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Theodore Roosevelt and His Times
Chapter VIII. The Square Deal for Labor
by Howland, Harold
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It should go without saying that Roosevelt was vigorously and
deeply concerned with the relations between capital and labor,
for he was interested in everything that concerned the men and
women of America, everything that had to do with human relations.
From the very beginning of his public life he had been a
champion
of the workingman when the workingman needed defense against
exploitation and injustice. But his advocacy of the workers'
rights was never demagogic nor partial. In industrial relations,
as in the relations between business and the community, he
believed in the square deal. The rights of labor and the rights
of capital must, he firmly held, be respected each by the other--
and the rights of the public by both.
Roosevelt believed thoroughly in trade unions. He realized that
one of the striking accompaniments of the gigantic developments
in business and industry of the past few generations was a gross
inequality in the bargaining relation between the employer and
the individual employee standing alone.
Speaking of the great coal strike which occurred while he was
President, he developed the idea in this way:
"The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which
employed their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the
services of any particular miner. The miner, on the other hand,
however expert, could not dispense with the companies. He needed
a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get one.
What the miner had to sell--his labor--was a perishable
commodity; the labor of today--if not sold today was lost
forever. Moreover, his labor was not like most commodities--a
mere thing; it was a part of a living, human being. The workman
saw, and all citizens who gave earnest thought to the matter saw
that the labor problem was not only an economic, but also a
moral, a human problem. Individually the miners were impotent
when they sought to enter a wage contract with the great
companies; they could make fair terms only by uniting into trade
unions to bargain collectively. The men were forced to cooperate
to secure not only their economic, but their simple human rights.
They, like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions
under which they lived to unite in unions of their industry or
trade, and those unions were bound to grow in size, in strength,
and in power for good and evil as the industries in which the men
were employed grew larger and larger."*
[Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 471-78.]
He was fond of quoting three statements of Lincoln's as
expressing precisely what he himself believed about capital and
labor. The first of these sayings was this: "Labor is prior to,
and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor,
and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration."
This statement, Roosevelt used to say, would have made him, if it
had been original with him, even more strongly denounced as a
communist agitator than he already was! Then he would turn from
this, which the capitalist ought to hear, to another saying of
Lincoln's which the workingman ought to hear: "Capital has its
rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . .
. . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property.
Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; it
is a positive good in the world."
Then would come the final word from Lincoln, driven home by
Roosevelt with all his usual vigor and fire: "Let not him who is
houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring
that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
In these three sayings, Roosevelt declared, Lincoln "showed the
proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital
and labor, of human rights and property rights." Roosevelt's own
most famous statement of the matter was made in an address which
he delivered before the Sorbonne in Paris, on his way back from
Africa: "In every civilized society property rights must be
carefully safeguarded. Ordinarily, and in the great majority of
cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in
the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is
a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper
hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property."
Several times it happened to Roosevelt to be confronted with the
necessity of meeting with force the threat of violence on the
part of striking workers. He never refused the challenge, and his
firmness never lost him the respect of any but the worthless
among the workingmen. When he was Police Commissioner, strikers
in New York were coming into continual conflict with the police.
Roosevelt asked the strike leaders to meet him in order to talk
things over. These leaders did not know the man with whom they
were dealing; they tried to bully him. They truculently announced
the things that they would do if the police were not compliant to
their wishes. But they did not get far in that direction.
Roosevelt called a halt with a snap of his jaws. "Gentlemen!" he
said, "we want to understand one another. That was my object in
coming here. Remember, please, that he who counsels violence does
the cause of labor the poorest service. Also, he loses his case.
Understand distinctly that order will be kept. The police will
keep it. Now, gentlemen!" There was surprised silence for a
moment, and then smashing applause. They had learned suddenly
what kind of a man Roosevelt was. All their respect was his.
It was after he became President that his greatest opportunity
occurred to put into effect his convictions about the industrial
problem. In 1909 there was a strike which brought about a
complete stoppage of work for several months in the anthracite
coal regions. Both operators and workers were determined to make
no concession. The coal famine became a national menace as the
winter approached. "The big coal operators had banded together,"
so Roosevelt has described the situation, "and positively refused
to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. They knew that
the suffering among the miners was great; they were confident
that if order was kept, and nothing further done by the
Government, they would win; and they refused to consider that the
public had any rights in the matter."
