Dr. Washington, the ablest negro educator of his day, came to Washington to see the President in October, 1901. When their business outlasted the morning hours the President kept him at the White House for luncheon, a fact which scandalized opinion in the South, and made it more difficult for Roosevelt to carry out his policy of breaking down the barriers. It was long before this luncheon was forgotten; but the Roosevelt policy of bringing to the White House any citizens who could be of use to the President, or who interested him, was established for the next eight years. The powerful zest for life that made Roosevelt an historian and a naturalist as well as a statesman, at the age of forty, led him to bring within his circle all sorts and conditions of guests. The White House became the center of a charmed circle where the President talked freely to all of the intimacies of politics and diplomacy, and kept his interests alive by bringing to his table the world that he could no longer easily visit.

The prosperous winter of 1900-01 was marked by huge extension of corporation activities, and acute struggles be

Labor problems

tween capital and labor. Only an obtuse mind could have ignored the fact that the nation was speedily to be involved one way or another in the controversy. The changes in corporate organization were disturbing to the minds of many, but the inconveniences due to strikes affected the disposition of perhaps larger numbers. The last pronounced period of strikes had been associated with the panic of 1893. The Homestead strike that preceded the panic, the Pullman strike that followed it, and the violent miners' strike at Cripple Creek had been partially forgotten in the years of depression when labor was too keen to get a job to cavil at its terms. The new prosperity brought pressure upon production in the basic industries and revived the social conditions in which organized labor can flourish. The United Mine Workers of America, calling out 150,000 anthracite miners in eastern Pennsylvania, opened a new period of economic clash.

The organization of the miners had lagged behind that of

other industries because of the transitory character of much of the labor and the high percentage of unskilled foreigners involved. The last upheavals in the coal regions, in which the "Molly Maguires" carried out their reign of terror, long delayed any successful attempt to bring the coal miners together. John Mitchell took charge of the strike in the anthracite region, announced a limited series of demands, and maintained a discipline over his followers unusual in labor controversies. He kept his men sober, he dissuaded them from congregating in public places, established friendly relations with public opinion, and secured useful political assistance.

Senator Hanna, who was then managing the Republican campaign, had good reason to be anxious for industrial peace. The argument of the full dinner pail would have lost its force if a great strike were being fought in a basic industry upon election day. Political pressure was brought upon the owners, who yielded in October, with the result that the United Mine Workers of America acquired the great prestige of a successful strike, and John Mitchell was enabled to proceed to the speedy organization of all of the mining region. It was common supposition that there would be another and larger strike before long, with the recognition of the union as its dominant issue.

In the following summer the steel industry was threatened with an upset that might interfere with the whole course of industrial expansion. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers that had fought and lost the Homestead strike in 1892 had been reorganized after the panic. It prepared in the summer of 1901 to strike chiefly for the recognition of the union, and received the promise of moral support from the American Federation of Labor of which Samuel Gompers had long been chief. The strike began in the first week of August and collapsed after a month. The steel industries that were involved met it in many cases by the relatively simple process of transferring the contracts affected by the strike to remote mills not affected or not unionized.

Two symptoms were revealed by these two strikes. The first indicated that it was possible for a labor body if well organized and discreetly managed to gain the sympathy of the public and to win its case. The other revealed the fact that in at least one great industry centralization had proceeded so far that labor had no chance against corporate organization. The United States Steel Corporation that had nullified the desires of this second Homestead strike was in itself a new-born organization and had been in existence but a few months. The opinion of the public was attracted by both of these facts. The coal strike had not proceeded far enough for public inconvenience to overbalance interest in the strikers' cause. The tactical strength of the Steel Corporation was a matter of some alarm. At least two issues were ready for presentation in the party councils.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The numerous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, written during his life, are necessarily inadequate and lack the full documentation available in Joseph B. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and his Time Shown in his own Letters (1920), in the preparation of which Colonel Roosevelt himself collaborated. The best brief work is William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (1919). Other biographies, of varying degrees of incompleteness and laudation, are Charles G. Washburn, Theodore Roosevelt, the Logic of His Career (1916); Francis E. Leupp, The Man Roosevelt (1904); Jacob A. Riis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (1904); Lawrence F. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (1919); William Draper Lewis, Life of Theodore Roosevelt (1919); Albert Shaw, A Cartoon History of Roosevelt's Career (1910); and John J. Leary, Talks with T. R. (1920). E. J. Scott and L. B. Stowe, Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization (1916), is of interest. Albert Bushnell Hart, Foundations of American Foreign Policy (1901), is contemporary evidence upon the new American interests abroad. John H. Latané, America as a World Power (1907), gives a good running narrative. Croly's Marcus Alonzo Hanna: His Life and Work, and Thayer's Life and Letters of John Hay continue of great value.

CHAPTER XXIX

WORLD POLICY

IN the internal affairs of the Administration President Roosevelt was little hampered by policies that had been established by his predecessor. He found diffi- Hay and culties because the business connections and Root preferences of members of the Republican Party made it easier to go in some directions than in others, but the selection of a final policy was his own. In his foreign relationships he inherited two great secretaries and a group of well-established principles to which he gave consistent support. Hay in the State Department and Root in the War Department were well entered upon their tasks before McKinley died, and remained to work them out.

John Hay began his term as Secretary of State in time to carry on the correspondence with the peace commissioners in Paris. In his first few weeks the decision was made that led to the retention of the Philippines and the acceptance of the share of the "white man's burden" entailed thereby. In the earliest correspondence with the peace commissioners while this policy was still undetermined, the principle upon which the United States proposed to act was laid down. Whether Luzon alone was to be retained or the whole archipelago, the islands were to be administered without peculiar advantages to the United States, upon the principle of the "open door." This principle was novel in the Orient, where China was falling to pieces and great European powers were eagerly acquiring national concessions and special spheres of influence. Germany at Kiau-chau, England at Wei-Hai-Wei, Russia at Port Arthur, had all since the close of the China-Japanese War in 1895 exercised a privilege that they denied Japan, the victor in that war. The conclusion of the Treaty of Paris, and its final ratification, transferred the affairs of the Philippine Islands to

the desk of the Secretary of War, but left the United States The "open- predisposed to an extension of the doctrine of the

door" policy

open door." The early history of American relations with China and Japan made this policy of disinterestedness a thing to be expected of the American Government.

The application of the open-door policy to China was made in September, 1899, while the European powers were still engaged in the partition of China. The United States urged this policy as a matter of fairness to themselves and to China, and it was not easy for any other nation to formulate respectable reasons for rejecting it. In the following spring, when Chinese revolutionists, the "Boxers," broke into open revolt demanding the extermination of the "foreign devils," the sincerity of the policy was brought to test. Peking was invested by the rebels, and the foreign embassies were cut off from the world outside. The United States, with a legation in the beleaguered city, became involved in the attempts at rescue. The American troops in the Philippine Islands made American assistance readily available. A joint intervention for the forcible relief of Peking was organized at once.

The ordinary consequence of such interventions in Chinese affairs had been the visitation upon China of severe national penalties, and the acquisition by the intervening powers of new and exclusive compensatory rights. On July 3, 1900, while General Chaffee was preparing for the actual invasion, Hay issued a circular to the powers on the aims of the relief expedition. Whatever concealed aspirations any of the interested powers may have had, they were forced under cover when the United States pointed out its understanding that the expedition was for the release of the legations and that the doctrine of the open door would prevail in the final settlement with China. With as good a grace as possible, the coöperating powers avowed this benevolent intention to be their own, and it became Hay's mission to hold them to their pledge. Before Chaffee had been many days in China he found it