History of the United States Volume Vi Part 9

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Copyright, 1901. by Pach Bros., N. Y: J. Pierpont Morgan.

One effect of this organization at home was to place the s.h.i.+p Subsidy Bill, which pa.s.sed the Senate in 1901, for the time, at least, on the table. The sentiment of the country, especially of the Middle West, would not permit the payment of public money to a concern commercially able to defy Britannia on the sea.

The Yankee Peril confronted Londoners when they saw American capital securing control of their proposed underground transit system. At their tables they beheld the output of food trusts. One of these, the so-called Beef Trust, called down upon itself in 1902 domestic as well as foreign anathema.

The failure of the corn crop in 1900, together with a scarcity of cattle, tended to raise the price of beef. In 1902 outcry became emphatic. Advance in meat values drew forcibly to view the control held by six slaughtering concerns acting in unison.

The President ordered an investigation, and, as a result, proceedings under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan not obnoxious to decrees, but effective for union.

If the public suffered from these phalanxed industries while they ran smoothly, it endured peculiar evils from the periodical conflicts between the capital and the labor engaged in them.

The Steel Strike of 1901 was a conflict over the unionizing of certain hitherto non-union plants of the United States Steel Corporation. It resulted in defeat for the strikers and in the disunionizing of plants.

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Col. Clements. Gen. Gobin, commanding troops sent to Shenandoah in the coal strike of 1902.

This strike had no such consequences for the consuming public as attended the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which was more bitterly fought in that it was a conflict over wages. The standard of living had been lowered in one of the coal-fields by the introduction of cheap foreign labor. Now the same process threatened the other coal-field.

A strike ordered by the United Mine Workers began May 12, 1902, when one hundred and forty-seven thousand miners went out. Though the record was marred at places, they behaved well and retained to a large degree public sympathy. When the price of anthracite rose from about $5 a ton to $28 and $30, the parts of the country using hard coal were threatened with a fuel famine and had begun to realize it. For the five months ending October 12th, the strike was estimated to have cost over $126,000,000. The operators stubbornly refused to arbitrate or to recognize the union, and the miners, with equal constancy, held their ranks intact.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Three men is suits sitting on a large log.]

Coal strike at Shenandoah, Pa., 1902. A strikers' picket.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Seven men around a large desk.]

Copyright, 1902, by George Grantham Bain.

The coal strike arbitrators chosen by the President. Carroll D. Wright, Recorder; T. H. Watkins, General J. M. Wilson, Judge Gray, Presiding Officer; E, W. Parker, E. E. Clark. and Bishop Spalding.

The problem of protecting the public pressed for solution as never before. The only suggestion at first discussed was arbitration. Enforced arbitration could not be effected in the absence of contract without infringing the workingman's right to labor or to decline to do so; in other words, without reducing him, in case of adverse decision by arbitration, to a condition of involuntary servitude. It looked as though no solution would be reached unless State or nation should condemn and acquire ample portions of the mining lands to be worked under its own auspices and in a just manner. This course was suggested, but nearly all deemed it dangerously radical; nor was it as yet likely to be adopted by Congress or by the Pennsylvania legislature, should these powers be called to deal with the problem.

On October 3 President Roosevelt called the coal operators and President Mitch.e.l.l of the United Mine Workers to a conference at the White House, urging them to agree. His effort, at first seeming unsuccessful, was much criticised, but very few failed to praise it when, a few days later, it was found to have succeeded completely. An able and impartial commission, satisfactory to both sides, was appointed by the President to act as arbitrator, both miners and operators agreeing to abide its decrees. The miners, the four hundred thousand women and children dependent on them, the poor beginning to suffer from cold, indeed the whole nation, including, no doubt, the operators, felt relief.

"How much better," said the young President, once, addressing a fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sembly, "boldly to attempt remedying a bad situation than to sit quietly in one's retreat, sigh, and think how good it would be if the situation could be remedied!"

CHAPTER II

ROOSEVELT'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION, 1901-1905

[1902]

The sentiment noted at the end of the last chapter seemed to be the motive of Mr. Roosevelt's public life. Not only was he better informed on the whole than almost any President who had sat in the chair before, but he was a good lawyer, familiar with national and general history and awake to all contemporary doings, questions, and interests south, west, east, and abroad. He was also more a man of action and affairs than any of his predecessors. He had, in a very high degree, alertness, energy, courage, initiative, dispatch. Physically as well as mentally vigorous, he read much, heard all who could usefully inform him, apprehended easily, decided quickly, and toiled like Hercules. He was just and catholic in spirit, appreciating whatever was good in any section of the country or cla.s.s of people. He respected precedent but was not its slave. Rather than walk always in ruts with never a jolt, he preferred some risks of tumbling over hummocks. Few public men of any age or country have more fully met Aristotle's test of a statesman: "ability to see facts as they exist and to do the things needing to be done."

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Copyright. l904. by Pach Bros., N. Y.

John Hay, Secretary of State. [Died July 1, 1905.]

He had able aids; pre-eminent among these were John Hay, Secretary of State, and Elihu Root, Secretary of War. Each was, to say the least, the peer of his greatest predecessors in his office. It was mainly to Mr. Root that we were indebted for starting the Cubans prosperously as an independent nation. His service for the Philippines so far as it went was not less distinguished; and he effected vitally important reorganization and reform in the war office.

