Having seen briefly how President Roosevelt dealt with Capital,
let us look even more briefly at his dealings with Labor. I think
that he took the deepest personal satisfaction in fighting the
criminal rich and the soulless corporations, because he regarded
them not only as lawbreakers, malefactors of great wealth, but as
despicably mean, in that they used their power to oppress the
poor and helpless classes. The Labor groups when they burst out
into violence merely responded to the passion which men naturally
feel at injustice and at suffering; to their violence they did
not add slyness or legal deceits. But Roosevelt had no toleration
for the Labor demagogue, for the walking delegate, and all
similar parasites, who preyed upon the working classes for their
own profit, and fomented the irritation of Labor and Capital.
Stronger, however, than his sympathy for any individual, and
especially for those who suffered without redress, was his love
of justice. This he put in a phrase which he invented and made
current, a phrase which everybody could understand: "the labor
unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have
a square deal." At another time he expressed the same idea, by
saying that the rich man should have justice, and that the poor
man should have justice, and that no man should have more or
less.
Time soon brought a test for his devotion to social justice. In
the summer of 1902 the coal-miners of Pennsylvania stopped
working. Early in September the public awoke with a start to the
realization that a coal famine threatened the country. In the
Eastern States, in New York, and Pennsylvania, and in some of the
Middle Western States, a calamity threatened, which would be
quite as terrible as the invasion of an enemy's army. For not
only would lack of fuel cause incalculable hardship and distress
from cold, but it would stop transportation, and all
manufacturing by machinery run by coal. The mine operators and
the miners were at a deadlock. The President invited the leaders
on both sides to confer with him at the White House. They came
and found him stretched out on an invalid's chair, with one of
his legs much bandaged, from an accident he had received in a
collision at Pittsfield a few weeks before, but his mental vigor
was unsubdued. John Mitchell spoke for the miners. The President
urged the quarrelers to come to terms. But the big coal operators
would not yield. They knew that the distress among the mining
population was great, and they believed that if the authorities
would only maintain peace, the miners would soon be forced to
give in. So the meeting broke up and the "coal barons," as the
newspapers dubbed the operators, quitted with evident
satisfaction. They felt that they had not only repelled the
miners again, but virtually put down the President for
interfering in a matter in which he had no legal jurisdiction.
And, in truth, the laws gave the President of the United States
no authority to play the role of arbiter in a strike. His plain
duty was to keep the peace. If a strike resulted in violent
disorders he could send United States troops to quell them, but
only in case the Governor of the State in which the riots
occurred declared himself unable, by the State force at his
command, to keep the peace, and requested assistance from the
President. In the coal strike the Governor of Pennsylvania, for
reasons which I need not discuss here, refused to call for United
States troops, and so did the Pennsylvania Legislature. Roosevelt
acted as a patriotic citizen might act, but being the President,
his interference had immensely greater weight than that of any
private citizen could have. He knew the law in the matter, but he
believed that the popular opinion of the American people would
back him up.
In spite of the first rebuff, therefore, he persuaded the miners
and the operators to agree to the appointment of an arbitration
commission, and this suggested a settlement which both
contestants accepted. It ended the great coal strike of 1902, but
it left behind it much indignation among the American people, who
realized for the first time that one of the three or four great
industries essential to the welfare and even to the life itself
of the Nation, was in the hands of men who preferred their
selfish interests to those of the Nation. It taught several other
lessons also; it taught, for instance, that great combinations of
Labor may be as dangerous as those of Capital, and as heedless of
everything except their own selfish control. It taught that the
people of the States and of the Nation could not go on forever
without taking steps to put an end to the already dangerous
hostility between Capital and Labor, and that that end must be
the establishment of justice for all. An apologist of the "coal
barons" might have pleaded that they held out not merely for
their private gain on that occasion, but in order to defeat the
growing menace of Labor. Their stubbornness might turn back the
rising flood of socialism.
Respecters of legal precedent, on the other hand, criticised the
President. They acknowledged his good intentions, but they
pointed out that his extra-legal interference set an ominously
bad example. And some of them would have preferred to go cold all
winter, and even to have had the quarrel sink into civil war,
rather than to have had the constitutional ideals of the Nation
distorted or obscured by the President's good-natured endeavor.
