While at Pittsfield, Mass., he suffered a severe accident. A trolley car, going at a high rate of speed, ran into a carriage, in which he was riding; a secret service man who sat on the box with the driver was instantly killed; the President was thrown forty feet and fell upon his right cheek which with his right leg was badly bruised. The accident took place on September 3, but nothing daunted he started on the day following from Oyster Bay on a speech-making tour through the South and West.1 The most notable speech was made in Chattanooga on September 8 to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. "I believe emphatically in organized labor," he declared; and then he preached the gospel of work in words to fit the occasion: "Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit. I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn't work at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. The law of worthy work well done is the law of successful American life. I believe in play too play and play hard while you play; but don't make the mistake of thinking that that is the main thing. The work is what counts." 2 An abscess developing on the injured leg, forced him to abandon his trip and return to Washington. 1 Bishop, i. 196. * Current Lit. Pub., i. 69, 70. End CHAPTER IX IN 1902 President Roosevelt was confronted with a strike in the anthracite coal regions, which until then was the greatest coal strike in American history. After many and futile negotiations the strike was declared on May 15, and this brought out all of the miners of anthracite coal. Three men of various education and walks in life were earnestly in favor of settling the strike, but their efforts, both before and after the declaration, were for a while unavailing. John Mitchell, the President of the miners' union,1 was one of the three, and he wrote in his book published in 1903: "The average wage earner has made up his mind that he must remain a wage earner. He has given up the hope of a kingdom to come where he himself will be a capitalist and he asks that the reward for his work be given to him as a workingman. Singly, he has been too weak to enforce his just demands and he has sought strength in union and has associated himself into labor organizations. .. There is no necessary hostility between labor and capital. Neither can do without the other; each has evolved from the other. Capital is labor saved and materialized; the power to labor is in itself a form of capital. There is not even a necessary fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist. Both are men with the virtues and vices of men and each wishes at times more than his fair share." 2 1 The official title was United Mine Workers of America. As owner of bituminous Mark Hanna was another. coal mines, he had had a large experience with striking miners. He had tried the old-fashioned lock-out, negotiation with the miners' union and the substitution of green men for the old miners, with the purpose of breaking up a strike or ending a lock-out. He had come to the conclusion that of all of them, negotiation with the miners' union was on the whole the best plan. His business experience was now joined to his political standing and he gave the benefit of both to the public. Then there was President Roosevelt. With a practical agreement between the three it might have seemed as if a resolution were easy; and they had to deal with only six organizations as through mining and railroad combinations, the whole business of mining anthracite coal may have been said to be centered in these six, chief of whom was George F. Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company as well as of the Railroad Company. Baer, a self-made man, a lawyer by profession, seems to have dominated all the rest and even for a time to have prevailed over J. P. Morgan who had great influence with all of the coal operators. The bituminous coal miners in session at Indianapolis during July, 1902, decided against a sympathetic strike, for the reason that they had a contract with the producers not expiring until the following April; but although living up to their contract, they arranged to give to their brothers in the anthracite region the largest amount possible of material assistance which enabled them to prolong the strike. Thus affairs continued during the summer of 1902. There was a dead-lock between the miners and producers. When September came, the public in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England began to be alarmed regarding their supply of anthracite coal, as on that depended practically their domestic use. Much pressure was brought to bear that in some way the matter be settled so that the public should have their usual supply. Of this pressure the greatest amount was on the President, who appreciated thoroughly the gravity of the situation, and on September 27 wrote to Senator Hanna: "What gives me the greatest concern at the moment is the coal famine. Of course we have nothing to do whatever with this coal strike and no earthly responsibility for it. But the public at large will tend to visit on our heads responsibility for the shortage in coal. . . . But I do most earnestly feel that from every consideration of public policy and good morals, the operators should make some slight concession." 1 No one after the President bore so important a part in this matter as did Mark Hanna. He had temporarily settled the anthracite coal strike of 1900, had now become chairman of the Industrial Department of the Civic Federation, whose object was to prevent strikes and lockouts through trade agreements by means of collective bargaining. This position gave him an added influence with the men. He shared the President's "anxiety in regard to the coal situation." Visiting him at Oyster Bay he went thence to New York City where he saw Mitchell and Morgan. He obtained from Morgan aproposition of settlement which Mitchell, on behalf of 1 Life of Hanna, Croly, 397. * As to Hanna's connection with the Civic Federation see Croly, 390 et seg. the miners, agreed to accept. "I really felt encouraged," he wrote to the President, "to think that I was about to accomplish a settlement. I went to Philadelphia and saw Mr. Baer and to my surprise he absolutely refused to entertain it.” 1 Apparently at this time Baer was the master of the situation. He maintained that the operators must control their own business and not allow any dictation from a miners' union. To the demand for arbitration their reply was, "We have nothing to arbitrate." Hanna felt that the operators were determined on starving the miners to submission which seemed to him difficult as they were "getting abundant supplies from their fellowworkmen all over the country." 2 Roosevelt appreciated every point in the situation. On the same day that he wrote to Hanna, he wrote to Senator Lodge. The operators "have said that they are never going to submit again to having their laborers given a triumph over them for political purposes, as Senator Hanna secured the triumph in 1900. They are now repeating with great bitterness that they do not intend to allow Quay to bully them into making any concession for his political ends any more than they would allow Hanna to do it for his." 3 Roosevelt, however, made up his mind to leave nothing undone. He invited representatives of the operators and miners to meet him in Washington on October 3, and on their assembling, he made them a brief address, telling them that he was impelled to his action by "the urgency and the terrible nature of the catastrophe impending 1 Hanna's letter of Sept. 29, Croly, 398. * Bishop, i. 200. |