Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  Roosevelt tended to agree with the Brooklyn Eagle that the fundamental issue now was “coal and not controversy.” He was inundated with mail demanding a military invasion of the anthracite fields. Some letters, on heavy corporate stationery, reminded him that President Cleveland had not hesitated to break up the 1894 Pullman railroad strike, in the name of free enterprise and private property. Others, misspelled and querulous, besought him to seize the mines “for the people,” under law of eminent domain.

  Roosevelt began to empathize with Lincoln at the onset of the Civil War. For the first time in his Presidency, he breathed the alpine air of a great decision. He could not retreat from the height he had assumed on 3 October—not unless he wanted to risk “the most awful riots this country has ever seen.” Only one other living American knew what it was like to be so alone at the peak of power. Or was that man too old and fat to remember, much less care?

  As if to reassure him, Grover Cleveland wrote from Princeton, New Jersey. “My dear Mr. President, I read in the paper this morning on my way home from Buzzard’s Bay, the newspaper accounts of what took place yesterday between you and the parties directly concerned in the coal strike.” The patient, spiky, sloping script was the same as it had been when Cleveland had been in the White House, benignly tolerating Roosevelt’s activism as Civil Service Commissioner. “I am so surprised and ‘stirred up’ by the position taken by the contestants that I cannot refrain from making a suggestion.”

  This was that Baer and Mitchell would welcome a “temporary escape” from their deadlock, if appealed to in such a way as to make them both look humane. They should be asked to postpone their quarrel long enough to allow the production of anthracite for the winter. Then they could “take up the fight again where they left off.”

  Roosevelt, of course, had already suggested much the same thing. Cleveland had always been a bit slow. Nevertheless, his counsel represented eight years of presidential experience. Here was the brute disciplinarian of 1894 recommending reason over force.

  “Your letter was a real help and comfort to me,” Roosevelt replied. He declined, however, to issue another appeal, feeling that Baer’s attitude precluded it. “I think I shall now tell Mitchell that if the miners will go back to work I will appoint a commission to investigate the whole situation and will do whatever in my power lies to have the findings of such a commission favorably acted upon.”

  Roosevelt did not say which distinguished private citizen he hoped might chair this commission. He merely ended his letter with a reminder that he had been “very glad” to make one of Cleveland’s friends Surgeon General.

  JOHN MITCHELL RECEIVED the President’s new proposal doubtfully. He said he would consider it. Roosevelt, meanwhile, was put under medical orders to refrain from further work. He expressed his frustration to the Librarian of Congress:

  Dear Mr. Putnam: As I lead, to put it mildly, a sedentary life for the moment I would greatly like some books that would appeal to my queer taste. I do not suppose there are any histories or any articles upon the early Mediterranean races. That man Lindsay who wrote about prehistoric Greece has not put out a second volume, has he? Has a second volume of Oman’s Art of War appeared? If so, send me either or both; if not, then a good translation of Niebuhr and Momsen [sic] or the best modern history of Mesopotamia. Is there a good history of Poland?

  Putnam obliged, only to receive a presidential reprimand. “I do not like the Poland. It is too short.”

  WHILE ROOSEVELT READ and Mitchell pondered, violence continued to roar in the anthracite valleys. At night, military searchlights played nervously around Shenandoah. “Things are steadily growing worse,” a state trooper reported, “and the future of this region is dark indeed.” A Justice Department spy in Wilkes-Barre reported that he had lost sympathy for the miners. UMW executives were openly inciting mobs to riot. The New York Sun demanded that labor thugs be treated like Filipino guerrillas: “without parley and without terms.” Governor Stone called out Pennsylvania’s entire ten-thousand-man National Guard.

  The weather turned cold and wet. Inch by inch, seepage mounted in empty mine shafts. Hills of unsold anthracite lay under the beating rain. Public pressure built on George Baer, who seemed at the point of a nervous breakdown before meeting with J. P. Morgan in New York. “He literally ran to the elevator making frantic motions with his right arm, to ward off the reporters,” a UMW observer wrote Mitchell. “He almost hysterically repeated over and over, nothing to say, nothing to say.… He shook and trembled and his face was livid.”