As the situation grew more and more dangerous, the President
directed the head of the Federal Labor Bureau to make an
investigation of the whole matter. From this investigation it
appeared that the most feasible solution of the problem was to
prevail upon both sides to agree to a commission of arbitration
and promise to accept its findings. To this proposal the miners
agreed; the mine owners insolently declined it. Nevertheless,
Roosevelt persisted, and ultimately the operators yielded on
condition that the commission, which was to be named by the
President, should contain no representative of labor. They
insisted that it should be composed of (1) an officer of the
engineer corps of the army or navy, (2) a man with experience in
mining, (3) a "man of prominence, eminent as a sociologist," (4)
a Federal Judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and (5)
a mining engineer. In the course of a long and grueling
conference it looked as though a deadlock could be the only
outcome, since the mine owners would have no representative of
labor on any terms. But it suddenly dawned on Roosevelt that the
owners were objecting not to the thing but to the name. He
discovered that they would not object to the appointment of any
man, labor man or not, so long as he was not appointed as a labor
man or as a representative of labor. "I shall never forget," he
says in his "Autobiography", "the mixture of relief and amusement
I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would
heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if
I would call it Tweedledee they would accept with rapture." All
that he needed to do was to "commit a technical and nominal
absurdity with a solemn face." When he realized that this was the
case, Roosevelt announced that he was glad to accept the terms
laid down, and proceeded to appoint to the third position on the
Commission the labor man whom he had wanted from the first to
appoint, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway
Conductors. He called him, however, an "eminent sociologist,"
adding in his announcement of the appointment this explanation:
"For the purposes of such a Commission, the term sociologist
means a man who has thought and studied deeply on social
questions and has practically applied his knowledge."
The Commission as finally constituted was an admirable one. Its
report, which removed every menace to peace in the coal industry,
was an outstanding event in the history of the relations of labor
and capital in the United States.
But the most interesting and significant part of Roosevelt's
relation to the great coal strike concerned something that did
not happen. It illustrates his habit of seeing clearly through a
situation to the end and knowing far in advance just what action
he was prepared to take in any contingency that might possibly
arise. He was determined that work should be resumed in the mines
and that the country should have coal. He did not propose to
allow the operators to maintain the deadlock by sheer refusal to
make any compromise. In case he could not succeed in making them
reconsider their position, he had prepared a definite and drastic
course of action. The facts in regard to this plan did not become
public until many years after the strike was settled, and then
only when Roosevelt described it in his "Autobiography".
The method of action which Roosevelt had determined upon in the
last resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to appeal to
him as President to restore order. He had then determined to put
Federal troops into the coal fields under the command of some
first-rate general, with instructions not only to preserve order
but to dispossess the mine operators and to run the mines as a
receiver, until such time as the Commission should make its
report and the President should issue further orders in view of
that report. Roosevelt found an army officer with the requisite
good sense, judgment, and nerve to act in such a crisis in the
person of Major General Schofield. Roosevelt sent for the General
and explained the seriousness of the crisis. "He was a fine
fellow," says Roosevelt in his "Autobiography", "a most
respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers and a black
skull-cap, without any of the outward aspect of the conventional
military dictator; but in both nerve and judgment he was all
right." Schofield quietly assured the President that if the order
was given he would take possession of the mines, and would
guarantee to open them and run them without permitting any
interference either by the owners or by the strikers or by any
one else, so long as the President told him to stay. Fortunately
Roosevelt's efforts to bring about arbitration were ultimately
successful and recourse to the novel expedient of having the army
operate the coal mines proved unnecessary. No one was more
pleased than Roosevelt himself at the harmonious adjustment of
the trouble, for, as he said, "It is never well to take drastic
action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in
less drastic fashion." But there can be no question that the
drastic action would have followed if the coal operators had not
seen the light when they did.
In other phases of national life Roosevelt made his influence
equally felt. As President he found that there was little which
the Federal Government could do directly for the practical
betterment of living and working conditions among the mass of the
people compared with what the State Governments could do. He
determined, however, to strive to make the National Government an
ideal employer. He hoped to make the Federal employee feel, just
as much as did the Cabinet officer, that he was one of the
partners engaged in the service of the public, proud of his work,
eager to do it efficiently, and confident of just treatment. The
Federal Government could act in relation to laboring conditions
only in the Territories, in the District of Columbia, and in
connection with interstate commerce. But in those fields it
accomplished much.
