Louis F. Post to Joseph P. Tumulty

Title

Louis F. Post to Joseph P. Tumulty

Creator

Post, Louis F. (Louis Freeland), 1849-1928

Identifier

WWP18175

Date

1913 November 5

Source

Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Washington, District of Columbia

Subject

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence

Text

Dear Mr. Tumulty

This is in reply to your request of the 12th in behalf of the PresidentWoodrow Wilson for such comments as I care to make regarding the statements of Mr. L. M. Bowers of Denver in his letter to the PresidentWoodrow Wilson under date of November 8th, which I herewith return.

As I understand the strike situation in Colorado, to which the Bowers letter relates, Mr. Bowers himself is the one man whose simple word could at once bring that strike to an end. His extraordinary business abilities have made him absolute, so I am informed, as manager of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, even its president deferring to him in vital matters of administration, and the principal owner (Mr. Rockefeller) trusting him implicitly.Nor would it be necessary for Mr. Bowers, if he really possesses the great industrial power which is attributed to him, to use it otherwise than reasonably in order to end the strike. He could secure that result upon fair terms to all parties and without yielding any industrial advantage that he himself or his associates and principals in interest would frankly insist upon retaining. For nothing is asked of him but to submit the merits of the dispute to an unbiased board of arbitration.

If the facts are as Mr. Bowers represents them in his letter to the President now before me, the award in such an arbitration could not fail to sustain his contentions. It would relieve him, besides, of all suspicion of undue partisanship and his company of an odium that now attaches to it more widely and intensely than he seems to realize.That part of the Bowers letter which relates to the conduct of Ethelbert Stewart, the mediator and commissioner of conciliation appointed by the Secretary of Labor, must be referred to Mr. Stewart if you desire specific comment upon the Bowers letter on those points. It will be so referred if you wish, and I suggest that Mr. Stewart really ought to have an opportunity to report upon it. Irrespective of this, however, it is due Mr. Stewart, I think, that I avail myself of the opportunity your request affords to say a word about his fitness for the mediation and conciliation service for which the Secretary of Labor chose him in connection with the Colorado affair. Mr. Stewart‘s reputation for wide and trustworthy knowledge of details regarding industrial problems is above reproach. This is so to my personal and intimate knowledge as to Chicago, where he has lived and long served the Federal Government. My impressions of his standing in Chicago might easily be verified through the City Club, Hull House, or the School of Civics and Philanthropy, or in any other centre of public spirited activities there. He is not a leader in labor union circles as Mr. Bowers implies, although he does command great confidence in those circles at Chicago as I personally know, and elsewhere as I have reason to believe. And he has earned this confidence by fairmindedness, industry and competency in the performance of official duties. I submit to your own sense of fairness that the readinesss of Mr. Bowers to throw such a man into the scrap heap of the incapable and unfair adds no strength to the case the Bowers letter presents.While refraining from comment upon those parts of that letter which relate to Mr. Stewart, and regarding which I am not yet sufficiently informed for a definite judgment, I think I should advise you nevertheless that I have reason to question some of those statements, and on other information than from Mr. Stewart either directly or indirectly

.Is Mr. Bowers quite correct, for one thing, in his contention that his company–the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company–has voluntarily granted to its men an eight-hour day, semi-monthly pay, their own check-weighman, and liberty to trade? Were not all these concessions secured by legislation which had been promoted by labor organizations and opposed by the Fuel and Iron Company?

Is Mr. Bowers sure, for another thing, that he is not deceived by his own statistics when he says that the average earnings per man per day in his company’s mines is $4.15? It is stated to me that this statistical result is commonly produced by paying a group of miners in the name of one of them. However thay may be in the present case, I am pretty confident (does it not seem so to you) that if $4.15 a day, as an average for average men, had been mining wages in southern Colorado, there would have been a stampede of miners to that field, and that not only would there have been no strike, but that no agitators could have made one?

