I’m not sure that TR’s rhetoric about capital and labor would have been better-received if it came two decades earlier. The early 1900’s were still an era of widespread union fervor and power, and as capital became more important, union membership was even more advantageous, and in some cases necessary, for workers. By 1910, labor would have been seen as a necessary counterbalance to the established power of capital, and TR’s point would be even more powerful.