The eight-hour law for workers in the executive departments had
become a mere farce and was continually violated by officials who
made their subordinates work longer hours than the law
stipulated. This condition the President remedied by executive
action, at the same time seeing to it that the shirk and the
dawdler received no mercy. A good law protecting the lives and
health of miners in the Territories was passed; and laws were
enacted for the District of Columbia, providing for the
supervision of employment agencies, for safeguarding workers
against accidents, and for the restriction of child labor. A
workmen's compensation law for government employees, inadequate
but at least a beginning, was put on the statute books. A similar
law for workers on interstate railways was declared
unconstitutional by the courts; but a second law was passed and
stood the test.
It was chiefly in the field of executive action, however, that
Roosevelt was able to put his theories into practice. There he
did not have to deal with recalcitrant, stupid, or
medieval-minded politicians, as he so often did in matters of
legislation. One case which confronted him found him on the side
against the labor unions, but, being sure that he was right, he
did not let that fact disturb him. A printer in the Government
Printing Office, named Miller, had been discharged because he was
a non-union man. The President immediately ordered him
reinstated.
Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor,
with several members of its Executive Council, called upon him to
protest. The President was courteous but inflexible. He answered
their protest by declaring that, in the employment and dismissal
of men in the Government service, he could no more recognize the
fact that a man did or did not belong to a union as being for or
against him, than he could recognize the fact that he was a
Protestant or a Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or
against him. He declared his belief in trade unions and said that
if he were a worker himself he would unquestionably join a union.
He always preferred to see a union shop. But he could not allow
his personal preferences to control his public actions. The
Government was bound to treat union and non-union men exactly
alike. His action in causing Miller to be reinstated was final.
Another instance which illustrated Roosevelt's skill in handling
a difficult situation occurred in 1908 when the Louisville and
Nashville Railroad and certain other lines announced a reduction
in wages. The heads of that particular road laid the necessity
for the reduction at the door of "the drastic laws inimical to
the interests of the railroads that have in the past year or two
been enacted." A general strike, with all the attendant
discomfort and disorder, was threatened in retaliation. The
President wrote a letter to the Interstate Commerce Commission,
in which he said:
"These reductions in wages may be justified or they may not. As
to this the public, which is a vitally interested party, can form
no judgment without a more complete knowledge of the essential
facts and real merits of the case than it now has or than it can
possibly obtain from the special pleadings, certain to be put
forth by each side in case their dispute should bring about
serious interruption to traffic. If the reduction in wages is due
to natural causes, the loss of business being such that the
burden should be, and is, equitably distributed, between
capitalist and wageworker, the public should know it. If it is
caused by legislation, the public and Congress should know it;
and if it is caused by misconduct in the past financial or other
operations of any railroad, then everybody should know it,
especially if the excuse of unfriendly legislation is advanced as
a method of covering up past business misconduct by the railroad
managers, or as a justification for failure to treat fairly the
wage-earning employees of the company."
The letter closed with a request to the Commission to investigate
the whole matter with these points in view. But the investigation
proved unnecessary; the letter was enough. The proposed reduction
of wages was never heard of again. The strength of the
President's position in a case of this sort was that he was
cheerfully prepared to accept whatever an investigation should
show to be right. If the reduction should prove to be required by
natural causes, very well--let the reduction be made. If it was
the result of unfair and unwise legislation, very well--repeal
the legislation. If it was caused by misconduct on the part of
railroad managers, very well--let them be punished. It was hard
to get the better of a man who wanted only the truth, and was
ready to act upon it, no matter which way it cut.
In 1910, after his return from Africa, a speaking trip happened
to take him to Columbus, Ohio, which had for months been in the
grasp of a street railway strike. There had been much violence,
many policemen had refused to do their duty, and many officials
had failed in theirs. It was an uncomfortable time for an
outsider to come and make a speech. But Roosevelt did not dodge.
He spoke, and straight to the point. His speech had been
announced as on Law and Order. When he rose to speak, however, he
declared that he would speak on Law, Order, and Justice. Here are
some of the incisive things that he said:
"Now, the first requisite is to establish order; and the first
duty of every official, in State and city alike, high and low, is
to see that order obtains and that violence is definitely stopped
. . . . I have the greatest regard for the policeman who does his
duty. I put him high among the props of the State, but the
policeman who mutinies, or refuses to perform his duty, stands on
a lower level than that of the professional lawbreaker . . . . I
ask, then, not only that civic officials perform their duties,
but that you, the people, insist upon their performing them . . .
