well that by electing Mr. McKinley the people had approved his policies, and therefore to institute a policy of his own would be a virtual opposing of his own will to that of the public. That Mr. Roosevelt endeavored to do this exceedingly difficult thing during the three years that followed there is no doubt; that he failed in a measure to keep his pledge consistently was doubtless not due to intention, but to temperament and to the stress of unforseen conditions.

The situation in which he found himself was little less exacting than that which confronted President McKinley at the outbreak of the war with Spain. The transformation that had taken place in the external relations of the nation found their reflection in its internal affairs, and Mr. Roosevelt came into office when these were in a state of flux and transition. Those who thought that he would make mistakes that would carry with them fatal consequences seemed to ignore the fact that he was one of very few Presidents of the United States who was adequately prepared for the position to which he had been so suddenly called. The majority of his predecessors had either been political leaders or soldiers. If these were prerequisites, he possessed both, and in addition he possessed a scholar's knowledge of the history of his country and of the principles that governed its development. He had followed with interest the movements that had marked the expansion of the nation, and had written with great

221

enthusiasm and scholarship regarding that tremendous enterprise that he calls so appositely "the winning of the West." The result of these studies was a breadth of vision and a knowledge of past affairs that tended to check the vagaries of a disposition that was far less erratic and impulsive than the public thought. In addition in President McKinley's cabinet were some able men, and in one of them, Secretary Hay, he found a mentor whose advice was always sane and in the highest sense patriotic.

It was a time that demanded sanity and patriotism, and most of all, courage-not the courage that leads wild charges up bullet-swept hills, but the kind that could meet the subtle and cunning attacks of vicious elements, great and small, that prey upon organized society. The tremendous upheaval produced by the war with Spain and its aftermath, brought as has been indicated an era of remarkable prosperity. Much of this was legitimate and wholesome, but along with it came an expansion of credit that was a god-send to every speculative spirit. Fraudulent enterprises were exploited in great numbers; corporations were capitalized beyond their earning power; and, in addition, the tremendous growth of pools and combines, so strong as to seem beyond the constraints of the law, and acting at times in positive defiance of it, menaced more and more the welfare of the masses of the people.

President Roosevelt in his first pro

nouncement to Congress on the opening of the Fifty-seventh Congress brought these facts sharply before the people of the United States. After paying a tribute to President McKinley and calling upon Congress to pass legislation necessary to suppress anarchism and to prevent a repetition of what he termed "a crime against the human race," he proceeded to the topic he conceived to be the transcendent issue before the American people - that of corporations and trusts. He called attention to the fact that such prosperity as the nation was enjoying could not come from man's effort, unaided by the bounty of nature, nor would it be maintained if the policy of gain at another's cost were continued. He paid a tribute to the work of captains of industry who opened up new territories for homemakers, and discovered new methods for rendering life more and more beautiful. He warned against unwise attacks on corporate interests, but went on to say that there was a conviction in the minds of people that the great corporations known as trusts were in certain of their tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. He asserted that this feeling was not based upon prejudice, but upon the conviction that some sort of control was necessary. This was not to be obtained by abrogating property rights, but by insisting that these organizations do not work an injury to the people and to their institutions. President Roosevelt in this message recommended two methods of obtain

ing this end-publicity of corporate activities and some form of national control over corporations doing an interstate business.

President McKinley's messages had contained statements similar to the one quoted, but they were generally appended to an enthusiastic account of the nation's great prosperity. They were fruitless appeals, however, for Congress took little notice of them if results are to be considered. Indeed no additional legislation was needed, for the Sherman act was still on the statute books, and if it had been applied would have proved sufficiently drastic to discourage the most enthusiastic "high financier." But it was not applied, and the trust promoters knew that it was not going to be. The late President in their terms was "safe and sane." With respect to his successor they were either very voluble or very silent, and the whole country waited to see whether the President would carry the threats contained in his messages and his speeches into effect. They must now determine whether Roosevelt's words were to be supported by deeds. The test was not long in coming. The Attorney-General in his Cabinet, Mr. Philander C. Knox, was a man who had spent his life as an attorney in corporation cases, and was thereby thoroughly prepared to deal with the problem from the point of view of wide experience. A suit was instituted against the beef trust in May 1902, and an injunction was granted May 20 by Judge Grosscup of the

223

United States Circuit Court forbidding its acts in constraint of trade. This injunction was declared permanent in February, 1903. An appeal was made to the Supreme Court and after two years of litigation a decision was rendered January 20, 1905, declaring the trust illegal.

It was the feeling of the public, however, that action directed merely at the trusts themselves would be unavailing unless the causes that tended to foster them were rendered inoperative. Two of these that recommended themselves strongly were the granting of rebates and secret freight rates to large shippers, and the pooling of railway interests, with the intention. of controlling the traffic of a region. The new century was barely begun before it was clear that the railways of the country were rapidly passing into the control of a few individuals. One of the most dominating of these was J. J. Hill, whose wonderful enterprises had done so much toward building up the Northwest. theless when he and his associates endeavored to form a merger of three competing lines known as the Northern Securities Co., a halt was called under the provisions of the Interstate Commerce and the Sherman anti-trust laws. The decision, handed down April, 1903, was a victory for the people. The pool was dissolved and a precedent made for future activities against illegal operations of capital. Yet the victory on the whole was more apparent than real. The combinations hastened to establish

Never

themselves on a basis of external legality, the laws being unable to prevent the formation of so-called "gentlemen's agreements," which effectually accomplished the object the corporate interests had in view. It was clear that the organization of capital was an assured fact, and one that could not be set aside by such indefinite legislation as the Sherman act. This is shown by the failure of all efforts made to destroy the trust principle by dissolving individual combinations. The Northern Securities, and numerous other decisions have been unavailing, and the trust, in its protean forms, controls the economic situation of America.

