On the domestic front, President Roosevelt was one of
the most visible Progressives of his time. Many of his domestic
policies involved fighting big industry and corruption in an attempt
to help the common man. He offered the American people a Square
Deal to improve their standard of living and exert more control
over large domineering corporations or trusts. Trusts, which were
technically illegal under the 1890 Sherman Act, attempted to consolidate
business interests to create a monopoly on specific products and
eliminate competition. Many businesses attacked Roosevelt as a socialist,
but he ardently refuted these accusations and refuted the principles
of Marxism. In truth, Roosevelt did not despise big business, and
in fact realized that the trusts had indirectly increased the standard
of living for nearly every American in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Roosevelt did, however, dislike the power of the trusts
and the fact that the American public had little control of them.
On the other hand, however, he also feared giving too much power
to labor. His Square Deal policies attempted to strike a balance
between the two.
Roosevelt's first major domestic test as President came
when 140,000 miners in eastern Pennsylvania went on strike in the
1902 Coal Strike. Coal was a vital energy source for almost all
Americans during this era, and the nation panicked during the strike.
Represented by John Mitchell, the miners formed the United Mine
Workers Union to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
The president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company and
owner of the mine, George Baer, would not concede to the strikers'
demands. Mitchell approached Roosevelt and asked him to establish
an independent arbitration council. Baer–and, ironically, even
the miners themselves–refused arbitration. Roosevelt, under pressure
from Republicans and the American citizenry and not even considering
the legality of his actions, planned to replace the strikers by
force with ten thousand Army troops and begin mining coal again
if a settlement could not be reached. Fortunately, Secretary of War
Elihu Root was able to avert a disaster. Working with banker J.P.
Morgan, Root was able to convince the miners to accept independent
arbitration. Roosevelt won the American people's approval of the
way he handled the situation.
Also in 1902, President Roosevelt shocked financiers on
Wall Street with his decision to approve the government's lawsuit
against Northern Securities, a large and recently merged western
railroad company, for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. J.P.
Morgan, the financier who had arranged the merger and who had significant amounts
of money invested in Northern Securities, took Roosevelt's decision
as a personal insult. Many conservative Republicans in Congress
and bankers on Wall Street attacked the President and Attorney General
Philander Knox for the decision. The American people, one the other
hand, loved Roosevelt for his boldness in the face of the trusts.
To ensure the government's victory, Roosevelt also nominated Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr., to replace Justice Horace Gray on the Supreme
Court. As Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Holmes
had voted against industry and railroads in similar suits, making
him the perfect choice from Roosevelt's perspective. In the end,
the U.S. government won the suit, Northern Securities was dismantled
into smaller companies, and President Roosevelt came to be known
as the "Trustbuster."
As the Sherman Act had never been truly enforced until
this time, the breakup of Northern Securities opened the floodgate
for suits against other major trusts. Famous among these was Roosevelt's "busting"
of the Standard Oil trust. Muckraker Ida Tarbell's History
of Standard Oil, which was published in McClure magazine, detailed
the business practices of Rockefeller's oil machine. Tarbell accused
Standard Oil of issuing rebates in total of one million dollars
to its customers to effectively eliminate competition. In 1906,
Roosevelt had the Hepburn Bill drafted and passed through Congress
to reform rate evaluations and outlaw excessive rebates designed
to thwart competitors. The bill also stipulated that all companies
engaged in interstate commerce were under the supervision of the
federal government. The bill hurt not only Standard Oil but the
powerful rebate-issuing railroads as well. In all, Roosevelt brought
lawsuits against forty-three other trusts during his Presidency.
In 1907, financial troubles hit the United States when
the Knickerbocker Trust Company in New York failed, leading to
a cascade effect that caused many other banks to totter as well.
Conservative Republicans blamed Roosevelt for the economic distress,
claiming that his actions had undermined stability and shattered
consumer confidence. Roosevelt shot back that it was the plutocracy
that caused the troubles. Although it was impossible to discern
at the time, the rest of the world was suffering as well, and the
Panic of 1907 was neither the result of Roosevelt's policies or
the plutocrats' business practices. When the large brokerage of
Moore and Schley nearly collapsed, J.P. Morgan once again met with
the President. Moore and Schley held five million dollars of stock
in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company that it could not convert
to cash to pay its investors. Morgan suggested that financially
sound U.S. Steel Company purchase the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company,
validating its stock, and thus stabilize Moore and Schley. This
plan would work so long as Roosevelt approved the merger and promised
not to declare it a violation of the Sherman Act. Roosevelt consented,
U.S. Steel purchased Tennessee Coal and Iron, and as a result the
stock market did not collapse. Together, Roosevelt and Morgan successfully
avoided a widespread economic depression.
Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which
graphically depicted the horrible working conditions of the Chicago
stockyards and meatpacking industry, spurred Roosevelt to make
other reforms. The President was especially disgusted by Sinclair's
apparently fact-based account of a machinist who fell into a meat
grinder and emerged as canned meat to be sold and eaten. Roosevelt
called for immediate action and organized an investigation into
the packinghouses in Chicago and other cities. The details of the
report turned out to be not far from Sinclair's fictional account.
An outraged public cry for action quickly produced the Meat Inspection Bill
and later the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
Another major component of Roosevelt's domestic policy
was conservation, stemming from his great love of the outdoors.
After having toured the nation on several campaign trips, including
stints in California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southwest,
the president determined to conserve as much land as possible.
Roosevelt's idea of conservation was groundbreaking–at the time,
the idea of conserving the land primarily meant not preservation,
but merely saving the land for future generations to use later.
For this reason, most of the conserved land at that point was forest
that provided valuable timber. During his administrations, Roosevelt
purchased 150 acres of land to conserve. Roosevelt also consorted
with many prominent conservationists of the time, such as Gifford
Pinchot and John Muir, and established many wildlife preservations
along with them. The National Forest Service was organized and
additional National Parks were set aside throughout the U.S. for
recreation and conservation purposes. Such acts faced opposition
from many members of Congress and Western settlers who had plans
to use the land that was being set aside. Settlers were, however,
pleased with the 1902 Reclamation Act that set aside money to irrigate
previously dry and unlivable tracts of land.
