ere determined to make no concession. The coal famine became
a national menace as the winter approached. "The big coal operators
had banded together," so Roosevelt has described the situation, "and
positively refused to take any steps looking toward an accommodation.
They knew that the suffering among the miners was great; they were
confident that if order was kept, and nothing further done by the
Government, they would win; and they refused to consider that the public
had any rights in the matter."

As the situation grew more and more dangerous, the President directed
the head of the Federal Labor Bureau to make an investigation of the
whole matter. From this investigation it appeared that the most feasible
solution of the problem was to prevail upon both sides to agree to a
commission of arbitration and promise to accept its findings. To this
proposal the miners agreed; the mine owners insolently declined it.
Nevertheless, Roosevelt persisted, and ultimately the operators
yielded on condition that the commission, which was to be named by the
President, should contain no representative of labor. They insisted that
it should be composed of (1) an officer of the engineer corps of
the army or navy, (2) a man with experience in mining, (3) a "man
of prominence, eminent as a sociologist," (4) a Federal Judge of the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and (5) a mining engineer. In the
course of a long and grueling conference it looked as though a
deadlock could be the only outcome, since the mine owners would have
no representative of labor on any terms. But it suddenly dawned on
Roosevelt that the owners were objecting not to the thing but to the
name. He discovered that they would not object to the appointment of any
man, labor man or not, so long as he was not appointed as a labor man
or as a representative of labor. "I shall never forget," he says in
his "Autobiography", "the mixture of relief and amusement I felt when I
thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would heroically submit to
anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I would call it Tweedledee
they would accept with rapture." All that he needed to do was to "commit
a technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn face." When he realized
that this was the case, Roosevelt announced that he was glad to accept
the terms laid down, and proceeded to appoint to the third position
on the Commission the labor man whom he had wanted from the first
to appoint, Mr. E.