It is not capital we need to guard,
but helpless labor. If I returned to business to-morrow, fear of labor
troubles would not enter my mind, but tenderness for poor and
sometimes misguided though well-meaning laborers would fill my heart
and soften it; and thereby soften theirs.
Upon my return to Pittsburgh in 1892, after the Homestead trouble, I
went to the works and met many of the old men who had not been
concerned in the riot. They expressed the opinion that if I had been
at home the strike would never have happened. I told them that the
company had offered generous terms and beyond its offer I should not
have gone; that before their cable reached me in Scotland, the
Governor of the State had appeared on the scene with troops and wished
the law vindicated; that the question had then passed out of my
partners' hands. I added:
"You were badly advised. My partners' offer should have been accepted.
It was very generous. I don't know that I would have offered so much."
To this one of the rollers said to me:
"Oh, Mr. Carnegie, it wasn't a question of dollars. The boys would
have let you kick 'em, but they wouldn't let that other man stroke
their hair."
So much does sentiment count for in the practical affairs of life,
even with the laboring classes.
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