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On Friday, October 3, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt called a precedent-shattering meeting at the temporary White House at 22 Lafayette Place, Washington, D.C. A great strike in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania threatened a coal famine. The President feared "untold misery . . . with the certainty of riots which might develop into social war."1 Although he had no legal right to intervene, he sent telegrams to both sides summoning them to Washington to discuss the problem.
Roosevelt, who had been injured a month earlier when his carriage was hit by a trolley car, sat in his wheelchair pleading with representatives of management and labor. "With all the earnestness there is in me . ..," the President urged, "I ask that there be an immediate resumption of operations in the coal mines in some such way as will . . . meet the crying needs of the people." He appealed to the patriotism of the contestants to make "individual sacrifices for the general good."2
This meeting marked the turn of the U.S. Government from strikebreaker to peacemaker in industrial disputes. In the 19th century, presidents, if they acted at all, tended to side with employers. Andrew Jackson became a strikebreaker in 1834 when he sent troops to the construction sites of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.3 War Department employees operated the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad during the Civil War .4 In the violent rail strikes of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes sent troops to prevent obstruction of the mails.5 Grover Cleveland used soldiers to break the Pullman strike of 1894.6
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