Regarding Mr. Stewart’s alleged neglect to confer with General Manager Weitzel, Mr. Stewart can doubtless explain; but whatever his explanation may be, I am assured through independent and trustworthy channels of information that when Mr. Stewart had talked with Mr. Bowers he had talked with Mr. Weitzel in effect; for Mr. Weitzel, a man who is generally liked in the mining regions where he serves his company as manager, is also regarded there as strictly the business agent of Mr. Bowers in all things.In that connection, too, I am informed (and through similar sources) that there is a feudal system in the territory of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, benevolently paternal in some respects–schools, churches, etc.–but so absolute in all respects that freedom of opinion and action among its employees, even as to political affairs, is practically incompatible with continued employment. On this point both Senator Thomas and Congressman Keating can give definite and positive information. But are not the probabilities of such a condition manifest from the Bowers letter? How else for instance is the refusal of the miners to employ a check-weighman, when they have the right or permission to do so and the expense would be only nominal, to be reasonably accounted for? The answer of the Bowers letter does not impress me as convincing.

Upon reading the reference to Mother Jones in the Bowers letter I was shocked; first, by the fact that Mr. Bowers could in such a letter be guilty of so base an insinuation even if there were ground for it, and, secondly, by what I believe to be its utter falsity. Even if the story were true it seems to me unworthy of any man and any purpose to assail the present good character of any woman, whatever her former record may have been, by raking up a career of immorality completely closed twenty-five years before. Is there no statute of limitations in our code of feminine morals? If there be none, then at any rate Mother Jones is entitled to a fair hearing on the question of whether or not her past is what Mr. Bowers assumes it was.

The gist of it is that in 1904 Mother Jones, accused in print of having been an immoral woman part of her life down to 1889, has never denied the accusation. Since having this matter brought to my attention, my regard for this woman has led me to inquire into her past, and I am informed that the story which Mr. Bowers transmits to the PresidentWoodrow Wilson but does not vouch for except by insinuation, originated in print with a notoriously irresponsible woman of Denver, who was at the time of its first publication the publicity agent of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. I am also informed that Mrs. Jones has taken the pains to deny the story whenever and wherever it has been circulated under circumstances reasonably calling upon her to do so. I am further informed that reprints of this story, identical with the reprint forwarded by Mr. Bowers to the President, are being circulated now in the strike region anonymously and that the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company is locally suspected of causing its circulation. As to the falsity of that story I find trustworthy men in the labor movement who have known of Mrs. Jones as active in that movement in ways and over a period which make it not only improbable but virtually impossible for the story to be true.Having myself known Mother Jones since 1906 and of her for a longer time, I should from my knowledge of her reputation and course of life regard the story as highly improbable. Although her opinions and methods of agitation are in many respects not agreeable to me, I regard her opinions as sincere, her methods as well meant, and herself as a woman worthy of respect. She appears to be so regarded by nearly all who know her; and so far as I am advised, the exceptions may be accounted for by explanations that do not at all reflect upon her character. She is trusted, loved and idolized by scores upon scores of thousands of rough and ready men who do the heavy work of this country and whose wives and children she mothers in their distress. They find in her a sympathizer who thinks their thoughts and speaks their language–course language at times it may be to sophisticated ears, but a language nevertheless which those rough but by no means wicked men understand, and which to them rings true. I find, moreover, that Terrence V. Powderly‘s knowledge of Mother Jones goes back of the time when she is alleged to have closed her immoral life. He knew of her as active and to a considerable degree prominent in the American labor movement as long ago as 1877, twelve years before her alleged loose life had closed; and in 1887, two years before that, he knew her personally and has known her personally ever since. Mr. Powderly informs me that the Denver story is utterly inconsistent with Mother Jones’ career since 1877 as he knows that career and of it.And the Secretary of Labor, Mr. Wilson, who has known Mother Jones personally for nearly seventeen years and by reputation for a much longer period–long enough to have known of the Denver episode if it were true–has expressed the sentiment about her that prevails among all who know her. He did this in a general letter under date of February 21, 1911, as follows:

“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:I have known Mrs. Mary Jones, known as Mother Jones, personally for fourteen years and by reputation for a much longer period. During that time I have worked with her in many struggles of the coal miners in their efforts to better their conditions. She has frequently been a guest at my home and also in the homes of my neighbors.I have been so closely associated with her in her work that I am familiar with her hopes, her aspirations and her ideals. During all the time I have known her I have never heard her express an immoral thought and have never seen her do an immoral deed and I do not believe her capable of either. On the contrary, of my personal knowledge I have known her to endure hardships and make many personal sacrifices in her efforts to promote the welfare of the workers collectively and relieve their distress in individual cases coming under her personal observation.Knowing Mother Jones as I do, I can say most emphatically, she is not an immoral woman.

Respectfully yours,W. B. Wilson.”