As the question of capital intimately involves that of labor it was to be expected that organization of the former along lines of such scope and comprehensiveness would produce a similar development with respect to the latter, and such has proved the case. The American laboring man had been organized for many years, but it was not until the last decade of the Nineteenth century that labor organization assumed the characteristics of a definite institution. The workingman saw the tremendous profits that arose from suppression of competition, and the economies of combined capital, and he saw in addition the possibilities inherent in such a system tending to limit his own freedom of action. To deal with many independ ent employers of labor was one thing; to deal with a few, or one group, was

quite another. thing in the industrial expansion inaugurated in 1899, but not, as it conceived, what it was entitled to. Hence the situation between the two primary elements of industrial life became more and more strained. The situation is best summed up by the statement that in 1881 there were 471 strikes and 6 lockouts; in 1903, 3,494 strikes and 154 lockouts. Some of the strikes of the latter period were of national importance and brought great loss and suffering, not only to the parties directly involved, but to the general public as well. Of these the most far-reaching was the strike in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania.

Labor gained some

In 1899 there had been much unrest in the region, which finally resulted in the formation of an organization known as the United Mine Workers of America. This association in 1900 demanded a 10 per cent. increase in wages, and owing to the political pressure exerted upon the mine owners, was able to make an agreement with them obtaining such increase until April, 1902. At the expiration of this period the miners endeavored to arrange for a settlement of the wage scale and hours of labor for the forthcoming year, but the owners refused to consider any propositions whatsoever. The leader of the miners was John Mitchell, a self-educated man, who had worked in the mines, and whose abilities as an organizer made him the logical spokesman of the movement. Opposed to him was

George F. Baer, president of the Reading Coal and Iron Company, whose tactless management of the situation led to disastrous results. His reply to the request to arbitrate the difficulty was characteristic of the man. "Anthracite mining," he said, "is a business, not a religious, sentimental, or academic proposition," which accurately complements another statement he is reported to have made, that he and his kind were "Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom had entrusted the property interests of this country." The miners appealed to Senator Hanna, whose efforts to bring about an agreement were without avail, so on May 12 a general strike was declared in which 147,000 men were involved. The coal operators, trusting in their resources, adopted a waiting policy, hoping to tire the miners out, but this was rendered fruitless by the passage of a resolution at a National Convention of Mine Workers at Indianapolis to appropriate $2,000,000 a month to the support of the strikers. This startling testimonial of the faith the working men had in their cause had the effect of indefinitely extending the contest, and placed the owners at signal disadvantage. The strike dragged on into the summer, the situation becoming so serious that the President directed Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, to investigate and make a report with the view of remedying the same. Cases of violence against property and persons occurred, which resulted

finally in the dispatch of the state militia to the center of disturbance. On July 30 and on October 6 the entire national guard of Pennsylvania to the number of 10,000 were sent to the region.

The attitude of the laboring man is revealed by the following quotation from the Scranton Labor Herald:

"Yes, let us have more militia; let us have more and more military sent into the coal regions; let them come till every hill and vale is bristling with bayonets, and the tented cities' of our military power proclaim to the world that peace reigns, and no scenes of disorder mar the peaceful attitude of the mine workers now on strike.

"After this is done and the strike still goes on, let the representatives of the lawless coal trust get down from their exalted position, and meet the issues before them as men of intelligence, instead of continuing the chattering monkey act which they have been performing all these long months which have marked the progress of the strike.

"The calling out of the entire National Guard of Pennsylvania can not start the mines, as has been proved by the experience of the localities where the military has been stationed during the past few months.

"Some weeks ago THE LABOR HERALD stated that the coal strike was an educational contest. This has been demonstrated during the past few weeks. Labor has learned for the first time that the trust question is already beyond the control of our government officials. Here was a lesson worth the losses of the strike. The American people had been led to believe that there was some semblance of law which could be brought into force in curbing the trust evil when the necessity arose.

"The efforts of President Roosevelt to bring the coal strike to an end in the interest of the public has disproved the suggestions that any law exists whereby the people may be protected against the monopolistic development of recent years

"Let the mine workers stand firm with due regard for law and order, and it is up to the coal

225

In the meanwhile the price of coal in the large cities was soaring to an unprecedented point, 20 to 30 dollars for a single ton, and little to be obtained at that. Winter was approaching, and already schools and hospitals had been closed for want of fuel, and much suffering was being experienced. The mine-owners had declared that if protected by military force they would open the mines, but there was a Pennsylvania State law to the effect that no one could mine coal in the anthracite field without holding a certificate of experience, granted only after two years' apprenticeship and examination, and as all of these belonged to the United Mine Workers, the owners could get no men to do the work. The 40,000 holders of these certificates were all union men and the operators were helpless, and should have seen how untenable was their position, yet in spite of this fact, and in spite of tremendous pressure, financial, political, and above all, that of public opinion, which was brought to bear upon them, the operators became still more defiant, and refused to concede a single point. They assumed that the scarcity of coal would cause public opinion to react on the strikers, and hence would cause the dispatch of Federal troops to the region and the passage of legislation that would permit their cause to win. They however however reckoned without

their host, for public opinion took quite the contrary side. It was universally conceded that some way must be discovered to make the