This prophecy is to some extent confirmed by the rush of some of the threatened employers to forestall a strike by making concessions beforehand. No doubt they are wise, for when American steel magnates contemplate wage-increases there can be no doubt that wages will not bear looking into. But they probably have also in mind the fact that it will not be so easy in future to smash the unions by refusing to employ Unionists. For under Roosevelt the unemployed are no longer left to starve.
It is indeed remarkable that he has won so great a victory in the teeth of what was only a few years ago the almost unanimous American opinion against State unemployment relief. This opinion was based on the conviction, which until the beginning of the present century was almost equally unanimous in this country, that it sapped a man's moral fibre to be able to fall back upon a State dole.