Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [378]
56 Mark Hanna wrote Hanna to TR, 29 Sept. 1902 (TRP).
57 “The present miner” Press statement, 29 Sept. 1902 (JM).
58 Sentimentalities of this Even as TR prepared to make his “impartial” intervention in the strike, a consignment of nonunion anthracite arrived in Washington “for the exclusive use of the Executive Mansion” (Washington Evening Star, 22 Oct. 1902). Plenty of reserve anthracite was secretly shipped out of eastern Pennsylvania to elite customers. Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 28, mentions “the low roar of distant trains, moving coal under the protection of darkness.”
59 “socialistic action” This was no neurosis. For an example of the sort of radical activism already centering around John Mitchell, see the “Program of Reforms” drawn up by his friend Henry Demarest Lloyd, a leading socialist intellectual. The document calls for sweeping nationalizations of industry, punitive taxes on wealth, profit restrictions on private investment, and “immediate registration of all citizens.” Chester Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia, 1963), 472.
60 I SHOULD GREATLY TR, Letters, vol. 3, 334.
61 Duplicate telegrams A. J. Cassatt to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 179.
62 “Doesn’t that just” New York World, 3 Oct. 1902. The idea that anthracite miners, by exclusively striking an exclusive resource, were a “trust” in restraint of trade was not new. Knox had received several Sherman Act petitions to that effect, including one from Willcox himself. But he rejected them on the same grounds that he disallowed antitrust prosecution of the operators. “The miners’ activities are clearly restricted to production, a field in which the State [of Pennsylvania]’s power is necessarily exclusive.” P. C. Knox to TR, 7 June 1902, and “Memorandum on Mr. Ross’s letter,” 7 Oct. 1902, both in PCK.
CHAPTER 11: A VERY BIG AND ENTIRELY NEW THING
1 It’ll be a hard New York Journal, 17 Oct. 1902.
2 CURIOUS ONLOOKERS Except where otherwise indicated, descriptive and atmospheric details of the coal-strike conference are based on reports in the Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, 4 Oct. 1902.
3 Actually, he had George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).
4 For almost an Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902; visual description of Mitchell based on photographs and studio portraits in JM. Other details from “Mitchell, Leader of Men,” profile in World’s Work, 25 Oct. 1902, and Frank J. Warne, “John Mitchell: The Labor Leader and the Man,” Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902.
5 While George Cortelyou Walter Wellman, “The Inside History of the Great Coal Strike,” Collier’s Weekly, 18 Oct. 1902 (illustrated).
6 Eben B. Thomas Ibid. For Markle’s cruelty to employees, see Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, 259, 272.
7 “Gentlemen,” said New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.
8 “Dee-lighted,” The following account of the coal-strike conference is based on Report of the Conference Between the President and Representatives of the Anthracite Coal Companies and Representatives of the United Mine Workers of America, October 3, 1902 (Washington, D.C., 1903). TR’s own account appears in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359–66. Because TR himself notes that the transcript does not include “all of the invectives of the operators,” the author has also relied on a few obvious “news leaks” from participants. Cortelyou, for example, is clearly Walter Wellman’s source for “Inside History.” Other sources are New York Sun and New York World, 4 Oct. 1902. The latter features on-the-spot drawings.
9 He began to John Mitchell interviewed by J. J. Curran, The Survey, 18 Jan. 1919.
10 A yard or two George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug.