The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930

4: The Consuming Public and the Industrial Commission

95 I n his 1906 Annual Message to Congress, President Roosevelt urged support for a bill to mandate the government investigation of labor disputes before allowing workers to strike.1 In an “age of great corporate and labor combinations,” the president insisted that “the public has itself an interest which can not wisely be disregarded; an interest not merely of general convenience , for the question of a just and proper public policy must also be considered .”2 Congress at the time was unmoved. Yet Roosevelt’s proposal signaled a growing Progressive movement to compel the investigation and arbitration of major labor conflicts. This movement peaked in the years soon after World War I. National advocates for government mediation insisted that an impartial commission of experts could peacefully negotiate workplace disputes and spare the consuming public the contests of will and force associated with major strikes. The federal arbitration of railroad and mining conflicts established important precedents.3 National mediation boards, however, rarely assumed the power to compel compliance. Such efforts were more prominent at the state level, especially in Colorado and Kansas. In 1915, Colorado legislators largely implemented The Consuming Public and the Industrial Commission The Consuming Public and the Industrial Commission 96 Roosevelt’s Progressive proposal, creating the first state board with powers to ban strikes and lockouts pending an investigation in industries affected with a public interest. Soon after the war, Kansas expanded on the Colorado precedent with a compulsory arbitration board to regulate a host of industries deemed essential to the public.4 Administrative Progressive programs for state mediation of labor conflicts in the postwar period were particularly bound up with questions of compulsion in the public interest. In fact, crucial to the fate of the Colorado and Kansas experiments were competing efforts to define and represent the public and its interests.5 These mediation boards drew government bureaucrats, organized labor, large and small-business owners, farmers, and middle-class reformers into negotiations over the interests and boundaries of the public. Before 1914, Protestant Progressives in Colorado had wielded great influence over the scope and goals of nonpartisan public action in challenges against party machines and corporate lobbying. After the massacre at Ludlow a new cadre of industrial relations experts defined the public interest in less moral terms. With an emphasis on cross-class harmony and scientific investigation of labor unrest, mediation Progressives in Colorado and Kansas followed the lead of national figures such as John Commons at the University of Wisconsin and Paul Kellogg, editor of the influential Survey magazine. Their vision of the public interest informed the creation of the Colorado Industrial Commission (CIC) and the Kansas Industrial Court. The most consistent and fundamental struggle for the public interest occurred between these government boards and organized labor. In the immediate postwar years the CIC and Kansas Industrial Court sought foremost to represent the consumer. Responding to the surge in strike activity between 1919 and 1922, these boards sought to protect the consumer, check inflation, and end disruptions to life’s routines.6 Commissioners argued that only state compulsion could ensure negotiation between capital and labor to protect the consuming public. Organized workers strongly disagreed. The consuming public, unionists insisted, had no rights superior to those of workers to earn a living and resist employer oppression. Labor leaders argued that these boards taught consumers how to oppress workers. Unionization and protective labor legislation were far better tools than expert investigation for equalizing the balance of power in the workplace.7 The right to quit work collectively, they contended, was essential to democratic freedom. It was a citizenship right superior to the consuming public’s right to convenience. The Colorado labor department, empowered to enforce protective labor laws, could enhance union strength and worker citizenship. In responding to the challenge of compulsory arbitration with its focus on the interests of the public, union leaders advanced a vision of labor Progressivism at odds with the mediation experts. The Consuming Public and the Industrial Commission 97 Creating the Colorado Industrial Commission Colorado legislators, similar to President Roosevelt, came to favor compulsory investigation in response to a dispute in coal mining. Throughout the Colorado coal strike of 1913 and 1914, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CFI) consistently refused to recognize the growing influence of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). Progressive legislators considered compulsory arbitration as the only way to bring employers like the CFI to...