The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Some years earlier, Sam McClure had tried to expose the suffering of the industry’s workers, commissioning the realist author Stephen Crane to write a piece entitled “In the Depths of a Coal Mine.” Crane described a sinister system that brought children “yet at the spanking period” into the mines as breaker boys. There, they worked ten hours each day, separating out pieces of slate and other impurities from streams of coal speeding by on conveyor belts. Earning 55 cents a day, a breaker boy rarely set foot in a schoolhouse. His highest ambition was to rise to door-boy, then mule-boy, laborer, miner’s helper, and finally full-fledged miner. If he reached that zenith, having survived “the gas, the floods, the ‘squeezes’ of falling rocks, the cars shooting through little tunnels, the precarious elevators,” and the peculiar miner’s lung disease, he started “on the descent, going back to become a miner’s helper, then a mine laborer, now a door-boy; and when old and decrepit, he finally returns to the breaker where he started as a child.”

  In most collieries, mining families were forced to rent their shacks from the company and buy their food, clothing, and supplies in the company store, invariably at higher costs than outside the compound. It was a proverbial saying that “children were brought into the world by the company doctor, lived in the company house or hut, were nurtured by the company store, baptized by the company parson, buried in a company coffin, and laid away in the company graveyard.” Since mine owners generally paid employees in company-printed scrip instead of cash, workers had little recourse but to pay the exorbitant prices the company demanded. Just such conditions led to the founding of the United Mine Workers Union in 1890.

  The wave of consolidation that created trusts in steel, oil, and beef had produced a massive coal trust during this same period. The process of combination had begun when coal-carrying railroads began purchasing coal fields. Quickly, they utilized their control over freight rates to destroy independent coal operators, “reaping the reward” of monopolistic power over both production and transportation. While mine owners and operators of earlier eras had lived near the coal fields, gathering some understanding of the miners’ situation, the railroad presidents and financiers who now controlled the industry shared no personal connection with their workers. Skilled in high finance, they had little experience with labor unions and scant comprehension of public relations. In the months preceding the strike, the miners had agreed to accept a 5 percent wage increase, a raise which would have amounted to $3 million annually against the operators’ estimated profit of $75 million. The operators, represented by George Baer of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, flatly refused, confident that public opinion would drive the strikers back to work, crushing the union and Mitchell in the process.

  The operators badly miscalculated; as the strike entered its fifth month, opinion had turned in favor of the miners, largely due to the contrasting public impressions of Mitchell and Baer. In early August 1902, Lincoln Steffens had drawn a profile of the compelling young UMW president for McClure’s. A telling anecdote in his article illustrated the near-mystical hold Mitchell exercised over the miners, many of them immigrants who barely spoke English: “When President McKinley was shot, and the news spread to the coal region, the workmen gathered into a mob, crying, ‘Who shot our President?’ They dispersed when they learned that it wasn’t President Mitchell who was shot.”

  Subsequent coverage confirmed Mitchell’s stature with the workers and the public at large. “No better strike leader than John Mitchell has ever emerged in any time of industrial strife,” Walter Wellman remarked. Throughout the summer, Mitchell conducted himself with impressive dignity, never resorting “to bitterness or retort.” He allowed pump men and firemen to continue at work protecting the mines. He agreed to meet with anyone at any time to discuss potential areas of agreement, publicly declaring readiness to compromise.

  Whereas Mitchell welcomed arbitration, George Baer refused even to meet with the labor leader and flatly denied Mitchell’s right to speak for the anthracite miners in the various collieries. To the wealthy, college-educated railroad president, Mitchell “was only a common coal-miner, who had worked with his hands for 15 years, and was now a labor agitator.” Any negotiation, Baer felt, would unduly recognize a mere rabble-rouser.

  In response to a citizen’s plea for compromise, Baer wrote: “I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful Management of which so much depends.” When Baer’s correspondent submitted this rejoinder to the newspapers, the railroad president’s overweening arrogance was mocked in editorials across the country. “The doctrine of the divine right of kings was bad enough, but not so intolerable as the doctrine of the divine right of plutocrats,” remarked one Boston paper. “It will take a load from the consciences of many earnest people to have this authoritative declaration that God, through the kindness of the coal operators, will be able to manage this strike in accordance with the dictates of infinite wisdom,” jeered the New York Tribune. “But if the medium’s acquaintances really are spirits acquainted with the heavenly mysteries why, oh why, do they on earth talk such egregious nonsense?”

  In the Northeast, where people suffered the effects of the strike most keenly, opinion began turning against the Republicans, whom many continued to regard as henchmen of the trusts despite Roosevelt’s bold action against Northern Securities. “The coal business here is getting rapidly worse,” Lodge wrote from Massachusetts. “If no settlement is reached it means political disaster in New England and especially in this state,” he warned. “The demand that the Government take the coal fields is rising louder all the time. It is a perilous cry. When the cold weather comes it will be far worse. You have no power or authority of course, that is the worst of it. Is there anything you can appear to do?” Roosevelt himself was increasingly frustrated. “I am at my wit’s end how to proceed,” he admitted. “Of course, we have nothing whatever to do with this coal strike and no earthly responsibility for it,” he wrote to Hanna. “But the public at large will tend to visit upon our heads responsibility for the shortage in coal precisely as Kansas and Nebraska visited upon our heads their failure to raise good crops in the arid belt, eight, ten or a dozen years ago.”

