ROOSEVELT SENT FOR JOHN MITCHELL
The strike of the anthracite miners which started in the spring with
$90,000 in the treasury, ended in the fall with over a million dollars
in the possession of the United Mine Workers. The strike had been
peaceful. The miners had the support of the public. The tie up of the
collieries had been complete. Factories and railroads were without coal.
Toward fall New York began to suffer. In October, Mr. Roosevelt
summoned “Divine Right Baer”, President of the Coal Producers’ Union,
and other officials of the coal interests, to Washington. He called
also the officials of the miners’ union. They sat at the cabinet table,
the coal officials on one side, the miners’ officials at the other and
the president at the head of the table in between the two groups.
They discussed the matter and the mine owners would not consent to
any kind of settlement. Mr. Baer said that before he would consent to
arbitration with the union he would call out the militia and shoot the
miners back into the mines.
The meeting adjourned without results. Mr. Roosevelt sent for John
Mitchell. He patted him on the shoulder, told him that he was the true
patriot and loyal citizen and not the mine owners. After the conference
there was a deadlock.
Mr. Mitchell reported the conference to the miners. They said, “All
right. We have money enough to see this thing through. We will fight to
a finish. Until the coal operators recognize our union and deal with
our demands.”
Wall Street sent for Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan to come home from Europe.
He came. The situation was serious for the mine operators. The public
was indignant at their stubbornness.
A Mr. ---- wrote to Montgomery where I was organizing and asked me
to come to New York, saying he wished to discuss the strike with me.
I went to headquarters at Wilkesbarre and asked Mr. Mitchell what I
should do.
He said, “Go, Mother, but whatever you do, do not consent to any
outside group arbitrating this strike. The union won this strike. The
operators know that they are beaten and that they must deal with the
United Mine Workers.”
“No,” I said, “I will consent to no other group undertaking the
settlement. I will report to you.”
I met Mr. ---- and we went over the situation. He then went down to Mr.
Morgan’s office and I waited for him in his office until he returned.
“Mr. Morgan is most distressed,” he said on his return. “He says the
miners have us!”
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Baer and his group met on Mr. Morgan’s yacht
out in the bay of New York. Mr. Root came down from Washington to
represent Roosevelt. Not a newspaperman was permitted out on that
yacht. There were no telegrams, no telephones, no messages. How to lose
the strike without apparently losing it was what they discussed. But
give the victory to the union they would not!
Mr. Root proposed the way out. The President should appoint “an
impartial board of inquiry.” This method of settling the strike would
avoid capitulation to the union, put the operators in the position of
yielding to public opinion, make the miners lose public support if they
refused to submit their cause to the board.
The next morning, Monday, my friend, Mr. ----, met Mr. Morgan at 209
Madison Avenue. He returned from that appointment, crying “The strike
is settled.”
I went back to Wilkesbarre and found that Mr. Mitchell had already been
to Washington and had consented to the arbitration of the strike by a
board appointed by the president.
“It would never do to refuse the president,” he said, when I tried to
dissuade him from taking part in the conferences.
“You have a good excuse to give the president,” I replied. “Tell him
that when you came home from the last conference in the cabinet room,
Mr. Baer said he would shoot the miners back before he would deal with
their union. Tell him that the miners said, ‘All right. We will fight
to a finish for the recognition of The United Mine Workers’.”
“It would not do to tell the president that,” he replied.
That night, Mr. Mitchell, accompanied by Mr. Wellman, Roosevelt’s
publicity man, went to Washington. He had an audience with the
president the next morning. Before he left the White House, the
newspapers, magazines and pulpits were shouting his praises, calling
him the greatest labor leader in all America. Mr. Mitchell was not
dishonest but he had a weak point, and that was his love of flattery;
and the interests used this weak point in furtherance of their designs.
When he returned to Wilkesbarre, priests, ministers and politicians
fell on their knees before him. Bands met him at the station. The men
took the horses from his carriage and drew it themselves. Parades with
banners marched in his honor beside the carriage. His black hair was
pushed back from his forehead. His face was pale. His dark eyes shone
with excitement. There were deep lines in his face from the long strain
he had been under.
Flattery and homage did its work with John Mitchell. The strike was
won. Absolutely no anthracite coal was being dug. The operators could
have been made to deal with the unions if Mr. Mitchell had stood firm.
A moral victory would have been won for the principle of unionism. This
to my mind was more important than the material gains which the miners
received through the later decision of the president’s board.
Mr. Mitchell died a rich man, distrusted by the working people whom he
once served.
From out that strike came the Irish Hessian law--the establishment
of a police constabulary. The bill was framed under the pretext that
it would protect the farmer. Workingmen went down to Harrisburg and
lobbied for it. They hated the coal and iron police of the mine owners
and thought anything preferable to them. They forgot that the coal and
iron police could join the constabulary and they forgot the history of
Ireland, whence the law came: Ireland, soaked with the blood of men and
of women, shed by the brutal constabulary.
“No honorable man will join,” said a labor leader to me when I spoke of
my fears.
“Then that leaves the workers up against the bad men, the gunmen and
thugs that do join,” I answered.
And that’s just where they have been left.
I attended the hearings of the board of inquiry, appointed by President
Roosevelt. Never shall I forget the words of John Mitchell as he
appeared before the commission:
“For more than twenty years the anthracite miners have groaned under
most intolerable and inhuman conditions. In a brotherhood of labor they
seek to remedy their wrongs.”
Never shall I forget the words of President Baer, speaking for the
operators:
“The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected not by
the labor agitator but by the Christian men and women to whom God in
His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of
this country.”
Never shall I forget the words of labor’s great pleader, Clarence
Darrow:
“These agents of the Almighty have seen men killed daily; have seen
men crippled, blinded and maimed and turned out to alms-houses and
on the roadsides with no compensation. They have seen the anthracite
region dotted with silk mills because the wages of the miner makes it
necessary for him to send his little girls to work twelve hours a day,
a night, in the factory ... at a child’s wage. President Baer sheds
tears because boys are taken into the union but he has no tears because
they are taken into the breakers.”
Never, never shall I forget his closing words, words which I shall hear
when my own life draws to its close:
“This contest is one of the important contests that have marked the
progress of human liberty since the world began. Every advantage that
the human race has won has been at fearful cost. Some men must die that
others may live. It has come to these poor miners to bear this cross,
not for themselves alone but that the human race may be lifted up to a
higher and broader plane.”
The commission found in favor of the miners in every one of their
demands. The operators gracefully bowed to their findings. Labor walked
into the House of Victory through the back door.