Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) at first attempted to mediate between Palmer and Lewis, but after several days called the injunction "so autocratic as to stagger the human mind." The coal operators smeared the strikers with charges that Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press echoed that language. Palmer's public rhetoric was restrained throughout. He eschewed characterizing labor's action as some others did –"insurrection" and "Bolshevik revolution", for example –and made straightforward statements about what the government of necessity had to do. Responding to an AFL attack he wrote: