Theodore Rex (37 page)

CHILL WEATHER THAT
weekend sent the first tremors of panic through coal-dependent states. Northeastern hospitals, alarmed by a rise in the pneumonia rate, competed for reserve anthracite at three or four times last winter’s cost. Poor families burned coconut shells, available at fifteen cents a sack from candy companies, to keep warm. From New York, Mayor Seth Low wired the President: “
I CANNOT EMPHASIZE TOO STRONGLY THE IMMENSE INJUSTICES OF THE EXISTING COAL SITUATION.… MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE … WILL ENDURE REAL SUFFERING IF PRESENT CONDITIONS CONTINUE
.”

Henry Cabot Lodge, who viewed all situations politically, whether they were social, sexual, or seasonal, feared that his Bay State constituents might vote Democratic in November. “They say (and this is literal) ‘We don’t care whether you are to blame or not. Coal is going up, and the party in power must be punished.’ ” He made a characteristic inquiry. “Is there anything we can appear to do?”

“
Literally nothing,” Roosevelt wrote back, “so far as I have yet been able to find out.” Unless Pennsylvania requested federal aid, the strike remained a state issue.

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:

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.

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)

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.

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 service.

CURIOUS ONLOOKERS BEGAN
congregating outside number 22 Jackson Place early on Friday, 3 October 1902. Their ranks were swelled by the largest contingent of reporters and photographers seen in Washington since the beginning of the Spanish-American War. It was an exquisite fall morning. Sun slanted through the open windows of the President’s second-floor parlor, at such an angle that people across the street could make out several yards of silk wall-covering, and the tops of fourteen empty chairs. Roosevelt himself was nowhere to be seen.

Just before ten o’clock, the Attorney General, natty in white vest and bowler, skipped up the front steps with his hands in his pockets. Moments later, he reappeared above, suddenly bald. From within came a piping shout, “Hello, Knox!” Roosevelt rolled into view in a blue-striped robe, a bowl of asters in his lap. He placed the flowers on a sunny sill, then, to general disappointment, moved out of sight.

Actually, he had only wheeled himself into a corner between two windows. Flanked thus, he sat in inscrutable shadow, facing a semicircle of seats bathed in light. For once he was not performer, but audience. He could not direct the players who would soon appear before him, yet without him they could not interact: they must throw their speeches his way.

For almost an hour he conferred quietly with Knox and another early arrival, Commissioner of Labor Carroll D. Wright. Outside, police tried to contain the thickening crowd. John Mitchell and his three aides came across the
square at six minutes before eleven. Kodaks clicked—probably in vain, because with his swarthy face and dark gray eyes under a black fedora, the union leader was dark enough to defeat any exposure. A black frock coat ballooned slightly behind him as he walked. Such saturninity was to be expected, perhaps, of a former coal miner. But Mitchell’s white starched collar, dazzling in the sun, made him also look clean and handsome enough to thrill any woman in the crowd. Only the scarred hands betrayed the years he had spent underground.