Roosevelt saw things from the people’s viewpoint and tried to get both sides to submit to a commission of arbitration, with a promise to accept its decision. Under this arrangement the miners were to go to work as soon as the commission was appointed, at the old rate of wages. The miners, headed by John Mitchell, agreed to this proposition. The operators refused and Roosevelt confined his efforts to securing an agreement between the operators and the miners.
On October 3 he called the representatives of both before him. This time Roosevelt, by sheer force of will, secured his object. The operators obstinately held out for the appointment of a commission of five that did not include even one representative of labor. Roosevelt insisted that labor be represented and carried his point. Human rights had triumphed over property rights.
When the battle was over the President stood clearly before the people as a man who would champion them against the so-called captains of industry when it was necessary to do so.
The President let it be known early in his administration that in the South he would appoint good Democrats to office rather than bad Republicans.
It was while the President was making appointments of Democrats to office in the South, winning praise from those who had never before praised anything Republican, that the famous Booker T. Washington incident took place.
It had been through the help of the South that Washington had been able to accomplish his great work as a negro educator, but this section of the country, with the negro as a social problem very close to it, bitterly resented Roosevelt’s dining with the colored man.
The South took it as an affront, though evidently the President had not thought one way or the other as to the possible consequences. The criticisms heaped upon him he ignored.
Roosevelt did not long remain in the bad graces of the Southern people. He did not permit the South to forget that his mother was a Georgian woman, and that her brothers had fought in the Confederacy. The following incident illustrates the fine diplomacy with which he won back the regard of the Southern people:
On one of his Southern trips his train stopped at Charlotte. N. C. A committee of women led by Mrs. Thomas J. Jackson, widow of General Stonewall Jackson, was at the depot to meet Colonel Roosevelt. When he was introduced he referred to himself as by right a Southerner, and then being introduced to Mrs. Jackson, he added a remark which flashed through the South: