"No one could know less about it than I do." "People are saying, I suppose," he continued in a tone of exasperation, "that these men had an understanding with me before I came into office.
They seem to think that I can make the strike a success by standing aside and holding my hands.

That, of course, is pure nonsense.

If the men want to stop work, nobody has a right to interfere with them.
Certainly I haven't.

But have they the right--the question hangs on this point--to interfere with the farmers who want to get their crops to market as badly as the strikers want to quit work?
The kind of general strike these people have in mind bears less relation to industry than it does to war; and you know what I think about war and the rights of non-combatants.

They want to tie up the whole system of transportation until they starve their opponents into submission.