But the Mother Jones phase of the Bowers letter is perhaps of little concern except for the sake of fairness to this devoted woman. The important considerations are the strike itself and the administration of the Department of Labor with reference to it.As to the strike itself I am unable to reconcile some of Mr. Bowers’ contentions with the manifest facts. If Mr. Bowers is correctly informed, at least 94% of his miners are not members of a union and do not wish to be. If he is correctly informed, there was not a majority vote for a strike in any of his mines, nor did his miners elect a single delegate to the miners’ convention., although they acted in freedom.¹ If he is correctly informed, his miners are non-union from choice. If he is correctly informed, the most cordial and friendly relations existed between his company and its employees and the latter were prosperous and happy until the agitators came. Yet, in fact, Mr. Bowers’ company is at this moment involved in a terrible strike. Does it seem probable, then, that Mr. Bowers has been correctly informed?

As to the magnitude of that strike I am reliably advised (and through channels entirely independent of Mr. Stewart) that public opinion among all classes in and about Trinidad, places the proportion of strikers at 80% or more of the total number of miners. Is it reasonable to believe that agitators from outside could have brought on such a strike unless the great majority of the employees really wanted a strike as an alternative to the conditions under which they were working? Is it not more probable that the prosperity, happiness and content, and the repugnance to unionization to which the Bowers letter refers, were only apparent?

With thirty-odd years of experience in observing labor controversies, I should judge that the true explanation of this strike may be read between the lines of the Bowers letter. Given a feudal system such as he describes, with power concentrated in a corporation controlling everything, from the natural deposits of coal to schools and churches and doctors and store custom and working opportunites and politics, as I am assured the fact is and as the Bowers letter implies–given that industrial condition, and a violent outbreak of “contented” employees is explainable. The fact that unionization is the insistent demand of the strikers testifies to the same effect. Their feeling evidently is that by unionization, and only so, can they defend themselves against the aggressions of their corporate employer whose power in respect of unorganized individuals is resistless.It was to cope with this difficult situation, regarding which the employers reject all overtures, that the Secretary of Labor appointed Mr. Stewart as mediator and commissioner of conciliation under the organic law of the Department of Labor. Although Mr. Stewart has proved in his long and useful career in connection with labor problems that in the performance of his official duties he is a man of unbiased disposition, there would be no substantial reason for criticism if the fact in that respect were otherwise. What is required of a mediator in such a case is resourcefulness and tact in bringing opposing parties voluntarily together rather than the judicial fairness which is needed for rendering a decisive judgment.

Mr. Bowers appears to entertain a mistaken notion of the object of Congress in establishing the Department of Labor, and also of the functions of mediators and commissioners of conciliation under Section 8 of the organic act. His erroneous notions in that connection are expressed on page 3 of his letter, in the second paragraph, where he says:

“I was not aware at the time of Mr. Stewart‘s visit here, that the officials of the United Mine Workers of America had been in conference with Commissioner of Labor Wilsonsome time before the strike was called, neither did I know that Commissioner Wilson was for years the secretary and treasurer of this union, nor that Mr. Stewart was a leader in labor union circles. My notion of a mediator is that he should have an open and unbiased mind, which I have never known a man long connected with labor unions as an officer, to possess. My sense offairness prompts me to say that an independent man should have been selected to act as mediator,providing there was any dispute existing between ourselves and our miners, demanding mediation, which there was not.”

It was the Secretary‘s plain duty under the law to confer with officials of the United Mine Workers before the strike, for the purpose of averting it if that could be done. That he himself had for years been officially connected with that labor union, and that Mr. Stewart was a leader in labor circles (if the latter statement had been true) would have made no such difference as Mr. Bowers thinks it should make. His opinion that “an independent man should have been selected to act as mediator” rests, no doubt, upon his confusion of mediation with arbitration. But Mr. Stewart was sent to Colorado to arbitrate; he was sent there to bring the conflicting parties to some kind of agreement in the interest of industrial peace, one method among the hoped for possibilities being arbitration by arbitrators acceptable to both parties.In other words, the functions of the Secretary under the organic law of the Department of Labor, and of his appointees as mediators and commissioners of conciliation, are analogous in industrial controversies to the functions of the Secretary of State and of Ambassadors respectively in international controversies. This analogy will commend itself, I think, to anyone who considers the organic act with any care. The purpose of the Department of Labor, which is, of course, the underlying and continuously applicable consideration in this connection, is prescribed in Section 1 of that Act. It is “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions and to advance their opportunities for employment.” This means all wage earners of the United States, of course, and not organized wage earners alone; it means organized wage earners too. Even as to organized wage earners the labor organizations cannot be wholly ignored so long as the unorganized are as a mass inarticulate. For this Department to depend wholly upon organized employers like the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company for information as to the welfare and working conditions of their working men, would hardly meet the purposes of the organic act; and to consult the unorganized working men individually would be impracticable.

