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bakery employees, and so forth. All that was theor etical, but it served to offer to Cummings and Hull the idea that the President wanted something else done first before we called out the troops, which if it had been a true general strike was also the right thing to do. You don't shoot until you've tried everything else, not if you're decent people trying to live a civilized life according to the rules of democracy. You don't shoot your follow citizens until you've exhausted every other method of persussion and agreement, and perhaps you don't do it then.

So, anyway, it was okay. Louis Howe had taken it upon himself to wire the President not to come back. Louis was always afraid of the President getting into trouble. I thought the President ought to come back, but Louis' reaction was, “No, because it will do two things. It will make the country think the matter is very, very serious if the President changes his program, and it will be played up by the press as being a major crisis, which we don't want to have it be. Second, it will put the President right in the middle of an obligation to settle whatever is wrong out there. He's in no position to do that. He can't do it, because he can't take the time. He shouldn't do it anyhow.”