Coal mine owner fought for workers' rights

By Tillie Fong

Josephine Aspinwell Roche once described her only hobby as ``humanity.''

But it was more a lifelong passion than idle pastime, a commitment that made her one of the most influential Denver women of the century.

Roche spent much of her long life waging war against ignorance and injustice in government and business.

She was the rarest of business executive in the 1920s and '30s - a coal mine owner who fought to improve conditions for miners and to negotiate with their union.

During her long career, Roche did everything from fight prostitution in the city's red light district as Denver's first policewoman to run for governor of Colorado.

``I don't know of a woman who worked for so many causes and knew so many important people as she,'' said Elinor McGinn, a Boulder lecturer and author of an upcoming biography on Roche.

``She concerned herself with the plight of child labor, troubled youth, corrupt city government, coal miners and their families, immigrants, World War I refugees, the rights of workers and the nation's health.''

Roche's background gave no hint of the social activist to come.

She was born Dec. 2, 1886, in Neligh, Neb., to a prominent couple, John and Ella Roche of Omaha. The family moved in 1906 to Denver, where John Roche became head of Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. The company had mines in Louisville, Lafayette and areas west of Denver, including Gunnison.

At an early age, Josephine Roche began to ask hard questions, even challenging her father about working conditions.

``I was about 12, and I wanted to go down in a coal mine,'' she said in a 1975 Rocky Mountain News interview. ``My father said it was too dangerous. I can remember saying, `If it is too dangerous for me, why isn't it just as dangerous for the men?' ''

At Vassar College, where she earned a degree in sociology in 1908, her progressive politics and humanitarian instincts bloomed.

``She was a wealthy person who was introduced to immigrants at the time, and she threw her lot with the downtrodden,'' McGinn said.

Roche did volunteer work with the poor in New York City. During summer breaks before her junior and senior years, she worked as an assistant with the juvenile court of famed Denver ``children's judge'' Benjamin Lindsey.

In 1912, George Creel, a Denver police commissioner, asked her to become Denver's first policewoman.

Roche patrolled Denver's ``entertainment district'' - the theaters, saloons, gambling dens and brothels from Arapahoe Street to the South Platte River.

Her reports on violations of liquor and dance hall laws resulted in her firing in 1913. Roche was reinstated but then forced to resign amid opposition from the police and fire boards.

``My activities in behalf of social betterment were obnoxious to the administration,'' she later wrote.

But she remained a potent force. In 1914, as secretary of the Colorado Progressive Party, Roche called for addressing the plight of coal miners.

That cause was dramatized in the April 1914 Ludlow Massacre, in which the state militia destroyed a tent city of striking miners, killing women and children.

Roche helped the grieving families in Ludlow and organized a group of women survivors, accompanying them to New York to testify before the U.S. Industrial Relations Commission.

Over the next decade, she held several jobs in Washington and Denver. Among other things, she launched a campaign against child labor in the sugar beet industry, which had a huge Colorado presence.

Her father's failing health drew her back to Denver in July 1925. Her father died in 1927, and Roche inherited his share of the minority stock at the Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. She became vice president in 1928 and president in 1929.

``I like this work better than anything I have ever done,'' she said. ``In a job like this, one has the power of putting into effect policies that directly benefit people.''

During her tenure, she stressed ``humanity over profit,'' reversing decades of bad blood between labor and coal companies.

She invited the United Mine Workers back into the state and negotiated the first union contract for Colorado mine workers.

She established the highest wages in the coal industry - $7 a day - and re-established collective bargaining.

Under her leadership, Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. became the second largest coal company in the state after Colorado Fuel & Iron. But Roche was about to face her biggest challenge - CF&I slashed prices and miners' wages to bring her down.

Rocky Mountain Fuel nearly collapsed. But its workers - the miners that Roche, their boss, had protected - saved the day. They loaned Roche half their wages - $80,000 - to keep the company afloat.

A year later, the company faltered again, and Roche had to slash wages to $5.25 a day. However, she offered the miners land to farm and credit at the company store to help them survive.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt called Roche one of the greatest humanitarians of her time.

``Her work was known not only in Colorado but throughout the East and even in England and France,'' McGinn said.

As the Great Depression worsened in 1934, she ran against Democrat Edwin Johnson for governor, using the slogan ``Roosevelt, Roche, Recovery.''

She lost, but President Roosevelt soon appointed her assistant secretary of the treasury.

She represented Treasury in the ``little cabinet'' - the Cabinet Committee on Economic Security, which outlined plans to get people out of soup lines and poor houses and into jobs.

The next year, Roosevelt appointed Roche head of the new National Youth Administration which helped youths between 15 and 25 get jobs and training.

She resigned in October 1937 to return to Colorado to take over Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. after its president died.

During her absence, the company had faltered, partly as a result of the increasing popularity and availability of natural gas.

Roche tried to salvage the company. At times, her workers contributed as much as three months wages to keep it going. But the company filed for bankruptcy in 1944.

United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis appointed her in 1948 one of three directors of its welfare and retirement fund, a post she held until 1971.

She left Colorado in 1946 but returned for a visit in 1975, when she bristled at the suggestion of writing an autobiography.

``Who in hell would want to read it?'' she said, scoffing at one publicist's claim that she had ``made or participated in more history than most people read in a lifetime.''

She died the following year at 90.

July 13, 1999

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