GOVERNOR, 1906
and would make the sheriff master of the situation. I let it be known that, while I recognized the propriety of consulting with the sheriff and letting him maintain the peace if he could, I would not listen for a moment to the claim of want of power in the governor and, if the occasion required such action, would wait for no sheriff.
On the 4th the New York Sun had a long leading editorial entitled: “No Presidential Intervention this Time,” saying that the union leaders were “trying to dragoon the most exalted personage in the nation into a wrangle with which he has no official connection whatever,” that there was a definite report throughout the anthracite region that the President “has determined to take part today or tomorrow,” but that Northeastern Pennsylvania was quiet; “thanks to Governor Pennypacker's unyielding insistence, that law and order must be maintained.” Knowing what the President had said to me at an earlier date, I have no doubt that this statement was correct and that he was waiting to jump in at the first opportunity. There was rioting at Mount Carmel and the mob took possession of the town. The constabulary were sent there and the mob defied them. Then they rode through the town. The mob assailed them and they shot about eighty men, establishing a reputation which has gone all over the country and has been retained in many trying occasions since, with the result that the labor difficulties in the anthracite coal region entirely disappeared. It was in every way a most wholesome lesson. The rights of labor and the general sympathy for the man who produces the wealth of the world had been asserted, the authority of the state had been maintained and violent opposition to the law overcome, and the aggression of the national government, dangerous to both state and nation, had been successfully resisted. There was almost universal commendation over the country.
