Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [91]
Roosevelt struck out line after cautious line, and wrote: “But that the urgency and terrible nature of the catastrophe now impending over a large portion of our people, in the shape of a winter fuel famine, and the further fact that as this strike affected a necessity of life to so many of our people, no precedent in other strikes will be created, impel me, after much anxious thought, to believe that my duty requires me to see whether I cannot bring about an agreement.”
THE COAL STRIKE was five months old. Every mail, every newspaper proclaimed an escalation of violence in anthracite country. There had been, by various estimates, six to fourteen murders, sixty-seven aggravated assaults (from eye-gougings to attempted lynchings), and sundry riots, ambushes, and arson. Bridges were being blown up, trains wrecked, mines flooded. Seven counties in northeastern Pennsylvania were under military surveillance. Governor Stone authorized state troops to “shoot to kill” at any provocation.
Mark Hanna wrote from Cleveland to say that the operators had told him they would not accept even an industry-appointed board of arbitration. “You see how determined they are. It looks as if it was only to be settled when the miners are starved to it.” And from Wilkes-Barre came John Mitchell’s most emotional public statement yet, vowing that his men would make the ultimate sacrifice, if necessary:
“YOU SEE HOW DETERMINED THEY ARE.”
John Mitchell as president of United Mine Workers, ca. 1902 (photo credit 10.1)
The present miner has had his day; he has been oppressed and ground down and denied the right to live the life of a human being; but there is another generation coming up, a generation of little children prematurely doomed to the whirl of the mill and the soot and the noise and the blackness of the breaker. It is for [them] that we are fighting. We have not underestimated the strength of our opponents … but in the grimy hand of the miner is the little white hand of a child, a child like the children of the rich.
Sentimentalities of this kind left Roosevelt unmoved. More than any prophecies of future doom, or loss of congressional seats in November, he dreaded an immediate spread of “socialistic action” through the ranks of labor if his telegram to Baer failed. So he cast it in the form no American could refuse: that of a presidential invitation.
I SHOULD GREATLY LIKE TO SEE YOU ON FRIDAY NEXT, OCTOBER 3d, AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK A.M., HERE IN WASHINGTON, IN REGARD TO THE FAILURE OF THE COAL SUPPLY, WHICH HAS BECOME A MATTER OF VITAL CONCERN TO THE WHOLE NATION. I HAVE SENT A SIMILAR DISPATCH TO MR. JOHN MITCHELL, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA.
Duplicate telegrams went out to six other mine owners and coal-road executives. All agreed to attend, with the exception of the Pennsylvania’s A. J. Cassatt, who pleaded noninvolvement in the dispute, and the Delaware & Hudson’s aged Robert M. Olyphant, who said he would be represented by his counsel, David Willcox. Mitchell was reluctant to face such a phalanx of management alone, and received permission to bring along three UMW district presidents. Roosevelt made no attempt to explain the curious imbalance of his initial list. To liberals, it betrayed a bias in favor of management; to conservatives, it was a recognition of Mitchell’s monopolistic power. “Doesn’t that just show,” Willcox fumed, “that this one man has got the biggest kind of a trust in labor?”
In an eve-of-conference briefing, Knox and Root cautioned the President against allowing either side to hurl accusations of monopoly and tyranny. The tone of the proceedings must be kept lofty, in the higher interests of millions of innocent Americans without heat.
Roosevelt himself, as he prepared for the greatest challenge of his political career, could take satisfaction in the fact that the operators had already moderated their position. They had actually consented to meet under the same roof as John Mitchell. And in the same room too: a President in a wheelchair could hardly be expected to perform shuttle