with the President's strong faith in what may be called individualism. In his view, the labor-union serves its chief purpose when it makes possible the highest development of the gifts bestowed upon each individual by his Creator.

With this understanding it is easy to explain the personal interest President Roosevelt has in all of those who are leaders in labor organizations. The energy, the far-reaching understanding, the tact, and the frequent use of somewhat imperious power, all of which were necessary to bring the army of mine-workers into one compact organization, and all of which have been exemplified by John Mitchell, were sure to appeal very strongly to Theodore Roosevelt.

Twice since he became President he has had executive opportunity for showing, not merely by word but in deed, exactly what is his understanding of labor organizations and of their rights and limitations. To this day the world does not accurately measure Roosevelt's action at the time of the portentous struggle between the anthracite coal-miners and their employers. At that crisis, when there was danger of something like civil war, or at least of industrial anarchy and suffering, he seemed to be impelled by precisely the same motives as those that actuated him in bringing about the conference for peace between Russia and Japan. After confidential communication with ex-President Cleveland, who warmly approved his proposed plan, he offered to open the door for a settlement of the desperate struggle between the miners and the mine-owners. As his correspondence with ex-President Cleveland shows, he did not consider, except incidentally, the rights and limitations of the labor organizations on the one hand, or, upon the other, the legal position of those who control capital, credit, transportation, and mines. He spoke for the much-suffering public. He realized that no other than he could with any prospect of success offer to serve as mediator.

No Respecter of Persons.

When the representatives of capital first met the President, they were under the delusion that he had invited them to meet him because he fully sympathized with the miners' labor organization. But at that first meeting these kings of finance and of transportation and of the mining industry perceived that Roosevelt gloried in his sense of manhood, and that his courtesy to John Mitchell, and his recognition of John Mitchell's leadership, were in no way diminished by the presence of men possessed of immense capital and consequently of great power.

Capital was mistaken, however, in its presumption that Roosevelt was its enemy. It was learned in the course of the several interviews with the President that he had as firm a conviction of the necessity of combinations of capital and credit as he had in the imperative need that those who work with the hand should also combine for common benefit.

In private, President Roosevelt has expressed his unbounded admiration for the courage of that business statesmanship which, within a generation, has so mastered the West as to make its prairies rich in harvests and its population continuous and thriving between the Atlantic and the Pacific. But he has quite as much admiration for the native qualities, and for the stern training and disciplining of those qualities, whereby a coal-miner succeeded in organizing for a common purpose a vast army of men whose toil is hidden from the sunlight, and whose faces are blackened as they come, with lanterns on their caps, from the dismal caverns where they delve.

Mr. George W. Perkins has spoken to his friends of the impression made by the President upon the capitalists whom he met at these interviews in which the way was prepared for a settlement of the anthracite coal strike. Mr. Roosevelt made it clear that he was no respecter of persons by reason of the incidental power any one might possess, but was only a respecter and admirer of manhood.

The second of the executive opportunities came when a demand was made that none but a member of the labor organization should be employed in one of the government departments. The President's reply was emphatic. The government as a government could not, he said, recognize either labor organizations as against an individual or an individual as against a labor organization. At one meeting between Mr. Roosevelt and some of those who were of the labor world, he declared that no combination, whether of capital, or of credit, or any wherein the bond of union is a common kind of labor, can in the long run prosper if it forgets the rights of the individual. He has over and over again inculcated the doctrine of individual right of judgment, deeming that to contain the very spirit of American institutions.

The Enjoyment in Labor.

The President is quoted by his friends as having recently expressed his confident belief that the labor organizations are coming to see the wisdom of the view that the right to exercise individual judgment must not be forgotten or ignored. He has no doubt that ultimately, if wisely and justly handled, they will give the fullest opportunity for the perfection of the individual morally, intellectually, and physically.

The time, he thinks, is not far distant when the sense of individuality may be sufficient to teach the lesson that in every kind of labor the laborer may find enjoyment--the florist and the harvester in the mystery of the growth and coloring of the products of the field, the granite-worker in the tracings of geology, the carpenter in the beauty of geometry and in the fine penciling which nature has left in the native wood. Work undertaken in this spirit is no longer mere mercenary drudgery, but partakes of the inspiration that follows high appeal to the intellectual and moral faculty of the worker.

To give a final summing up of President Roosevelt's view of trade-unions and labor organizations, it may be said that he believes in them because he sees in such combinations the greater opportunity for each individual to develop the best that is in him.

A Descent Into the Maelström.

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and died in Baltimore, October 7, 1849. His father, David Poe, while a law student in Baltimore, married Elizabeth Arnold, a beautiful English actress, and went on the stage himself. Several years later both died within a few weeks of each other, leaving three children, of whom Edgar was the second. Impressed by the boy's extraordinary beauty and intelligence, John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, adopted him.

Poe was then sent to England to be educated. There he spent five or six years in a school at Stoke Newington. Subsequently he was sent to the University of Virginia and to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but remained only a few months at each institution. Finally he quarreled with Mr. Allan, who died shortly afterward; and Edgar was not mentioned in the will.

In 1833 the Baltimore _Saturday Visitor_ offered two prizes of a hundred dollars each for a story and a poem. Poe won both. This led to his employment in various editorial capacities in Richmond and New York. Quarrels with his employers usually resulted in his dismissal. During this period he was distinguished by an extraordinary degree of literary activity, however, and it was not long before he was recognized as one of the most forceful figures in American literature.

Scores of authors have found inspiration in the pages of Edgar Allan Poe. Sardou, the celebrated French dramatist, founded the main incident of his "Scrap of Paper" on Poe's "The Purloined Letter," and Conan Doyle has admitted that _Dupin_, the detective who appears in several of Poe's tales, was the prototype of _Sherlock Holmes_. "A Descent Into the Maelström" is generally regarded as one of the most representative of his stories.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but about three years past there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man--or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul.

"You suppose me a very old man, but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to un-string my nerves so that I tremble at the least exertion and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us.

Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth, so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds.

It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

"You must get over these fancies," said the guide; "for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned, and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye.

"We are now," he continued in that particularizing manner which distinguished him--"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea."

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive.

To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horribly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever.

Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small bleak-looking island; or more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped.

About two miles nearer the land arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean in the space between the more distant island and the shore had something very unusual about it. Although at the time so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick angry cross-dashing of water in every direction--as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

"The island in the distance," resumed the old man, "is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places; but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in the water?"

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen--to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward.

Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed--to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury, but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway.

Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion: heaving, boiling, hissing, gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before.

These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter.

The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven.

"This," said I at length to the old man--"this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelström."