In 1902, 147,000 workers from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania went on strike. As the strike grew violent, the entire force of the national Guard, 10,000 strong, was called into Pennsylvania. The situation became so dire, that President Theodore Roosevelt was compelled to take action. Without any legal right to get involved, Roosevelt intervened in the strike by personally enforcing his will to resolve the matter, whether the law allowed him to or not.
Hearings were held and after 558 witnesses were heard from, the strike finally ended over one year later. The anthracite strike galvanized Roosevelt to set the precedent of involving he federal government in contests of capital and labor. It was the beginning of a new progressive future, using the federal government to improve the standard of living for all Americans.
In his third annual address to congress, Roosevelt introduced his plan to use the Bureau of Labor to settle all sorts of labor matters. These matters could not be left to the states, but demanded federal intervention:
"Much can be done by the Government in labor matters merely by giving publicity to certain conditions. The Bureau of Labor has done excellent work of this kind in many different directions. I shall shortly lay before you in a special message the full report of the investigation of the Bureau of Labor into the Colorado mining strike, as this was a strike in which certain very evil forces, which are more or less at work everywhere under the conditions of modern industrialism, became startlingly prominent. It is greatly to be wished that the Department of Commerce and Labor, through the Labor Bureau, should compile and arrange for the Congress a list of the labor laws of the various States, and should be given the means to investigate and report to the Congress upon the labor conditions in the manufacturing and mining regions throughout the country, both as to wages, as to hours of labor, as to the labor of women and children, and as to the effect in the various labor centers of immigration from abroad. In this investigation especial attention should be paid to the conditions of child labor and child-labor legislation in the several States. Such an investigation must necessarily take into account many of the problems with which this question of child labor is connected. These problems can be actually met, in most cases, only by the States themselves; but the lack of proper legislation in one State in such a matter as child labor often renders it excessively difficult to establish protective restriction upon the work in another State having the same industries, so that the worst tends to drag down the better. For this reason, it would be well for the Nation at least to endeavor to secure comprehensive information as to the conditions of labor of children in the different States. Such investigation and publication by the National Government would tend toward the securing of approximately uniform legislation of the proper character among the several States."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29545
http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/Coal1902.html
https://rohrbachlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/miners.jpg
Roosevelt's Progressivism
It's hard to imagine Teddy Roosevelt as a Republican today. His progressive agenda made for Big Government. Even in 1912, Roosevelt was dismayed by the lack of focus on his progressive ideas, and Teddy ran for re-election under the "Bull Moose Party", so named because when he was asked if he was physically able to be president, Theodore Roosevelt responded: "I am fit as a Bull Moose".http://www.millbrooktimes.com/?p=7427
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