  In discussions with Attorney General Knox, Roosevelt was told that he had “no warrant” to intervene. The Constitution provided no precedent for a president to mediate disputes between labor and management. He was warned “that he would almost certainly fail if he tried; and that he would injure his prestige and perhaps sacrifice his political future if he essayed to step outside the role of his constitutional duties.” Roosevelt would not be confined by precedent or bound by fear of failure. He held to what he called “the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the Presidency; that is, that occasionally great national crises arise which call for immediate and vigorous executive action, and that in such cases it is the duty of the President to act upon the theory that he is the steward of the people, and that the proper attitude for him to take is that he is bound to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.”

  On October 1, 1902, he sent identical telegrams to the coal operators’ board of directors and to the union representative, John Mitchell. Both factions were invited to Washington to discuss “the failure of the coal supply, which has become a matter of vital concern to the whole nation.” This singular request from the president captivated newspapermen and magazine writers across the nation.

  “For the first time in the history of the country,” Walter Wellman wrote, great corporate leaders and union leaders would join “the President of the United States to talk over their differences face-to-face.” The large crowd gathered in front of the temporary White House on Lafayette Square earlier that morning was
increasing with each passing hour. Confidence spread that an end to the menacing coal strike was near at hand. Reporters eagerly followed the arrival of the parties, contrasting the “luxurious private cars” that carried the six coal operators to the nation’s capital with “the smoking car of a night train” that transported Mitchell and his three district presidents to Union Station, whereupon they “trudged down Pennsylvania Avenue, their grips in their hands, stopping at a cheap hotel.” Likewise, the elaborate carriages, staffed by footmen in “plum-colored livery,” that deposited the coal barons at Roosevelt’s door illustrated a sharp disparity with the common streetcars that bore the union representatives from their hotel. Nonetheless, once in the president’s presence, both parties met as equals.

  Theodore Roosevelt greeted his guests warmly, explaining that he could not rise from his chair, for his leg was still healing after his recent carriage accident. As the gentlemen took their seats, the president opened the meeting with a graceful statement acknowledging the existence of “three parties affected by the situation in the anthracite trade—the operators, the miners, and the general public.” He spoke, he assured them, “for neither the operators nor the miners, but for the general public.” Rather than adjudicate “respective claims,” he would appeal to their shared “patriotism, to the spirit that sinks personal considerations and makes individual sacrifices for the general good.”

  No sooner had the president finished than Mitchell “literally jumped to his feet.” In a voice “clear as a bell,” he reiterated his willingness to negotiate with the operators at any time. If they were unable to reach a resolution by themselves, he would willingly abide by the decision of an impartial tribunal that the president might appoint, even if the ruling denied the miners’ claims. Mitchell’s dramatic statement took both the operators and the president by surprise. “I had not expected such an offer as this,” Roosevelt admitted. Turning to the operators, he asked: “What have you gentlemen to say to this proposition?” After a swift consultation, President George Baer stood up. “We cannot agree to it. We cannot agree to any proposition advanced by Mr. Mitchell,” he emphatically asserted. “Very well,” said the president. “I shall ask you, then, to return at three o’clock and I wish you would present at that time your various positions in writing so we may discuss them.”

  When they reconvened, tension in the room quickly escalated. Rather than engage in open discussion, the coal barons read a series of typewritten statements that accused the strikers of criminal behavior, including the murder of hundreds of non-union men willing to work the mines during the strike. “The duty of the hour is not to waste time negotiating with the fomenters of this anarchy,” Baer declared. Roosevelt was stunned by what he considered the “extraordinary stupidity and bad temper” of the operators, who “did everything in their power to goad and irritate Mitchell,” resorting to “insolent” words that were “insulting to the miners and offensive to me.” Roosevelt told Mark Hanna that after the operators belittled the union officials, “they insulted me for not preserving order” by sending federal troops to protect their property “and attacked Knox for not having brought suit against the miners’ union as violating the Sherman Antitrust Law.” Through it all, he marveled, “Mitchell behaved with great dignity and moderation.” Not one of the operators, he remarked, “appeared to such advantage as Mitchell,” who “towered above” them all. Roosevelt later admitted that after one operator referred to the union as “a set of outlaws,” he wanted to take him “by the seat of the breeches and nape of the neck and chuck him out of that window.” With great difficulty he managed to keep his anger in check.

  Realizing that the operator’s high-handed belligerence would negate any direct negotiation, Roosevelt finally repeated Mitchell’s proposition that they submit the conflict to a presidential tribunal. Again they refused “to have any dealings of any nature with John Mitchell.” Roosevelt was intensely irritated by their stubborn disdain. “If this is the case,” he concluded, “I can see no necessity for detaining you gentlemen further.”

