[ 342 ] DONALD A. RITCHIE chot a "case of the Biblical command to conceal from your right hand what your left has been doing!'88 In an open letter to the mayor, Pinchot insisted that the community owed an opportunity to work to every man who was willing to work. He denounced the formation of the committee as a means for the administration to "pass the buck" and the tactics of the committee as a "masterpiece of reticent evasion!' Pinchot's ally, Max Heidelberger, continued this attack when he charged that Gary, as a businessman, would be sure to "oppose every radical plan brought forward!' The mayor promptly came to Gary's defense by rejecting the charges as impertinent and designed to create discontent at a time when "serious plans were under way to handle a big problem in a practical manner!'84 Unemployed dock workers, printers, sheet metal workers, and union members responded more favorably to Pinchot's attack and bitterly opposed the Mitchel administration. "The Mayor has put us on half time from the first of the year!' one city employee complained. "He has appointed a committee of men to look for work for unemployed and still he does not care what position he puts us in!'85 Organized labor and various reform groups began holding town meetings to discuss and condemn the Gary committee. Two hundred delegates from American Federation of Labor local unions, angered over the low wages at the workshops and by the Municipal Employment Bureau's practice of sending applicants to companies where the regular workers were on strike, called for all of the labor representatives on the committee to resign. "I predicted to Bruere that they'd do nothing" one of these representatives told the meeting, "and they haven't done anything!'88 The People's Institute, a respected reform organization under the direction of Frederick C. Howe, held a Cooper Union meeting at which the audience hissed the names of Gary and Mitchel and called for a "new American Revolution!'87 Despite these attacks, the Gary committee had its defenders. Former President Theodore Roosevelt actively supported the good work 83 Times, January 11,1915, March 24,1915. 84 Ibid., January 14, 1915; Amos R. Pinchot to Mitchel, January 12, 1915, Amos R. Pinchot Papers, Library of Congress. 85 C. Smith to Pinchot, January 13,1915, Pinchot Papers. 89 Times, January 28,29,1915. 87Ibid., March 13,1915.