TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 623 



and it means not only adequate wages — no man has fought harder, no 

 man will fight harder than I from morning till night, and all night if 

 necessary, to see that living conditions are made better, to see that we 

 have social justice, to see that adequate wages are paid; but when any 

 class of men tells you and me that "we will stop the mines and starve 

 us into submission to serve their political ends," I say they mistake the 

 temper of the American people. (Prolonged applause.) No! We will 

 reach approximate justice in this country through the Cummins bill, and 

 if not through it some other machinery for the arbitration of industrial 

 disputes in the great, basic, essential industries. Turn it around — you 

 farmers cannot stop producing; you cannot stop along in July and say 

 that you will not plow any corn or produce any more foodstuffs until we 

 agree to something. You cannot do it from the very nature of things, 

 and you won't do it, because it is an immoral act. But suppose we again 

 turn it around as some of the mine owners have done and say, "I don't 

 think we are getting enough, so we won't open the mines until we get 

 what we want." Take the same illustration and apply it to any of these 

 great, basic, essential industries — something must be done. We will come 

 to arbitration first, and if that doesn't seem to fit and serve the purpose, 

 something else will be developed. I am inclined to think that it is com- 

 ing in all industries. If it is not, then in the basic industires, those that 

 keep us warm and clothe us; in the steel industry, without which the 

 modern world cannot exist, and with the railroads, without which we 

 cannot live now in this modern life of our great cities, there will come 

 compulsory arbitration — absolutely compulsory. (Applause.) Anything 

 else is intangible, anything but a sure solution of this problem, and so 

 we come down to the great period of this day with its social unrest. 



I was down in Boston the other day and I asked them about the police 

 strike there, and, you know, they advocated the doctrine in Boston that 

 the men who are employed to keep the peace may refuse to keep the 

 peace unless they get such and such wages, and the answer to that doc- 

 trine by the people of Massachusetts was 135,000 majority for Governor 

 Coolidge and his position. (Applause.) Why was that answer made? 

 Because it was an expression of public opinion of the American people. 

 Now, I am a lawyer; I have tried cases before juries, and I have found 

 this to be true: I could take each individual juryman and find that he 

 would have his prejudices; he might be not dependable to give a square 

 verdict on the fact, but when I took them all together, there was an ani- 

 mus collectively that would reach in the main a just result. And so there 

 is planted down deep in the American heart — a tribute to the American 

 education — the power to reflect; and there has been planted down in the 

 human heart a recognition of what is really right, and the American na- 

 tion will look to that basic, fundamental, popular judgment for a solution 

 upon the right lines of all these great problems. And what I ask of the 

 farmer is this: I ask that he sit steady, because (and I do not say it 

 as a mere compliment) he is the foundation of our national life; that 

 he sit steady; that he seek to achieve reforms in constitutional lines, 

 by the orderly processes of the ballot; that he a-void men who advocate 

 quick political remedies, and that he prove as I know he will in Iowa a 



