No serious leader
outside made any objection. The one concern of everybody was to stop
the panic, and everybody was overjoyed that I was willing to take the
responsibility of stopping it upon my own shoulders. But a few months
afterward, the panic was a thing of the past. People forgot the
frightful condition of alarm in which they had been. They no longer had
a personal interest in preventing any interference with the stoppage of
the panic. Then the men who had not dared to raise their voices until
all danger was past came bravely forth from their hiding places and
denounced the action which had saved them. They had kept a hushed
silence when there was danger; they made clamorous outcry when there was
safety in doing so.
Just the same course would have been followed in connection with the
Anthracite Coal Strike if I had been obliged to act in the fashion I
intended to act had I failed to secure a voluntary agreement between the
miners and the operators. Even as it was, my action was remembered with
rancor by the heads of the great moneyed interests; and as time went by
was assailed with constantly increasing vigor by the newspapers these
men controlled. Had I been forced to take possession of the mines,
these men and the politicians hostile to me would have waited until the
popular alarm was over and the popular needs met, just as they waited
in the case of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and then they
would have attacked me precisely as they did attack me as regards the
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company.
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