Business was vitally helped by what I did. The benefit was not only
for the moment. It was permanent. Particularly was this the case in the
South. Three or four years afterwards I visited Birmingham. Every man
I met, without exception, who was competent to testify, informed me
voluntarily that the results of the action taken had been of the utmost
benefit to Birmingham, and therefore to Alabama, the industry having
profited to an extraordinary degree, not only from the standpoint of the
business, but from the standpoint of the community at large and of the
wage-workers, by the change in ownership. The results of the action I
took were beneficial from every standpoint, and the action itself, at
the time when it was taken, was vitally necessary to the welfare of the
people of the United States.
I would have been derelict in my duty, I would have shown myself a timid
and unworthy public servant, if in that extraordinary crisis I had not
acted precisely as I did act. In every such crisis the temptation to
indecision, to non-action, is great, for excuses can always be found for
non-action, and action means risk and the certainty of blame to the man
who acts. But if the man is worth his salt he will do his duty, he will
give the people the benefit of the doubt, and act in any way which
their interests demand and which is not affirmatively prohibited by law,
unheeding the likelihood that he himself, when the crisis is over and
the danger past, will be assailed for what he has done.
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