  “Well, I have tried and failed,” Roosevelt told Mark Hanna. “I feel down-hearted over the result both because of the great misery made necessary for the mass of our people, and because the attitude of the operators will beyond a doubt double the burden on us who stand between them and socialistic action.” Worse still, when the coal barons provided an account of the failed conference to the press, they reveled “in the fact that they had ‘turned down’ both the miners and the President.”

  The operators’ exultation was short-lived. Roosevelt had made arrangements for a stenographer to record the entire proceedings, and when the statements of both parties were released to the press, public opinion turned sharply against them. While a small number of papers endorsed the operators’ view that the public had no rights in the situation and insisted that Roosevelt’s “uncontrollable penchant for impulsive self-intrusion” had made “a sorry mess” of the negotiations, the majority held the coal barons totally responsible for the failed Washington conference and the continuing strike. Furthermore, their insolent defiance of the president did not compare favorably with Mitchell’s “respectful, placable, and patriotic spirit.”

  Public condemnation of the operators’ intractable behavior fortified Roosevelt as he contemplated a more extreme step. With “ugly talk of a general sympathetic strike” beginning to spread, he considered the situation nothing short of “a state of war.” He warned Attorney General Knox and Secretary of War Root that he was considering an action that “would form an evil precedent” but felt “obliged to take it rather than expose our people to the suffering and chaos which would otherwise come.” Knox and Root were free to disavow the action he was contemplating, but he had made up his mind. He believed that the operators and their colleagues on Wall Street were “absolutely out of touch with the big world,” and the president could not remain idle as “misery and death” threatened masses of the American people.

  His undisclosed strategy was to ready “a first-rate general” and 10,000 regular Army troops to enter the coal fields with instructions “to dispossess the operators and run the mines as a receiver” for the government until a settlement could be reached. He secured the agreement of his selected general, John M. Schofield, to pay “no heed to any authority, judicial or otherwise,” besides the president in his role as “Commander-in-Chief.” According to this stratagem, if “the operators went to court and had a writ served on him, he would do as was done under Lincoln, simply send the writ on to the President.” This intrepid plan illustrated one of Roosevelt’s favorite maxims: “Don’t hit till you have to; but, when you do hit, hit hard.”

  Whether the president would have implemented this unorthodox design is not clear. “Theodore was a bit of a bluffer,” Elihu Root observed. But Mark Sullivan had discussed the measure with Roosevelt on a number of occasions and believed he was prepared to follow through: “The one condition Roosevelt’s spirit could not endure,” he remarked, “was any situation in which individuals or groups seemed able to defy or ignore the people as a whole and their representative in the White House.”

  The question proved moot. Secretary Root devised a way to resolve the issue that would not humiliate the mine owners or require massive federal intervention. Certain that public opinion had finally convinced the coal barons to negotiate so long as they did not have to deal directly with union representatives, Root proposed that he travel to New York and meet with J. P. Morgan. If anyone could bring the operators to the table, he believed, it would be the original architect of the coal trust. Morgan’s financial genius had unified the railway owners and coalmen together in the gargantuan combination that now controlled 80 percent of the anthracite coal market. Root would make it clear that in speaking with Morgan, he acted independently, without instructions from the president. Roosevelt enthusiastically approved the plan.

  Taking the midnight train to New York, Root met with Morgan for five hours on his yacht, the Corsair
. Together, they composed a memorandum that Morgan carried to the Union Club, where the mine owners were holding a meeting. The memo called for the president to establish an Arbitration Commission, virtually identical to the proposition Mitchell and then Roosevelt had suggested at the Washington conference. In this instance, however, J. P. Morgan was advocating the measure—not John Mitchell—allowing the owners to maintain the fiction that they were not negotiating with representatives of organized labor. “It was a damned lie,” Root later said, but it opened the door to a settlement. To his credit, Morgan intervened at this critical juncture, for only eight months earlier he had considered Roosevelt’s suit against Northern Securities as a personal attack. The financier’s willingness to help the president “was one of the crowning moments of his life,” one journalist remarked, observing, “there was to be no littleness in this great hour.”

  Despite this breakthrough, immediate difficulties emerged over the composition of the panel. The owners insisted that the Arbitration Commission be comprised of five members chosen from specific categories: an officer of the military or naval Engineer Corps, an expert mining engineer unconnected with coal, a Pennsylvania judge, a businessman familiar with mining and selling coal, and an eminent sociologist. Both Roosevelt and Mitchell immediately recognized the pointed absence of a labor representative in this configuration. After a series of hurried meetings with Morgan’s men, Bacon and Perkins, Roosevelt hit upon a solution. “Suddenly,” he recollected, “it dawned on me that they were not objecting to the thing, but to the name. I found they did not mind my appointing any man, whether he was a labor man or not, so long as he was not appointed as a labor man.” Roosevelt promptly appointed Edgar E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway Train Conductors, to the “eminent sociologist” slot. While the owners “would heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum,” Roosevelt noted with amusement, “yet if I would call it Tweedledee they would accept with rapture.”