Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [100]
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.
Morgan’s men adjourned once more to the telephone. Back over the line came consent to the “eminent sociologist” and to the Catholic prelate. But Baer had the satisfaction of rejecting a former President of the United States. This permitted the instant elevation of Wright. And so, as Roosevelt put it, the thing was done. “Heavens and earth, it has been a struggle!”
SOME WEEKS AFTER the Coal Strike Commission had begun its work, and anthracite fires were glowing in forty million grates, George Baer encountered Owen Wister and roared at him, “Does your friend ever think?” The railroad executive was still furious over Roosevelt’s “impetuous” intervention between free-market forces. Even the most conservative economic experts were predicting that United Mine Workers would win at least a 10 percent wage increase, plus fairer and safer working conditions and the right to arbitrate all disputes.
“He certainly seems to act,” Wister replied.
The rest of the world seemed to agree. Theodore Roosevelt’s mediation between capital and labor earned him fame as the first head of state to confront the largest problem of the twentieth century. He was cheered in the French Chamber of Deputies, and hailed by The Times of London as a political original. “In a most quiet and unobtrusive manner the President has done a very big and entirely new thing. We are witnessing not merely the ending of the coal strike, but the definite entry of a powerful government upon a novel sphere of operation.”
At home, Roosevelt basked in a popular outpouring of admiration and affection that