lawless spirit had not been subdued, but merely held in check. The murder of the policeman led the outraged citizens to form an alliance against the boycott. The climax of the struggle came on March 14, when Judge Elmer of the Supreme Court, on application of the Connecticut Lighting and Railway Company, granted a temporary injunc tion restraining the strikers and all other persons from interfering with the business of the railway company, and attaching the property of the Unions involved to the amount of $25,000. By thus tying up the funds of the strikers, the Court deprived them of the sinews of war. In Chicago, also, a strike of street car employees was marked by great violence and disorder. This was followed by a strike of cabmen and livery drivers, the strikers going to such extremes that they refused to drive hearses or mourning coaches, and even picketed houses where funerals were held.

III

Labor disturbances in Europe assumed alarming proportions. In Russia, during March, 500 workmen of the State Iron Works, on strike at Salatoust, stormed the manager's house, and were dispersed by the troops with much bloodshed. In May the Governor of the province was assassinated. Further disturbances took place at Batoum, which were promptly suppressed by the troops. In July and August there was a general uprising of the workingmen over the whole manufacturing district of Southern Russia from Kieff to Odessa. Three great land owners, Prince Urusoff, Prince Gagarin, and Prince Scherbatoff, were murdered by the peasants. These crimes, however, were declared by the strikers to have been acts of private revenge. At Baku, for several days 45,000 strikers held the city, stopping railway trains and street cars, and turning off the municipal lights. In many towns there was sharp street fighting, and nearly all the factories were closed. According to the latest statistics, not less than 500,000 workmen took part in this general uprising, several thousand of whom were killed and wounded. The loss to the oil industry alone was estimated at eight millions of dollars.

On April 2 a general strike of large proportions was declared at Rome, involving all workmen except government employés. Over 25,000 men were out of work. For three days no newspaper appeared except the Popolo Romano. The King, the Prime Minister, and the

Minister of the Interior found the situation so grave that they gave up their Easter holidays in the country and returned to the capital. The arrangements for preserving order were so successful that work was generally resumed on April 10. Toward the end of January a universal strike was declared in Holland. The employees of different transport companies in Amsterdam having gone out on a strike on the question of wages, the companies engaged non-union workmen. On this ground all other workmen left work, including the railway employees. This resulted in a complete stoppage of the train service of Amsterdam, and for two days the carriage of letters and newspapers had to be supplied by an improvised service of automobiles. In France certain provincial towns, notably Nantes, Nice, and Havre, were the scenes of violent labor disturbances, and street agitations which were put down by energetic measures on the part of the government. On November 29, in Paris, collisions occurred with serious injuries on both sides, between the police and workingmen who were demonstrating against the exploitation alleged to be practised by labor agents. On the same day, at Bilbao, Spain, six persons were killed and one hundred wounded during an outbreak of striking miners. The foregoing represent only a small percentage of the strikes of the year, but they were the only ones accompanied by violence, bloodshed, and lawlessness. The so-called "peaceful strikes," together with the causes and the methods of settlement of strikes in general, are taken up in the chapter on Social Conditions.

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CHAPTER VI

PHASES OF ADMINISTRATION

President Roosevelt's position in the eyes of his party, in the eyes of the country at large, was greatly strengthened by his participation in the public issues of the year 1903. Many of his acts excited hostility and there was a charge in more than one instance of his exceeding constitutional limits, but so vigorous and incisive was his action that the nation rested securely under the feeling that there was a man at the head of affairs. At the beginning of the year a debate on the prerogatives of the President was precipitated in the Senate. Senator Hoar claimed that the President was charged by the country at large with trying to influence legislation, and insisted that the President should not meddle with the work of Congress, that it was his duty, if he thought necessary, to communicate his opinions and such information. as he might have about matters of legislation in a message, and that there he should stop. "It is nobody's business," argued Senator Hoar, "to be arranging with the President of the United States what the Senate shall do. We are an independent body. The time for the President to make up his mind about statutes is after we have passed them, and not before, unless he avails himself of the constitutional privilege to make communication to the entire body by message."

