black people and Tuskegee Institute and he praised Potter for "his consuming desire to serve his fellow man." He said that Potter was "always guided" by one question: "Is it the right thing to do?" Washington recalled the last time he saw Potter in a public meeting. It was on a Sunday afternoon in a "little crowded negro church," which was not an Episcopal Church. He said that "after a busy Sunday morning," Potter arrived and "for an hour he poured out his great soul before that audience of colored men and women." Washington closed his talk by quoting from the Robert Burns poem "A Man's A Man For A' That," in which Burns says that a "man's character" should be "the measure of a man's true worth," not "wealth, or lack of it, and social class." Labor and social service On May 10, 1886, Potter issued a pastoral letter to his clergy regarding labor. The Church Association for the Advancement of the Interests of Labor (C.A.I.L.) later used the document as its inspiration, especially its statement that "what the laborer wants from his employer is fair and fraternal dealing, not alms-giving; and a recognition of his manhood rather than a condescension to his inferiority." In 1892, Potter was made the association's honorary vice-president. In 1893, he was made the chairman of its Committee of Mediation and Arbitration. When the National Civic Federation was established in 1900, Potter was from the start a member of the executive committee. As such, he was involved with the steel strike of 1901 and the anthracite Coal strike of 1902. He worked for the public interest to be considered in disputes between capital and labor. In one case, President George Frederick Baer of the anthracite railways argued, "cannot I do what I will with my own?" Potter replied, "Ah, well, but what is my own?" In August 1901, a strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers against the United States Steel Corporation "threatened to be a national disaster." Potter wrote a letter to William Randolph Hearst suggesting "a symposium of clever men discussing the question of wages, common ownership of plants and land—anything to make the people think." The symposium was held and reported in the book John Punnett Peters, Labor and Capital: A Discussion of the Relations of Employer and Employed. (1902). In December 1902, Potter spoke to the Men's