. I ask this particularly of the wage-workers, and employees, and
men on strike . . . . I ask them, not merely passively, but
actively, to aid in restoring order. I ask them to clear their
skirts of all suspicion of sympathizing with disorder, and, above
all, the suspicion of sympathizing with those who commit brutal
and cowardly assaults . . . . What I have said of the laboring
men applies just as much to the capitalists and the capitalists'
representatives . . . . The wage-workers and the representatives
of the companies should make it evident that they wish the law
absolutely obeyed; that there is no chance of saying that either
the labor organization or the corporation favors lawbreakers or
lawbreaking. But let your public servants trust, not in the good
will of either side, but in the might of the civil arm, and see
that law rules, that order obtains, and that every miscreant,
every scoundrel who seeks brutally to assault any other
man--whatever that man's status--is punished with the utmost
severity . . . . When you have obtained law and order, remember
that it is useless to have obtained them unless upon them you
build a superstructure of justice. After finding out the facts,
see that justice is done; see that injustice that has been
perpetrated in the past is remedied, and see that the chance of
doing injustice in the future is minimized."
Now, any one might in his closet write an essay on Law, Order,
and Justice, which would contain every idea that is here
expressed. The essayist might even feel somewhat ashamed of his
production on the ground that all the ideas that it contained
were platitudes. But it is one thing to write an essay far from
the madding crowd, and it was quite another to face an audience
every member of which was probably a partisan of either the
workers, the employers, or the officials, and give them straight
from the shoulder simple platitudinous truths of this sort
applicable to the situation in which they found themselves. Any
one of them would have been delighted to hear these things said
about his opponents; it was when they were addressed to himself
and his associates that they stung. The best part of it, however,
was the fact that those things were precisely what the situation
needed. They were the truth; and Roosevelt knew it. His sword had
a double edge, and he habitually used it with a sweep that cut
both ways. As a result he was generally hated or feared by the
extremists on both sides. But the average citizen heartily
approved the impartiality of his strokes.
In the year 1905 the Governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb as he
was leaving his house. A former miner, who had been driven from
the State six years before by United States troops engaged in
putting down industrial disorder, was arrested and confessed the
crime. In his confession he implicated three officers of the
Western Federation of Miners, Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone.
These three men were brought from Colorado into Idaho by a method
that closely resembled kidnaping, though it subsequently received
the sanction of the United States Supreme Court. While these
prominent labor leaders were awaiting trial, Colorado, Idaho, and
Nevada seethed and burst into eruption. Parts of the mining
districts were transformed into two hostile armed camps. Violence
was common. At this time Roosevelt coupled the name of a giant
among American railroad financiers, with those of Moyer and
Haywood, and described them all as "undesirable citizens." The
outbursts of resentment from both sides were instantaneous and
vicious. There was little to choose between them. Finally the
President took advantage of a letter of criticism from a
supporter of the accused labor leaders to reply to both groups of
critics. He referred to the fact that certain representatives of
the great capitalists had protested, because he had included a
prominent financier with Moyer and Haywood, while certain
representatives of labor had protested on precisely the opposite
grounds. Then Roosevelt went on to say:
"I am as profoundly indifferent to the condemnation in one case
as in the other. I challenge as a right the support of all good
Americans, whether wage-workers or capitalists, whatever their
occupation or creed, or in whatever portion of the country they
live, when I condemn both the types of bad citizenship which I
have held up to reprobation . . . . You ask for a 'square deal'
for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. So do I. When I say 'square deal',
I mean a square deal to every one; 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 protest against the denunciation of a labor
leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing. I stand for equal
justice to both; and so far as in my power lies I shall uphold
justice, whether the man accused of guilt has behind him the
wealthiest corporation, the greatest aggregations of riches in
the country, or whether he has behind him the most influential
labor organizations in the country."
It should be recorded for the sake of avoiding misapprehension
that Roosevelt's denunciation of Moyer and Haywood was not based
on the assumption that they were guilty of the death of the
murdered' Governor, but was predicated on their general attitude
and conduct in the industrial conflicts in the mining fields.
The criticisms of Roosevelt because of his actions in the complex
relations of capital and labor were often puerile. For instance,
he was sternly taken to task on one or two occasions because he
had labor leaders lunch with him at the White House. He replied
to one of his critics with this statement of his position: "While
I am President I wish the labor man to feel that he has the same
right of access to me that the capitalist has; that the doors
swing open as easily to the wageworker as to the head of a big
corporation--and no easier."
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