Questions of Presidential Propriety

A clash between the laws of the United States and the laws of the International Brotherhood of Book-Binders, arising in the Government Printing Office, again brought the prerogatives of the President into question. An assistant foreman who had been expelled from the Union was for that reason removed from the Government Printing Office, and his application to President Roosevelt was immediately approved,

REPORT OF THE COAL COMMISSION

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the President saying in a letter to Secretary Cortelyou, "There is no objection to the employees of the Government Printing Office constituting themselves into a body if they so desire, but no rules or resolutions of that union can be permitted to override the laws of the United States, which it is my sworn duty to enforce."

II

The work of the commission appointed by President Roosevelt the previous year to investigate the anthracite coal strike and arbitrate the differences between the mine operators and the mine workers began on the 6th of January with a personal visit of the commissioners to the mines, followed by the taking of testimony from the miners as to their treatment by operators; from non-union men as to their treatment by the strikers, and from the operators as to their relations with their men. It took three months to complete the investigation, and the report of the commission was handed in on March 18, signed by all of its members: Judge George Gray, Labor Commissioner Carroll D. Wright, Brigadier-General J. M. Wilson, Bishop J. L. Spalding, T. H. Watkins, E. E. Clark and E. W. Parker. The awards were said to be satisfactory to all parties to the dispute. The commission had not only worked rapidly; it worked cheaply, its entire expenses amounting only to $38,000, of which $18,000 went for salaries and compensation. This left unspent $12,000 out of the $50,000 appropriation made by Congress. The award was a material, as well as a moral, victory for the men, and a great relief to the suffering public. It commended the President's judgment in the appointment of the commission, although his opponents claimed that his action was responsible for all the arrogant demands of labor that followed.

Acrimonious comment upon his appointments of negroes to Federal offices in the South, aroused the President to defend his position in an open letter to the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, in which he declared that he had sought to consider the feelings of the people as far as he could without sacrificing principle. His prime test in appointments, he said, were character, fitness, and ability. He could not treat mere color as a bar to holding office, any more than he could so treat creed or birthplace. "In South Carolina I have appointed at white postmaster to succeed a colored postmaster. Again in South

Carolina I have nominated a colored man to fill a vacancy in the position of Collector of the Port of Charleston, just as in Georgia I have reappointed the colored man who is now serving as Collector of the Port of Savannah. Both are fit men." The President claimed that he had freely consulted Southern Senators and Representatives as to the character and ability of appointees. "I may add," he concluded, “that the proportion of colored men among the new appointees is only about one in one hundred." The suppression of the post-office at Indianola, Miss., because the citizens had forced the colored post-mistress to resign, and the suspension of a rural delivery route running out of Gallatin, Tex., because the negro mail-carrier had been threatened with death if he did not resign, intensified the feeling throughout the South that the President was attempting to force the negro into a social and official position that the Southerner refuses to recognize.

IV

On the part of the moneyed interests there was a tendency to look upon the President as a dangerous man, too assertive and too aggressive. None of these charges and criticisms, however, materially weakened the strong hold the President was fast gaining on the country, and his two months' trip to the Pacific Coast made many new. friends and strengthened the allegiance of many old ones. The financiering of this western tour brought up another question of Presidential propriety. There was a rumor to the effect that all expenses of the tour, including wining, dining, transportation, etc., were borne by the railroad corporations that had the honor of carrying the President and his party over the lines. Invidious comparisons were made between President President Roosevelt's acceptance of courtesies, and President Cleveland's habit of paying all of his own bills whenever he went on a tour. His action was defended on the ground that he had been assured that special trains had been furnished free of charge to his predecessors, not in their personal capacity, but as Presidents of the United States. He was informed at the time of his original inquiry that the various railroads vied with one another in furnishing such special trains because such trains carrying a President of the United States attracted passengers to the trains at various points of call, and hence were a sound business investment. A President, moreover, could hardly be expected to defray his own expenses.