Roosevelt himself, however, never held this opinion. In 1915, he
wrote to Mr. Washburn: "I think the settlement of the coal strike
was much the most important thing I did about Labor, from every
standpoint."
I find an intimate letter of his which dates from the time of the
conflict itself and gives frankly his motives and apology, if we
should call it that. He admits that his action was not strictly
legal, but he asks that, if the President of the United States
may not intervene to prevent a widespread calamity, what is his
authority worth? If it had been a national strike of iron-workers
or miners, he would have held himself aloof, but the coal strike
affected a product necessary to the life and health of the
people. It was easy enough for well-to-do gentlemen to say that
they had rather go cold and see the fight carried. through until
the strikers submitted, than to have legal precedence ignored;
for these gentlemen had money enough to buy fuel at even an
exorbitant price, and they would be warm anyway, while the great
mass of the population froze. I may add that it seems more legal
than sensible that any official chosen to preserve the public
welfare and health should not be allowed to interpose against
persons who would destroy both, and may stir only after the
destroyers have caused the catastrophe they aimed at.
Roosevelt's action in the great coal strike not only averted the
danger, but it also gave Labor means of judging him fairly. Every
demagogue, from the days of Cleon down, has talked glibly in
behalf of the downtrodden or unjustly treated working-men, and we
might suppose that the demagogue has acquired enlargement of the
heart, owing to his overpowering sympathy with Labor. But the
questions we have to ask about demagogues are two: Is he sincere?
Is he wise?
Sincerity alone has been rather too much exalted as an excuse for
the follies and crimes of fanatics and zealots, blatherskites and
cranks. Some of our "lunatic fringe" of reformers have been heard
to palliate the Huns' atrocities in Belgium, by the plea: "Ah,
but they were so perfectly sincere!" Sincerity alone, therefore,
is not enough; it must be wise or it may be diabolical. Now
Roosevelt was both sincere and wise. He left no doubt in the
strikers' minds that he sympathized with their sufferings and
grievances and with their attempts to better their condition, so
far as this could be achieved without violence, and without
leaving a permanent state of war between Labor and Capital. In a
word, he did not aim at merely patching up a temporary peace, but
at finding, and when found, applying, a remedy to the deep-rooted
causes of the quarrel.
In his first message to Congress, the new President said: "The
most vital problem with which this country, and, for that matter,
the whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has
for one side the betterment of social conditions, moral and
physical, in large cities, and for another side the effort to
deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions which we group
together when we speak of 'labor.'"
By his settlement of the coal strike, Roosevelt showed the
workers that he would practice towards them the justice which he
preached, but this did not mean that he would be unjust towards
the capitalists. They, too, should have justice, and they had it.
He never intended to coddle laborers or to make them feel that,
having a grievance, as they alleged, they must be specially
favored. Since Labor is, or should be, common to all men,
Roosevelt believed that every laborer, whether farmer or
mechanic, employer or employee, merchant or financier, should
stand erect and look every other man straight in the eyes, and
neither look up nor down, but with level gaze, fearless,
uncringing, uncondescending. The laws he proposed, the
adjustments he arranged, had the self-respect, the dignity, of
the individual, for their aim. He knew that nothing could be more
dangerous to the public, or more harmful to the laboring class
itself, than to make of it a privileged class, absolved from the
obligations, and even from the laws, which bound the rest of the
community. By this ideal he set a great gulf between himself and
the demagogues who fawned upon Labor and corrupted it by granting
its unjust demands.
He had always present before him a vision of the sacred Oneness
of the body politic. This made him the greatest of modern
Democrats, and the chief interpreter, as it seems to me, of the
highest ideal of American Democracy. The ideal of Oneness can
never be realized in a State which permits a single class to
enjoy privileges of its own at the expense of all other classes;
and it makes no difference whether this class belongs to the
Proletariat or to the Plutocracy. Equality before the law, and
justice, are the two eternal instruments for establishing the
true Democracy. And I do not recall that in any of the measures
which Roosevelt supported these two vital principles were
violated. The following brief quotations from later messages
summarize his creed:
'In the vast and complicated mechanism of our modern civilized
life, the dominant note is the note of industrialism, and the
relations of capital and labor, and especially of organized
capital and organized labor, to each other, and to the public at
large, come second in importance only to the intimate questions
of family life.'
The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has
come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be
favored as long as it does good, but each should be sharply
checked where it acts against law and justice.
