incalculable harm in this community, with their hired stock-jobbing newspaper, with their corruption of the judiciary, and with their corruption of this house. It is not a question of doing right to them, for they are merely common thieves. As to the resolution"—a petition handed in by the directors of the company"signed by Gould and his son, I would pay more attention to a petition signed by Barney Aaron, Owney Geoghegan, and Billy McGlory than I would pay to that paper, because I regard these men as part of an infinitely dangerous order-the wealthy criminal class."

This speech, which a hundred prophets were ready to swear would be Mr. Roosevelt's valedictory in politics because of the popular antagonism it would excite against him, did just two things: it established the speaker more firmly in the confidence of his constituency, who discovered that they had a representative with courage enough to take an unpopular stand if he saw plainly that it was right, even at the cost of humiliating himself by an apology; and it gave to the politico-social vocabulary a new and striking phrase. "The wealthy criminal class" became a fixture in the language. It was quoted again and again when,

INGENIOUS FICTION

two years later, its author made a campaign for mayor of New York city. He was defeated through the peculiar complications of a threesided contest; but he carried with him the largest percentage of the whole vote cast for any Republican candidate for mayor who up to that time had made the fight with three tickets in the field.

The mention of Gray recalls the coal-strike arbitration, over which he presided. That episode has furnished a text for an exceptionally large number of perversions of history, but for none which surpasses in picturesque quality this widely copied newspaper skit:

When he made up his list of the members of the commission for submission to the coal operators and to President Mitchell, President Roosevelt did not have the name of Judge Gray at the top. He had there the name of Grover Cleveland. Mr. Cleveland had been communicated with and had consented to serve. The President was delighted with this selection for chairman. He believed the appearance of the former President at the head of the strike-settling body would command the respect and admiration of the American people. Therefore he was much surprised when one of his advisers suggested that the selection of Mr.

Cleveland might be a political mistake. The President asked what he meant by that.

"I mean," said the gentleman, "that Mr. Cleveland is a presidential possibility. If he serves at the head of this commission it will bring him very prominently before the public, and may end in making him the Democratic nominee in 1904."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the President.

At that moment Secretary Root appeared, and the President asked him what he thought of it. Mr. Root stroked his chin during a few moments of meditation, and then replied, "I agree with the gentleman who has just spoken."

Without another word President Roosevelt grabbed a lead-pencil and drew a line through the name of Grover Cleveland.

As every one knows that the President had nothing to do with the appointment of the chairman or "head" of the commission as such, but left the members free to select him from among themselves, it seems strange that this story could have gained any considerable credence. Again, when the names appeared Judge Gray's stood not at the top, but down in the body of the list. These preliminary errors, of course, might be attributable to the exercise of

ACTUAL FACTS

the story-teller's license; but it is on the main fact that the narrator has gone most sadly astray.

It had been in the President's mind for some time to have the whole subject of the strike investigated and the grievances adjusted if possible; he had accordingly made out a list of persons he deemed available for a board of inquiry and conciliation, and in some cases obtained their consent to serve. Later he revised his plan, and decided to call in the warring parties and let them have most to say about the selection of their judges. In his original list he had included Mr. Cleveland, whose participation he regarded as almost an essential to the success of the scheme, and when the method of selection was changed he still clung most tenaciously to this one name. He felt that he had a right in such an emergency to take advantage of the wide-spread regard in which Mr. Cleveland was held. He had a high patriotic purpose in mind; this effort for the restoration of industrial peace and the salvation of the country from suffering could succeed only by the backing of public sentiment; and he believed that the combination of the President and the one living ex-President, sepa

rated in political faith but united in an unselfish undertaking for the common welfare, would carry weight with the mass of good citizens.

When he called in the representatives of the miners and the operators they demanded that the commission of arbitration should be composed of members of certain specified classes and callings-an army or naval engineer, a sociologist, a United States judge, etc. For the judge's place the President had selected William R. Day, the bosom friend of the late President McKinley and now a justice of the Supreme Court. But the conference decided that it would be better to have a judge from the Third Circuit, which embraced the scene of the controversy, than from the Sixth, where Judge Day was serving; so Judge Gray was put on in the place to which Day had first been assigned. That disposes of the story that Gray was substituted for Cleveland, for Gray did. not figure in the program at all till the judge's place had been reached and Day had been ruled out on grounds of locality.

When it came to selecting the military engineer, the President exerted himself to the utmost to induce the withdrawal of this de