March 22, 1903: The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, created by President Theodore Roosevelt in response to the 1902 anthracite coal strike, submitted its report and labor recommendations. These included shorter hours and increased wages. Before gathering testimony, the committee toured coal worksites to see first-hand how coal miners lived and worked. Historian Jonathan Grossman writes of the strike and commission’s outcome that “Roosevelt’s effort to end the strike were successful. Both sides finally agreed to the findings of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, and peace was restored in the coalfields. More important in the long run, a new role was established for the Federal Government in labor disputes . . . a precedent for the Federal Government to intervene in labor disputes, not as strikebreaker but as a representative of the public interest.” The federal government was no longer immediately and vehemently against seriously considering the needs and demands of labor demonstrators.
Citations: Jonathan Grossman, “The coal strike of 1902—turning point in U.S. policy,” Monthly Labor Review 98, no. 10 (October 1975), 21, 26-27, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41839484; Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, Report to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1903), 51, 56, https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/documents/darrow/Report%20Anthracite%20Comm.pdf; “Anthracite Coal Strike Commission appointed 1902 by President Roosevelt,” photograph (location unknown, c. March 2, 1903), https://lccn.loc.gov/2010646576.
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