TR’s Triumphs 571that he was “disturbed and vexed by the tone and sub-
stance of the operators’ deliverances.” Encouraged by
this state of affairs, Roosevelt took a bold step: He
announced that unless a settlement was reached
promptly, he would order federal troops into the
anthracite regions, not to break the strike but to seize
and operate the mines.
The threat of government intervention brought
the owners to terms. A Cabinet member, Elihu
Root, worked out the details with J. P. Morgan,
whose firm had major interests in the Reading and
other railroads, while cruising the Hudson River on
Morgan’s yacht. The miners would return to the pits
and all issues between them and the coal companies
would be submitted for settlement to a commission
appointed by Roosevelt. Both sides accepted the
arrangement, and the men went back to work. In
March 1903 the commission granted the miners a
10 percent wage increase and a nine-hour workday.
To the public the incident seemed a perfect illus-
tration of the progressive spirit—in Roosevelt’s words,
everyone had received a Square Deal. In fact the
results were by no means so clear-cut. The miners
gained relatively little and the companies lost still less.
The president was the main winner. The public
acclaimed him as a fearless, imaginative, public-spirited
leader. Without calling on Congress for support, he
had expanded his own authority and hence that of the
federal government. His action marked a major for-
ward step in the evolution of the modern presidency.
TR’s Triumphs
By reviving the Sherman Act, settling the coal strike,
and pushing moderate reforms through Congress,
Roosevelt ensured that he would be reelected presi-
dent in 1904. Progressives, if not captivated, were at
least pleased by his performance. Conservative
Republicans offered no serious objection. Sensing
that Roosevelt had won over the liberals, the
Democrats nominated a conservative, Judge Alton B.
Parker of New York, and bid for the support of east-
ern industrialists.
This strategy failed, for businessmen continued to
eye the party of Bryan with intense suspicion. They
preferred, as theNew York Sunput it, “the impulsive
candidate of the party of conservatism to the conserva-
tive candidate of the party which the business interests
regard as permanently and dangerously impulsive.”
Despite his resentment at Roosevelt’s attack on the
Northern Securities Company, J. P. Morgan con-
tributed $150,000 to the Republican campaign. Other
tycoons gave with equal generosity. Roosevelt swept
the country, carrying even the normally Democratic
border states of Maryland and Missouri.
Encouraged by the landslide and the increasing
militancy of progressives, Roosevelt pressed for more
reform legislation. His most imaginative proposal was
a plan to make the District of Columbia a model pro-
gressive community. He suggested child labor and
factory inspection laws and a slum clearance program,
but Congress refused to act. Likewise, his request for
a minimum wage for railroad workers was rejected.Early in the twentieth century, when malnutrition was common,
companies such as this one advertised that its pills could make
people fatter. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 fined
manufacturers who made false claims for their products. A century
later, in 2010, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, under the headline “Too
Fat to Fight,” reported that over a fourth of eighteen to twenty-four
year-old potential army recruits were rejected as unfit.