Mr. Bowers’ strictures on the Secretary for conferring with the United Mine Workers prior to the strike would, therefore, seem to be not only without legal foundation but inconsistent with the Secretary‘s legal obligations. And so of his strictures upon the selection of Mr. Stewart as mediator. By Section 8 of the organic act the Secretary of Labor is empowered to “act as a mediator and to appoint commissioners of conciliation in labor disputes whenever in his judgment the interests of industrial peace may require it to be done.” In cases in which either party to a labor dispute–whether the dispute be actually advanced to a state of industrial warfare, or be still in its beginnings–refuses to act reasonably in order to avert or end an industrial war by which whole communities are or may become chaotic, it is probably true that the Secretary of Labor may, and if so he ought to, exert the power Congress has reposed in him with a view to compelling industrial peace. In that event he should, of course, use his power fairly, both as to ends and means. And that the present Secretary of Labor would do this, no fairminded persons doubt who are at all familiar with his long and conciliatory career in the labor movement, whether those persons be working men or employers.The exercise, however, of any such plenary authority should of course be avoided in every case so long as there is a reasonable possibility of voluntary adjustment through mediation. Diplomacy rather than power, for the maintenance of industrial peace, is the keynote of the act creating the Department of Labor; and it is in this spirit that Secretary Wilson has invariably administered Section 8 ever since my connection with the Department. It was in the same spirit that he appointed Mr. Stewart a commissioner of conciliation to the opposing parties in the present Colorado strike; not as an absolute arbitrator to decide conflicting claims, but as a conciliator to adjust them by means of voluntary settlement or by arbitral agreement.

Had the Secretary‘s commissioner been met by the owners of the natural coal deposits of southern Colorado, in the spirit in which the Secretary of Labor sent him, and in which so far as I can learn he acted throughout, there would probably have been no strike, or if one had broken out it would most likely have been of short duration and free from the ugly phases it appears in fact to have assumed. Nor do I think I go beyond bounds in saying that the strike would end now if Mr. Bowers were to agree to a reasonable arbitration by unbiased arbitrators.That industrial peace on fair terms was the Secretary‘s object in sending Mr. Stewart to Colorado is evident from the facts. From various sources he had been importuned to use the good offices of this Department in an effort to bring about a conference between the miners and their employers prior to the anticipated calling of the present strike. In response he had appealed to the miners to be patient while efforts to avert the strike were being made by the Department. On September 5th, nearly twenty days prior to the calling of the strike but when the conditions all pointed to an early call, he sent the following telegram to Frank J. Hayes, National Vice President of the United Mine Workers of America:

“I have today appointed Ethelbert Stewart, Chief Clerk of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as mediator and conciliator in the impending trade dispute between the coal miners of southernColorado and their employers. Mr. Stewart will proceed at once to get in touch with the easternowners of the mines, and will later consult with the mine workers. I trust that the miners of southern Colorado will be patient, and that the situation may be satisfactorily adjusted without resorting to strike.”

On September 10th the Secretary wrote Mr. Hayes in further reference to the Colorado situation, calling attention to his previous telegram, asking for continued patience, and, to promote peace, suggesting that there would be better opportunities for a successful conference if conciliatory proceedings were instituted before a strike should actually begin. A convention of miners had already been called, at which, as the Department was informed, a strike decision would be made. Thereupon the Secretary again directed the attention of the miners to the fact that Mr. Stewart would press the New York end of the situation–with reference, that is, to the interests at New York which own these Colorado coal deposits–as rapidly as possible, with the hope of getting definite assurances before the convention met, which might enable him to make a satisfactory adjustment of the impending controversy without any strike. But the owners of those coal deposits, or their representatives, were immovable. This you may infer without further evidence, I think, from the tone of the Bowers letter and from its explicit intimation of persistent refusal to submit to arbitration the questions which made the strike and keep it alive, but which as they assert, in spite of its inconsistence with the fact of the strike, do not exist.This Department did everything possible to bring about an amicable adjustment, as you may see from Mr. Stewart‘s report as soon as it can be put into written form; and when contrary to the wishes and efforts of the Department the strike had been called, the Secretary of Labor sent the following telegram to Mr. Stewart at Denver under date of September 29, 1913:

“Cooperate with Governor Ammons or any other person whose influence you can utilize towardsbringing about a satisfactory settlement of the strike.”