  Mitchell, sensing weakness, turned Roosevelt down. “We believe that we went more than half way in our proposal at Washington, and we do not feel that we should be asked to make further sacrifice.” His statement was published on 9 October. Within hours, a striker was shot dead at Shenandoah. Panicking, the mayors of more than one hundred of America’s largest cities called for the nationalization of the anthracite industry.

  Roosevelt noted that Poland’s ancient kings had also been hampered by irresponsible subjects. “I must not be drawn into any violent step which would bring reaction and disaster afterward.” He decided to appoint his commission of inquiry, whether Mitchell liked it or not. Congress was entitled to a full report on the situation before he took the law into his own hands. A follow-up letter reached Grover Cleveland on 11 October:

  In all the country there is no man whose name would add such weight to this enquiry as would yours. I earnestly beg you to say that you will accept. I am well aware of the great strain I put upon you by making such a request. I would not make it if I did not feel that the calamity now impending over our people may have consequences which without exaggeration are to be called terrible.

  Cleveland was sixty-five years old, retired, and chronically short of money. His only substantial investment was in—of all things—the anthracite industry. If he accepted Roosevelt’s invitation, he would be obliged to sell these stocks at current, depressed prices. “You rightly appreciate my reluctance to assume any public service,” he wrote back. However, “I feel so deeply the gravity of the situation, and I so fully sympathize with you in your efforts to remedy present sad conditions, that I believe it is my duty to undertake the service.”

  Anticipating an early call, Cleveland sold his coal shares and waited for the President to tell him when he should report for work. But the call never came. Roosevelt’s attention had been diverted by the magic name of J. P. Morgan.

  IT WAS ELIHU ROOT who suggested that “Pierpontifex Maximus” might be able to succeed where reason had failed. Morgan was, after all, the financial gray eminence behind the mine operators. Their coal roads slotted into his greater northeastern railway combination, and he had a seat on several of their boards.

  Root told the President that he had “some ideas” that Morgan might persuade the operators to accept. Without saying what they were, he requested a temporary leave of absence, so that he could visit New York unofficially. “I don’t want to represent you; I want entire freedom to say whatever I please.”

  One of the things Roosevelt liked about Root was his utter self-confidence. He granted leave, but first summoned Philander Knox and made his own attitude clear to both men: as soon as it became necessary for him to send the Army into Pennsylvania, he would do so without consulting them. He would use full force to reopen the mines, so that “the people on the eastern seaboard would have coal and have it right away.” Root and Knox were welcome to submit formal, written protests, but he intended to act as if the nation were in a state of siege.

  Far from dissenting, the Secretary of War put a force of ten thousand Army regulars on instant alert. Then Elihu Root, private citizen, took the midnight sleeper to New York.

  WHILE ROOT AND MORGAN conferred aboard the yacht Corsair, anchored off Manhattan, John Mitchell sat in his Wilkes-Barre digs, chewing on a cigar and snipping at the Sunday paper. A visitor saw that he was sinking into one of his frequent attacks of depression. All around him lay trashy piles of
newsprint and dime novels; on his knees, a child’s magazine cutout was gradually forming.

  When Mitchell finished his scissor-work, he propped it on the mantelpiece. It depicted Abraham Lincoln and two unshackled black slaves, with a caption reading: “A Race Set Free, And The Country At Peace.”

  THE WEATHER TURNED dry and mild, but Roosevelt (semimobile now, on crutches) felt no release of tension. On the contrary, he began to hear rumors of a general strike. That, combined with a sudden frost, would certainly deliver him the greatest crisis faced by any President since April 1861.

