Volume Vi Part 9 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Copyright, 1901. by Pach Bros., N. Y: J. Pierpont Morgan.
One effect of this organization at home was to place the s.h.i.+p Subsidy Bill, which pa.s.sed the Senate in 1901, for the time, at least, on the table. The sentiment of the country, especially of the Middle West, would not permit the payment of public money to a concern commercially able to defy Britannia on the sea.
The Yankee Peril confronted Londoners when they saw American capital securing control of their proposed underground transit system. At their tables they beheld the output of food trusts. One of these, the so-called Beef Trust, called down upon itself in 1902 domestic as well as foreign anathema.
The failure of the corn crop in 1900, together with a scarcity of cattle, tended to raise the price of beef. In 1902 outcry became emphatic. Advance in meat values drew forcibly to view the control held by six slaughtering concerns acting in unison.
The President ordered an investigation, and, as a result, proceedings under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan not obnoxious to decrees, but effective for union.
If the public suffered from these phalanxed industries while they ran smoothly, it endured peculiar evils from the periodical conflicts between the capital and the labor engaged in them.
The Steel Strike of 1901 was a conflict over the unionizing of certain hitherto non-union plants of the United States Steel Corporation. It resulted in defeat for the strikers and in the disunionizing of plants.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Two officers standing in front of a rail car.]
Col. Clements. Gen. Gobin, commanding troops sent to Shenandoah in the coal strike of 1902.
This strike had no such consequences for the consuming public as attended the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which was more bitterly fought in that it was a conflict over wages. The standard of living had been lowered in one of the coal-fields by the introduction of cheap foreign labor. Now the same process threatened the other coal-field.
A strike ordered by the United Mine Workers began May 12, 1902, when one hundred and forty-seven thousand miners went out. Though the record was marred at places, they behaved well and retained to a large degree public sympathy. When the price of anthracite rose from about $5 a ton to $28 and $30, the parts of the country using hard coal were threatened with a fuel famine and had begun to realize it. For the five months ending October 12th, the strike was estimated to have cost over $126,000,000. The operators stubbornly refused to arbitrate or to recognize the union, and the miners, with equal constancy, held their ranks intact.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Three men is suits sitting on a large log.]
Coal strike at Shenandoah, Pa., 1902. A strikers' picket.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Seven men around a large desk.]
Copyright, 1902, by George Grantham Bain.
The coal strike arbitrators chosen by the President. Carroll D. Wright, Recorder; T. H. Watkins, General J. M. Wilson, Judge Gray, Presiding Officer; E, W. Parker, E. E. Clark. and Bishop Spalding.
The problem of protecting the public pressed for solution as never before. The only suggestion at first discussed was arbitration. Enforced arbitration could not be effected in the absence of contract without infringing the workingman's right to labor or to decline to do so; in other words, without reducing him, in case of adverse decision by arbitration, to a condition of involuntary servitude. It looked as though no solution would be reached unless State or nation should condemn and acquire ample portions of the mining lands to be worked under its own auspices and in a just manner. This course was suggested, but nearly all deemed it dangerously radical; nor was it as yet likely to be adopted by Congress or by the Pennsylvania legislature, should these powers be called to deal with the problem.
On October 3 President Roosevelt called the coal operators and President Mitch.e.l.l of the United Mine Workers to a conference at the White House, urging them to agree. His effort, at first seeming unsuccessful, was much criticised, but very few failed to praise it when, a few days later, it was found to have succeeded completely. An able and impartial commission, satisfactory to both sides, was appointed by the President to act as arbitrator, both miners and operators agreeing to abide its decrees. The miners, the four hundred thousand women and children dependent on them, the poor beginning to suffer from cold, indeed the whole nation, including, no doubt, the operators, felt relief.
”How much better,” said the young President, once, addressing a fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sembly, ”boldly to attempt remedying a bad situation than to sit quietly in one's retreat, sigh, and think how good it would be if the situation could be remedied!”
CHAPTER II
ROOSEVELT'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION, 1901-1905
[1902]
The sentiment noted at the end of the last chapter seemed to be the motive of Mr. Roosevelt's public life. Not only was he better informed on the whole than almost any President who had sat in the chair before, but he was a good lawyer, familiar with national and general history and awake to all contemporary doings, questions, and interests south, west, east, and abroad. He was also more a man of action and affairs than any of his predecessors. He had, in a very high degree, alertness, energy, courage, initiative, dispatch. Physically as well as mentally vigorous, he read much, heard all who could usefully inform him, apprehended easily, decided quickly, and toiled like Hercules. He was just and catholic in spirit, appreciating whatever was good in any section of the country or cla.s.s of people. He respected precedent but was not its slave. Rather than walk always in ruts with never a jolt, he preferred some risks of tumbling over hummocks. Few public men of any age or country have more fully met Aristotle's test of a statesman: ”ability to see facts as they exist and to do the things needing to be done.”
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