This telegram was in response to Mr. Stewart‘s written report of September 25th, the next day but one after the strike call, in which he said of his visit to the Governor of Colorado upon the day of that call that he found the Governor to have “the most complete and apparently impartial information on the whole situation.”

By the same report it appears that Mr. Stewart had called upon Mr. Bowers on the 24th, the day before his report, and had found him “very bitter.” This judgment would seem to be confirmed by an undertone of Mr. Bowers‘ letter to the PresidentWoodrow Wilson. That Mr. Stewart was reasonably and fairly disposed, seems clear enough from that part of his report of the 25th, now in the files of this Department, in which he says: “Of course, I have not gotten sufficient hold here to be sure of my ground, but I am of opinion at present that if an agreement which did not recognize the union (something after the order of the Anthracite Commission agreement) could be secured, the union ought to accept it as the best thing obtainable at present. The organization is thus preserved without recognition. Frankly it looks to me like a strike for organization purposes with recognition of the union as its sole objective point; and frankly again I do not now believe this can be achieved. I believe a safeguarded open shop agreement is all that can be secured.” That does not read like the report of an unduly biased man. Neither does Secretary Wilson’s telegraphic acknowledgment quoted above imply that he had any other purpose than to make a fair and peaceable adjustment–satisfactory to reasonable employers and reasonable workmen alike–of a labor dispute, which he knew from advance information would involve, as in fact it has involved and still does involve, industrial warfare in Colorado. To accomplish this end it was necessary to secure, and only decent to deserve, the confidence of the organized workmen. Any other course would have made mediation impossible. To be sure, it was necessary also to secure, and only decent to deserve, the confidence of the employers. That the Secretary did secure the confidence of the organized men is true, I am sure. That he deserved the confidence of both, I am also sure. If he has failed to get that of the employers, the reason must be that such as they are accustomed to exacting unquestioning and undivided loyalty to themselves as the price of their confidence, an estimate which the Bowers letter to the PresidentWoodrow Wilson goes far to verify.

Would it be overleaping the limitations of your request, dear Mr. Tumulty, if, by way of concluding comment on the Bowers letter, I suggest that a broader public policy than acquiescence in the feudal overlordship and arrogant attitude of such employers as the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company indicate themselves to be by the Bowers letter, must be adopted in order to secure industrial peace in such cases. This company owns some of the rich natural resources of the people of the United States. That ownership is in the nature of a trusteeship. There could be no justification, political, industrial or moral, for allowing a few men to turn those natural deposits into private property, were it not that private tenure seems to offer the most expedient method for the utilization of natural resources under existing social policies. Such ownership is, therefore, in the nature of a trust for the common good, the beneficiaries of that trust being the whole people, and its condition the maintenance of industrial equity and peace in the utilization of those natural deposits. If industrial war comes, such war as that which now exists in Colorado–the fault must be attributed to the trustees, the owners for a peaceable public purpose, of the natural deposits over the utilization of which that warfare arises, unless they affirmatively show that they are not in the wrong. And in making this showing they ought not to be allowed–if there is any law to meet the case, and if there is none one should be enacted–to “stand pat” upon their own ex parte testimony in the determination of that issue. If they refuse to consent to a fair arbitration of disputed questions which vitalize such a strike as this, or refuse to propose some other reasonable mode of adjustment, but insist upon settling the matter according to their own code of ethics and by means of their own industrial power, which springs largely from their monopoly of natural resources, then they should be made to realize that they have misapprehended both the powers of the Government and the temper of the people.

Faithfully yours,
Louis F. Post
Assistant Secretary.


Hon. JP Tumulty,
Secretary to the President
Woodrow Wilson.


Enclosure.

Original Format

Letter

To

Tumulty, Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick), 1879-1954

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Temp00648.pdf

Citation

Post, Louis F. (Louis Freeland), 1849-1928, “Louis F. Post to Joseph P. Tumulty,” 1913 November 5, WWP18175, First Year Wilson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.