  Like Lincoln before him, he chose his military commander with care. General John M. Schofield, a veteran of the Pullman strike, was secretly summoned to 22 Jackson Place, and put in charge of Root’s reserves. The President did not mince words. “I bid you pay no heed to any other authority, no heed to a writ from a judge, or anything else excepting my commands.” Schofield must be ready to move at a half hour’s notice, invade Pennsylvania, dispossess the operators, end the strike, and run the mines as receiver for the government.

  The old soldier received these orders with equanimity. But Congressman James E. Watson, the House Republican Whip, was aghast when Roosevelt confided the details of his plan. “What about the Constitution of the United States? What about seizing private property without due process of law?” Exasperated, Roosevelt grabbed Watson by the shoulder and shouted, “The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution.”

  Then, late on the evening of 13 October, Elihu Root and J. Pierpont Morgan crossed Lafayette Square and knocked on Roosevelt’s door.

  WALTER WELLMAN, as usual the only journalist in town who knew what was going on, watched the door close behind Morgan. He knew the financier was carrying a document capable of ending the strike overnight—a document Root could have proclaimed from the deck of the Corsair. Yet here was the great J.P. coming south “to place the fruit of his power and labor before the young President.” Capital, it would seem, was tacitly acknowledging the supremacy of Government.

  At first, Roosevelt was disappointed with Morgan’s “agreement,” which was addressed to the American people and bore the signatures of all the operators. It began with several pages of familiar complaints, followed by an arbitration offer not much different from the one George Baer had floated at the conference. There was a stated willingness to accept, alternatively, Roosevelt’s commission. But the operators sounded as arrogant as ever in dictating what kind of commissioners he should choose:

  1. An officer of the Engineer Corps of either military or naval service of the United States.

  2. An expert mining engineer, experienced in the mining of coal and other minerals, and not in any way [still] connected with coal mining properties either anthracite or bituminous.

  3. One of the judges of the United States court of the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

  4. A man of prominence, eminent as a sociologist.

  5. A man, who by active participation in mining and selling coal is familiar with the physical and commercial features of the business.

  Anyone could see there was no place for labor here. The word sociologist introduced a note of jargon, yet signaled a clear preference: Carroll D. Wright was the author of Outline of Practical Sociology. Morgan added verbally that Judge George Gray, of the Third Judicial Circuit, and Thomas H. Watkins, a retired anthracite executive, would be acceptable candidates for slots 3 and 5. Three places on the proposed commission were thus earmarked for conservatives, and union sympathizers were unlikely to qualify for the first two.

  Nevertheless, Roosevelt began to see a legal beauty in the document he held in his hands—beauty perfected by Elihu Root via many scratched-out sheets of Corsair stationery. Alone among his advisers, Root understood that the coal-strike conference had foundered not on the shoals of arbitration, but on the rock of recognition. The main element in Baer’s and Markle’s tirades had been their refusal to accredit a union, three fourths of whose members worked outside the anthracite field.

  Thus, the language of the agreement pretended that the operators had never been against arbitration per se, only arbitration with the UMW. Their list of desirable commissioners took advantage of Mitchell’s willingness to accept any board the President chose. It was also calculated to make Roosevelt seem to be taking their advice, whereas in fact Root’s syntax left him plenty of room to negotiate each candidate. Ultimately, the operators hoped to boast that they had proposed arbitration, and were making the commission’s decision their victory. A Pyrrhic one, perhaps—but Mitchell would surely concede it.

  As Grover Cleveland remarked, “When quarreling parties are both in the wrong, and are assailed with blame … they will do strange things to save their faces.”

  ROOT AND MORGAN remained closeted with Roosevelt for one and a half hours. At last, the financier came down alone, and emerged into the night. Reporters surged around him. Usually, when confronted by the press, Morgan flinched, or cursed. Sometimes he even struck out with his cane. But now he smiled. A voice called, “Has the strike been settled?”

  He stopped under a tree and relit his half-burned cigar, as if pondering an answer. Then, still smiling, he walked wordlessly off.

