(dramatic music) - On April 1st, 2021, more than 1,000 union coal miners dropped their tools, hoisted protest signs and went on strike at the Warrior Met Coal mine in Brookwood, Alabama.

Contract negotiations had failed.

Requests for higher pay and better benefits had been denied.

The United Mine Workers of America filed unfair labor practice charges against the mine, citing an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith.

The miners formed picket lines and organized sit-ins and held rallies.

Some traveled to New York City to protest outside of the private equity firms invested in the mine.

Neither side relented.

One year later, their strike is now the longest in Alabama history and it's still underway.

As the Warrior Met strike marks its one-year anniversary, my friend Ken Burns and I want to share with you another moment in America's labor history, a strike held 120 years ago by this very same union.

(pensive music) (dramatic music) At the turn of the last century, mine workers powered the country.

America ran on anthracite coal, much of it mined from Pennsylvania hillsides.

Coal workers, some as young as 10, toiled for 16 hours a day under constant threat of cave-ins and explosions.

Mine owners hadn't raised their low wages for more than 20 years, and company-owned stores swallowed up what little money the miners could scrape together.

Owners used all their power to block change.

In 1902, hoping for better pay and shorter hours, the United Mine Workers Union called for a strike.

140,000 men laid down their pick axes.

Management refused to meet with them.

Over the next several months, the price of coal rose from $5 to $30 a ton.

President Theodore Roosevelt feared there would be the most awful riots this country has ever seen.

Though he had no constitutional authority to intervene, he felt that for the good of the country, he simply had to.

Watch what transpired in this moment from Ken Burns' "The Roosevelts."

- [Narrator] The president summoned both sides to Washington to discuss what he called "a matter of vital concern to the whole nation."

- Roosevelt holds them together and he says, "Gentlemen, I want you to agree to arbitrate."

And the coal operators say, "No way, we're not doing it.

We don't have to."

And Roosevelt says, "Very well, then.

"I will nationalize the mines "and use the United States Army to run them for the good of this people."

And they all say, "You have no constitutional authority of any sort to do that."

And he says, "I know I don't.

"The president has a moral duty "to the American people that is higher "than his constitutional duty and by godfrey, I'm going to do it if I have to."

- [Narrator] A conservative congressman confronted the president.

"What about the Constitution of the United States?"

he asked.

"How could private property be put to public purposes without due process of law?"

Roosevelt grasped his visitor's lapels.

"The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution," he said.

The mine owners retreated but only slightly.

They agreed to follow the suggestions of a presidential commission, provided no member of the United Mine Workers Union sat on it.

But Roosevelt was determined that labor have a voice, and appointed the head of the Railroad Conductor's Union instead.

The owners objected until the president told them, with a straight face, that he was naming him as a "sociologist," not a union man.

- [Theodore Roosevelt] I shall never forget 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 it with rapture.

It gave me an illuminating glimpse into one corner of the mighty brains of these "captains of industry."

- [Narrator] The mine owners continued to refuse to recognize the union but they did agree to a 10% pay raise and a nine-hour day.

The strike ended.

American homes would be heated and in the midterm elections, the Republicans would maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress.

(cart stopping) Roosevelt was jubilant.

He was the first president to mediate a labor dispute, the first to treat labor as a full partner, the first to threaten to employ federal troops to seize a strike-bound industry.

And it had all worked.

(dramatic music) - Theodore Roosevelt believed that the government must represent the interests of the people as a whole.

In 1902, he set a precedent: the federal government, as a representative of the public interest, has a role to play in labor disputes.

Samuel Gompers, the first president of the AFL, believed the 1902 strike was in his words, "evidence of the effectiveness of trade unions."

In its aftermath, union enrollment boomed, negotiation with unions would become a part of progressive business management.

Today, America faces levels of class inequality surpassing even that of the Gilded Age.

Hard work doesn't pay off for far too many Americans and those workers are increasingly speaking out and organizing.

I see more momentum behind the labor movement now than at any time in my career.

Workers have held successful strikes at John Deere, in Kellogg factories.

Nurses, teachers, flight attendants, journalists, Starbucks baristas are organizing and negotiating contracts.

Amazon warehouse workers are taking on a company whose dominance in the economy we simply haven't seen anything like since perhaps Roosevelt's presidency.

And at a mine in Alabama, workers continue to strike.

No one is calling for nationalizing an entire industry today as Roosevelt threatened but this moment is an essential reminder that our government must protect workers' rights to organize for fair pay and for safe working conditions.

On my lapel, I always wear a pin for 25 years depicting a canary in a birdcage.

Mine workers back then would have recognized it.

They took canaries down into the mines to warn them of poisonous gas.

If the canary stops singing, they knew they had mere minutes to get out alive.

They didn't have a union strong enough or a government that cared enough to protect them.

The 1902 strike changed the story.

To me, this pin represents their victory, it represents the constant struggle to ensure that hard work should pay off for people who power our country.

Progress tends to come in short bursts.

And the "conservators," as Ralph Waldo Emerson called them, spend the ensuing years protecting their privilege and trying to claw back more of their power.

It's a cycle that repeats itself throughout the 20th century in a struggle that remains ongoing 120 years later.