Credit: Library of Congress
To resolve the 1902 coal strike, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a commission that included ex-President Grover Cleveland, Commissioner of Labor Carroll Wright, a Catholic bishop, a military engineer, mining engineer, judge, and an "eminent sociologist"–E. E. Clark, head of the railway conductors' union. After the strike ended on October 23, 1902, the commissioners held three months of hearings and took the testimony of 558 witnesses, including 240 for the striking miners, 153 for nonunion mineworkers, and 154 for the operators, before handing down a settlement that gave the miners a 10% wage increase and forced the operators to agree to the establishment of a six-man arbitration board with the power to settle labor disputes.
