108 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS Republic will change to a syndicate and self- government will explode. For our increasing and wholesome anxiety about this, Mr. Roosevelt is to be honored, whatever imperfections may be found in his corrective machinery so far as it has gone. An equally great, if not greater, service has been rendered to the whole country by Mr. Roosevelt s "Strike Commission," which not even his friends have had the wit to point out. His apparent siding with "labor" on that occasion led "labor" to com mit so many arrogant outrages that the scales fell from the hitherto blind and sentimental public eye, and it was seen that "labor" could become just as dangerous a public enemy as could "capital." At all events, to sum up, Mr. Roosevelt was in Novem ber, 1904, elected president by the largest majority which the history of our nation records ; upon which he announced that he considered this his second term. II The foregoing was written and published in 1905, and such few opinions as were therein ex pressed may stand as then set down even though the eight momentous years which have followed since show that if the public eye saw "labor" in its true light for a day, the public mind forgot it the
