Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [90]
He suspected that the real issue in anthracite country was one of executive “face.” The operators refused to recognize John Mitchell because they associated him with their humiliation in 1900, when Senator Hanna had bullied them into an election-year wage increase. They would never hand labor another victory to help a politician. At least, not this politician:
Unfortunately the strength of my public position before the country is also its weakness. I am genuinely independent of the big monied men in all matters where I think the interests of the public are concerned, and probably I am the first President of recent times of whom this could truthfully be said.… I am at my wits’ end how to proceed.
Two days later, the Governor of Massachusetts arrived in town, red-eyed with worry. W. Murray Crane felt a bond with Roosevelt since their shared escape from death at Pittsfield, but he did not hesitate to lecture him: “Unless you end this strike, the workers in the North will begin tearing down buildings for fuel. They will not stand being frozen to death.”
“Agreed. What is your remedy?”
Crane suggested Roosevelt appeal to both sides simultaneously, in words showing that he favored neither. Perhaps a bipolar conference could be arranged, along the lines of one that had happened almost accidentally during a teamsters’ strike in Boston. Then, too, management had refused to meet with labor, but the Governor had been allowed to shuttle between adjacent hotel suites as mediator. This dialogue-by-proxy led to an arbitration agreement in fewer than twenty-four hours. “It worked then,” Crane said, “and it will work now.”
A crisis-management team collected round Roosevelt as he brooded over what to do. Along with Crane and the essential Knox, there were his Postmaster General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Navy. Payne spoke for the electorate; Root for Wall Street; and Moody advised on the probable reactions of Congress.
Crane’s idea of a conference was opposed only by Knox. But the other Cabinet officers clearly hoped that somebody else of stature would intervene, as Hanna had done two years before. Roosevelt was not so sanguine, nor had he patience to wait much longer. His moral sense—always abstract, always powerful—persuaded him that the miners were entitled to the tribunal they asked for. He felt that Knox was advocating “the Buchanan principle of striving to find some constitutional reason for inaction.”
In the cool morning light of 30 September, he summoned his advisers back for another meeting. “Yes, I will do it,” he said, wincing at the pain in his leg. He showed them the draft of an invitation he proposed to send to George Baer. Knox subjected it to close legal review. Crane, Payne, and Moody made further changes. “I am much obliged to you gentlemen,” the President growled through set teeth, “for leaving me one sentence of my own.”
He got his revenge on the memorandum of action that they, in turn, submitted to him.
1st. We would recommend that a telegram be sent to the leading operators and also to Mitchell, the President of the Miners’ Association, substantially in the form of your proposed letter to Mr. Baer.…
2nd. We would suggest [saying] that upon the one hand the operators, as the owners of the coal mines, entertain certain views upon the basis of their conduct, whereas upon the other hand their workmen claim that certain modifications in the arrangements heretofore existing between them should be made; that these are substantially commercial questions affecting immediately the parties concerned, but the public only indirectly—
Roosevelt reached for a pencil. “The public also, vitally,” he scrawled.
—that so long as there seemed a reasonable hope that these matters could be adjusted between the parties it had not seemed proper on your part to interfere in any way; that you should disclaim your right or duty to interfere upon any legal grounds—
“Legal grounds now existing,” Roosevelt rephrased it.
… but that the request has been so general from all classes of