A well co-ordinated plan was developed whereby army officers were given advanced training in the various branches of military science as in the European countries. Neither the President nor Secretary Root advocated a large standing army, but they both strove to bring the army "to the very highest point of efficiency of any army in the civilized world." The ability of Secretary Root to inaugurate reforms in a department which when he became its head was overridden by tradition, was well expressed by President Roosevelt as follows: "Elihu Root is the ablest man I have known in our governmental service. I will go further. He is the greatest man that has appeared in the public life of any country, in any position, on either side of the ocean in my time."

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Copyright. 1903. by Clinedinst, Was.h.i.+ngton.

Elihu Root, Secretary of War.

[Secretary of State, July 1905.]

Under Secretary Hay our State Department attained unprecedented prestige, due in part to the higher position among the nations now accorded us. This result itself Mr. Hay had done much to achieve; and he pa.s.sed hardly a month in his office without making some further addition to the renown and influence of his country. If the United States has--which may be doubted--raised up diplomatists with Mr. Hay's mastery of international law and practice and his art and skill in conducting delicate negotiations, we have probably never had his equal in diplomatic initiative, or in the thorough preparation and presentation of cases. He did not meet occasions merely but made them, not arbitrarily but for the world's good. Settling the Alaskan boundary favorably to the United States at every point save one, crumbling with the single stroke of his Pauncefote treaty that Clayton-Bulwer rock on which Evarts, Blaine, and Frelinghuysen in turn had tried dynamite in vain, were deeds seldom matched in statecraft.

By an act of Congress, in 1903, a new member was added to the President's cabinet in the person of the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor. George B. Cortelyou was the first man appointed to that office. Two bureaus, those of corporations and of manufactures, were created for the department. The other bureaus, such as the Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Standards of Weights and Measures and Coast and Geodetic Survey, were transferred from the other departments. The place of this new department was defined by the President in the following: "to aid in strengthening our domestic and foreign markets, in perfecting our transportation facilities, in building up our merchant marine, in preventing the entrance of undesirable immigrants, in improving commercial and industrial conditions, and in bringing together on common ground those necessary partners in industrial progress--capital and labor."

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Photograph by Rice.

George B. Cortelyou, Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

Among the problems engaging President Roosevelt none was of wider interest than the construction of an Atlantic-Pacific ca.n.a.l. A commission of nine, Rear-Admiral Walker its head, had been set by President McKinley to find the best route. It began investigation in the summer of 1899, visiting Paris to examine the claims of the French Panama Company, and also Nicaragua and Panama. It surveyed, platted, took borings, and made a minute and valuable report upon the work which each of the proposed ca.n.a.ls would require.

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The Isthmian Ca.n.a.l Commission, taken March 22, 1904.

1. Col. Frank J. Hecker. 2. William Barclay Parsons. 3. Wm. H. Burr.

4. C. E. Grunsky. 5. Ad. J. G. Walker. 6. B. M. Harrod. 7. Gen. Geo. W. Davis.

The most practicable routes were Nicaragua and Panama. The Nicaragua way was between three and four times the longer--183 miles to 49; 38 hours from ocean to ocean as against 12. The Panama way was straighter, had less elevation at its summit, and required fewer locks. Congress finally decided to construct a high level lock-ca.n.a.l. The cost of keeping up and operating a Panama ca.n.a.l was estimated at six-tenths that of one across Nicaragua. Harbor expenses and facilities would be nearly the same for both lines. The time required for construction, probably nine or ten years, would be a trifle the less at Nicaragua. Control works, to keep always the proper depth of water in the ca.n.a.l, could be more easily maintained at Panama.

Panama political and commercial complications were serious. The isthmus was Colombia territory, and, since October, 1899, a civil war had been raging in that republic. Its financial condition was desperate. Two hundred million inconvertible paper pesos had depreciated to the value of two cents each in gold, yet were legal tender for all obligations. In such a country, especially as war was in progress, the only government able to maintain itself was despotic. Civil troubles were intensified by dissension between Catholics and Protestants. Revolution accompanied any change in administration.

Under Ferdinand de Lesseps, creator of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, the French company had performed extensive excavations at Panama. The New Panama Ca.n.a.l Company of France held certain concessions from the Colombian government. The value of its a.s.sets was $109,000,000 at most. If we dug at Nicaragua these would be worth little. Besides, a Nicaragua ca.n.a.l completed, some $6,000,000 of stock owned by the French company in the Panama railroad would dwindle in value.

The validity of the French company's rights was questioned. Its agreement to work some each year had not been kept. Its charter was to expire in October, 1904, but, for 5,000,000 francs, the Colombia President granted a six-year extension. Even with this the French franchise would revert to Colombia in 1910. Colombia wished delay. The United States transcontinental railroads did not want a ca.n.a.l, as it would divert from them heavy, bulky, and imperishable freight. They therefore joined Colombia in seeking delay, playing off the Nicaragua plan against the Panama, hoping to defeat both.

Late in 1901, newspapers in the United States began urging the purchase from Colombia of a land belt across the isthmus to be United States territory. Our Senate, December 16, 1901, by a vote of 72 to 6, ratified the Hay-Pauncefote treaty with Great Britain, in which it was agreed that we should build a ca.n.a.l, allowing all other nations to use it.

Meantime, spite of the fact that the Walker commission had recommended Nicaragua route, public sentiment began to favor Panama. Even the Walker commission changed to this view.