  THE “CORSAIR AGREEMENT” was announced on 14 October. Roosevelt invited John Mitchell to discuss it with him the following day. As he feared, the labor leader objected on the ground that it constrained free power of presidential appointment. Roosevelt asked if, “in view of the very great urgency of the case,” the miners would perhaps “defer to the operators’ views.”

  Mitchell was sure they would not—unless the commission was expanded to seven members, with at least two chosen freely. He would “do his best” to sell that notion to the UMW. Roosevelt said that if so, he would push for former President Cleveland in slot 1, instead of the Army engineer. The next four commissioners could be typecast as per the Agreement, while the last two would be selected by Mitchell and himself: a high Catholic ecclesiastic and a representative of labor.

  Temptingly, he dropped the names of Bishop L. Spalding, a Baltimore patrician and industrial scholar, and Edgar E. Clark, chief of the Railway Conductors Union. Mitchell showed interest, and allowed that the latter would make an “excellent” commissioner. The first whiff of settlement gathered in the air.

  Roosevelt cautioned that he could only “try” to get management to agree to all this. After Mitchell left, he ordered Root to get somebody from the House of Morgan to come south as quickly as possible. Then, feeling a need for fresh air, he laid aside his crutches and went for a long drive out of town.

  GEORGE PERKINS AND Robert Bacon reached 22 Jackson Place at seven o’clock, as the President was dressing for dinner with John Hay. They said they had “full power” to represent both Morgan and the operators. He showed them his expanded list of commissioners, then limped the hundred yards to Hay’s house. Perkins and Bacon remained behind to huddle on the telephone with Morgan and Baer.

  While they conferred, Roosevelt celebrated. He obviously believed the strike was over. Pride in his skills as mediator, and joy in his returning health, bubbled up inside him. “He began talking at the oysters, and the pousse-café found him still at it,” Hay reported to Henry Adams. “When he was one of us, we could sit on him—but who except you, can sit on a Kaiser?”

  THE STRIKE, HOWEVER, was not over, as Roosevelt found to his chagrin when he got back to Jackson Place at 10:00. Perkins and Bacon said they personally approved the idea of a seven-man commission, but that Baer was driving them mad with objections to the inclusion of Edgar Clark. Under no circumstances would the operators allow “a labor man” power over their future.

  Roosevelt privately looked on the next three hours as a “screaming comedy.” Yet the evening could well have disintegrated into tragedy. Perkins and Bacon predicted civil warfare if the President did not yield to Baer’s objections. Roosevelt saw revolution if he did. Root and Wright joined in the debate, to a jangling counterpoint
of long-distance telephone calls. Midnight struck. In two more hours, the morning newspapers would go to press. Roosevelt redoubled his pressure on Perkins and Bacon. Suddenly, the latter said there could be some “latitude” in choosing commissioners, as long as they were put under the right “headings.” Roosevelt pounced.

  I found that 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.… I shall never forget the mixture of relief and amusement I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I would call it Tweedledee they would accept it with rapture; it gave me an illuminating glimpse into one corner of the mighty brains of these “captains of industry.”

  With a straight face, he proposed that Edgar E. Clark be moved to the “eminent sociologist” slot. After all, Mr. Clark must have “thought and studied deeply on social questions” as a union executive. Perkins and Bacon agreed at once. They also said yes to the selection of Bishop Spalding, while Roosevelt approved E. W. Parker of the United States Geological Survey as the scientist.

  The President now had five commissioners acceptable to both sides, with one more slot—that of the Army engineer—not yet negotiated. For the seventh, he still hoped to appoint Grover Cleveland. If Clark qualified as a “sociologist,” a former Commander-in-Chief could be described as having some military experience.

  Suspecting, perhaps, that even mighty brains might jib at this, he said casually that he would like Carroll Wright to serve “as recorder.” Perkins and Bacon again agreed, not realizing that the President now had, in effect, a reserve board member, whom he could promote at leisure if any of the seven proved problematic.