Any one can profess a creed; Theodore Roosevelt lived his.
Nothing better tested his impartiality than the strike of the
Federation of Western Miners in 1907. Many murders and much
violence were attributed to this organization and they were
charged with assassinating Governor Steunenberg of Idaho. Their
leaders, Moyer and Haywood, were anarchists like themselves, and
although they professed contempt for law, as soon as they were
arrested and brought up for trial, they clutched at every quibble
of the law, as drowning men clutch at straws to save them; and,
be it said to the glory or shame of the law, it furnished enough
quibbles, not only to save them from the gallows, but to let them
loose again on society with the legal whitewash "not guilty"
stamped upon them.
Roosevelt understood the great importance of punishing these men,
and he committed the indiscretion of classing them with certain
big capitalists as "undesirable citizens." Members of the
Federation then wrote him denouncing his attempt to prejudice the
courts against Moyer and Haywood, and they resented that their
leaders should be coupled with Harriman and other big capitalists
as "undesirable citizens." This gave the President the
opportunity to reply that such criticism did not come
appropriately from the Federation; for they and their supporters
had got up parades, mass-meetings, and petitions in favor of
Moyer and Haywood and for the direct purpose of intimidating the
court and jury. "You want," he said in substance, "the square
deal for the defendants only. I want the square deal for every
one"; and he added, "It is equally a violation of the policy of
the square deal for a capitalist to protest against denunciation
of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing and for a labor
leader to pro test against the denunciation of a labor leader who
has been guilty of wrongdoing." *
* Autobiography, 531.
But Moyer and Haywood, as I have said, escaped punishment, and
before long Haywood reappeared as leader of the Industrial
Workers of the World, an anarchistic body with a comically
inappropriate name for its members objected to nothing so much as
to industry and work. The I.W.W., as they have been known for
short, have consistently preached violence and "action," by which
they might take for themselves the savings and wealth of others
as a means to enable them to do no work. And some of the recent
strikes which have brought the greatest misery upon the laborers
whom they misled, have been directed by I. W. W. leaders.
"I treated anarchists and bomb-throwing and dynamiting gentry
precisely as I treated other criminals," Roosevelt writes:
"Murder is murder. It is not rendered one whit better by the
allegation that it is committed on behalf of a cause." * I need
hardly state that the President was as consistently vigilant to
prevent labor unions from persecuting non-union men as he was in
upholding the just rights of the union.
* Autobiography, 532.
Consider what this record of his with Capital and Labor really
means. The social conditions in the United States, owing to the
immense expansion in the production of wealth--an expansion which
included the invention of innumerable machines and the
application, largely made possible by immigration, of millions of
laborers--had changed rapidly, and had brought pressingly to the
front novel and gigantic industrial and financial problems. In
the solution of these problems Justice and Equality must not only
be regarded, but must play the determining part. Now, Justice and
Equality were beautiful abstractions which could be praised by
every demagogue without laying upon him any obligation except
that of dulcet lip service. Every American, young or old, had
heard them lauded so unlimitedly that he did not trouble himself
to inquire whether they were facts or not; they were words,
sonorous and pleasing words, which made his heart throb, and
himself feel a worthier creature. And then came along a young
zealot, mighty in physical vigor and moral energy, who believed
that Justice and Equality were not mere abstractions, were not
mere words for politicians and parsons to thrill their audiences
by, but were realities, duties, which every man in a Democracy
was bound to revere and to make prevail. And he urged them with
such power of persuasion, such tirelessness, such titanic zeal,
that he not only converted the masses of the people to believe in
them, too, but he also made the legislators of the country
understand that they must embody these principles in the national
statute book. He did not originate, as I have said, all or most
of the reforms, but he gave ear to those who first suggested
them, and his enthusiasm and support were essential to their
adoption. In order to measure the magnitude of Roosevelt's
contribution in marking deeply the main principles which should
govern the New Age, we need only remember how little his
predecessor, President McKinley, a good man with the best
intentions, either realized that the New Age was at hand, or
thought it necessary even to outline the principles which should
guide it; and how little his successor, President Taft, a most
amiable man, understood that the New Age, with the Rooseveltian
reforms, had come to stay, and could not be swept back by
actively opposing it or by allowing the Rooseveltian ideals to
lapse.