business to nominate or refuse to nominate, and yours, together with your colleagues, to confirm or refuse to confirm. Of course the common sense way is to confer together and try to come to an agreement. It is just exactly what I have been doing in this matter. If we both do our duty then each will endeavor to obtain a man for the position who is the best man under the circumstances that can be obtained, and neither of us will insist upon any man for merely personal reasons if there is good ground against him-upon any man who is not the best man for the position. I never saw H. until the other day. I have not the slightest interest in his appointment, save from the standpoint of the bench and of the public. As you do not indicate any possible objection to him, save that you insist upon having some one else, I must decline to consider that there will be any affront to you involved in appointing him.

"Finally, I am sorry to say I must emphatically disagree with you and disagree with your statement that it ought to suffice me to have you simply say that you prefer Y. to H. You add that 'both men are admittedly qualified for the position.' Here you say that H. is qualified for the position, but insist that your preference for Y. should be enough to settle the matter. I cannot consider such a proposition. I have not considered my own individual preference and I cannot consider yours. Neither of us is entitled to have his personal preference considered, and it is the duty of both of us to disregard our individual preferences and take the man who will be most acceptable to the public and the bar, who will be most likely to do his work well and faithfully, showing exact justice to corporation and labor union, rich man and poor man, and the man who is neither a member of the corporation nor the labor union, and is neither rich nor poor.

A strong movement had been started by the labor unions in 1905 for the passage of a law by Congress depriving the courts of their power to issue injunctions in labor disputes. In his annual message of that year the President had ex

pressed his opposition to such action and had suggested that the procedure in injunction cases might be regulated by requiring the judge to give due notice to the adverse parties before granting the writ, such due notice to depend upon the facts in the case. A bill somewhat along those lines was introduced but failed of enactment. It was reintroduced in 1906, and the labor unions opposed it, demanding the complete removal of the power to grant injunctions. The members of the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor sought an interview with the President on March 21, 1906, and stated their views on the subject. In his reply the President told them that if they thought that the pending bill did not go far enough they would have no earthly difficulty in killing it for the capitalists were against it. "Personally," he said, "I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely wish it could be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is absolutely necessary to have this power lodged in the courts; though of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener. But understand me, gentlemen, if ever I thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.

In the spring of 1906 the President's attention was called to conditions in the stock yards and meat packing-houses of Chicago, which were reported to be very bad. He appointed a special commission to investigate the matter and on June 4 he sent its report to Congress with a message in which he said the conditions disclosed were "revolting" and "in the interest of health and decency should be radically changed." The report fairly startled the whole country, for the revelations made were fitly characterized by the Presi

dent. Following his recommendations, a law was passed giving the Government power to enforce inspection of prepared meat products, and, what was of far-reaching importance, a Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was the first thoroughgoing law of the kind and which has proved in practise an incalculable boon to the country. The great beef dealers fought these measures bitterly and sought in many ways to deprive them of their effectiveness by ingenious amendments of one kind or another, but in vain. The whole country was aroused by the revelations and Congress acted in obedience to an overwhelming popular demand.

Another beneficient law passed at this session of Congress was an Employers' Liability Act which first established on the statute books recognition of the principle involved. A consular reform measure was also passed, classifying the service, and, most important of all, the act decreeing the construction of a lock canal at Panama.

The President was justly proud of the work of the session, and issued a frankly jubilant statement to that effect. High praise came to him from many quarters, and, most surprising of all, from a persistent and often virulent critic, the New York World. The editorial article which that journal published on July 2, 1906, after the adjournment of Congress, is worth reproducing to show what even his political opponents felt moved to say of him at this time:

MR. ROOSEVELT'S BEST WORK

"Mr. Roosevelt would be more than human if he could conceal his elation over the achievements of a Congress that has evidenced almost phonographic fidelity to the wishes of the President. The sentiment of the country is undoubtedly in accord with him in praising Congress for what it has done concerning which Mr. Roosevelt might say, 'All of which I saw and a great part of which I was.'

"But the President in his exultant proclamation was restrained by modesty perhaps from calling attention to what historians are likely to regard as the best work of

his Administration-not legislation, but the progress made in enforcing laws already on the statute-books.

Congress has for twenty years been making laws to restrain organized wealth and will be passing new laws along the same lines for decades to come, but Mr. Roosevelt is the first President to make a considerable progress in the matter of enforcing this legislation.

"In replying to a Senate resolution Attorney General Moody has issued a statement showing that under the Elkins Anti-Rebate law the Department of Justice has already obtained thirty-six indictments and nine convictions, with only two acquittals and three cases nolle-prossed. In view of the fact that it has been hardly more than a year since the Administration began to make serious efforts to enforce this law, a really great work has been accomplished. If the President continues this vigor it will be a matter of only a few months before he will have destroyed the iniquitous rebate system, root and branch.

"The rebate cases represented but one set of activities Only a few days ago Mr. Moody began more than thirty suits against railroad companies for violating the Safety Appliance law, an act which has been virtually a dead letter. The cases are not perhaps of the first importance, but they reveal a healthy determination to execute laws regardless of the wealth of the defendants. The same thing must be said of the Administration's campaign against the Paper Trust, the Drug Trust and the Fertilizer Trust.

"By relentless prosecution of rich offenders Secretary Hitchcock has all but destroyed the business of stealing Government land. The Post-Office Department has pursued Burton until he has been at last driven out of the United States Senate and is in a fair way to go to prison. In the railroad-rate matter, in the investigation of the coal roads by the Interstate Commerce Commission, in the investigation of the packing-houses, in the preparations for prosecuting the Standard Oil Company, the Administration has shown a spirit that is not dismayed by the power of

organized capital. The President is actualizing the 'square deal' which makes every man equal before the law.

"Even Mr. Roosevelt's bitterest opponents could not minimize the healthful influence upon public sentiment of these activities. At a time when a horde of demagogues are trying to convince the American people that there is one law for the rich and another law for the poor, the President is proving that there is only one law for everybody and that the National Government knows not distinction in offenders. Such an object-lesson could not be more opportune. It is doubly so at a time when District-Attorneys like William Travers Jerome are making class distinctions in crime and shirking the prosecution of rich offenders. Whatever his faults, Mr. Roosevelt has proved that he is not dazzled by dollars."

A few days earlier the President had written, June 26, 1906, a letter to his devoted and much-loved friend, Jacob Riis, in reply to one asking for hints as to how best to answer the President's critics:

"I would not have the least idea how to give you light upon the criticisms made, chiefly because I really do not know about the latter in detail. For instance, I am criticized for interference with Congress. There really is not any answer I can make to this except to say that if I had not interfered we would not have had any rate bill, or any beef-packers' bill, or any pure food bill, or any consular reform bill, or the Panama Canal, or the Employers' Liability Bill, or in short, any of the legislation which we have obtained during the last year. . . .

"I have enumerated the measures we have succeeded in passing. If I stand for anything it is for this kind of substantive achievement, and above all, for treating public affairs with courage, honesty and sanity; for keeping our Army and Navy up; for making it evident that as a nation we do not intend to inflict wrong or submit to wrong, and that we do intend to try to do justice within our own borders, and so far as it can be done by legislation, to favor the