Josephine Aspinwall Roche:

Industrialist—Crusader—Humanitarian

By: Jeanette G Carroll

Josephine Roche was one of Colorado’s most brilliant business women and one of its most potent social activists and she fused two entities into one of the state’s most remarkable personalities.  She was, simply a woman of great grace who believed in the most fundamental human tenets:  That the sanctity of the human spirit was the most important things in life.  In the twentieth century Colorado, using her politics and business acumen as weaponry against those that did not agree, she waged an almost singular one-woman thirty-year war to
help those who could not help themselves.[1]

            In the proverbial nutshell the preceding statement succinctly captures the essence of why Josephine Roche is important to Colorado.  She was a mover and a shaker:  she wanted to change the way things were done to make the world a better place in the early and middle twentieth century.  The ensuing discussion will chronicle Roche’s life and the significant contributions she made to a fledgling and growing Colorado.  Significant events in Roche’s life include being a police officer in Denver, acting as a patrol officer for juveniles caught up in the Colorado judicial system in Denver, taking over her family’s mines after the death of her father, and running for Governor of Colorado in 1934.  While these events were extremely important to the development of Colorado, Roche also had significant impact on the national scene, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Roosevelt and changing the face of labor, as it was then known in the United States.[2]  Roche was important enough to have Eleanor Roosevelt call her “one of the greatest humanitarians of her time” and John D. Rockefeller calls her “an insipid upstart.”[3]

            Josephine Aspinwall Roche was born in Nebraska in 1886 and moved with her family to Denver in 1908. She attended Vassar College and Columbia University completing a degree in social work.[4]  She was both a political activist and a humanitarian which found her early in her career working for women’s and children’s rights beginning in the early nineteen hundreds ending only with her death.  She worked for Judge Ben Lindsey’s Juvenile Court in Denver’s progressive movement.  After her stint as police officer and probation officer, she took over her family’s troubled Rocky Mountain Fuel Company.  In 1934 she launched a failed bid for Governor of Colorado, but her platform of Federal-State cooperation and government humanitarianism caught the attention of President Roosevelt.  After serving as Assistant Secretary of Treasury from1934 to 1937, Roche returned to Rocky Mountain Fuel Company in an attempt to save the failing company. She retired to Washington D. C. and died in 1976 just after her ninetieth birthday.[5]

            The first of Roche’s exploits to be discussed involves her activities in the Colorado criminal justice system—as policewoman and probation officer.  Abbott, Leonard, and McComb set the scene:  “By 1912 tolerance of sex for sale had declined sufficiently in Denver Police Commissioner George Creel judged the time right to launch a holy war.  Assisted by Josephine Roche, a Vassar graduate turned social worker, he reduced the number of Market Street prostitutes from 700 to 250.”[6]  Historians Monnett and McCarthy report:  “Roche’s job was to patrol Denver’s ‘entertainment district’…to destroy the areas vice by neutralizing its prostitution base.”[7]  Being a woman of high moral values, Roche attacked her job with a frenzy.  Again Monnett and McCarthy recount:  “She raided, arrested, preached, and sheltered until prostitution in the district was essentially gone.”[8]  At this facet of her job Roche was a success, but she was much more than just a crime-buster.  Epstein observes:  “Angry at the terrible living conditions of poor women and children she became their protector, speaking for them.”[9]  Roche’s presence and practice wrecked economic and political havoc.  Because she executed her duties faultlessly, Roche was a thorn in the side of the corrupt men who ran the entertainment business. These men used their influence and Roche was removed from her position.  Historians offer this explanation:  “Some said the reason was that as a woman in a department of men, and hired outside regular channels at that, Roche simply had caused too much dissension around her.”[10]

            In almost a straight line, Roche moved from the streets to the courts.  It was Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey, another individual important to the development of Colorado, who began the reformation of the court system as it applied to juveniles.  From his own mouth, Lindsey speaks about the system:  “It was more than absurd, more than wrong.  It was an outrage against childhood, against society, against justice, decency and common sense.”[11]  Fay summarizes:  “Judge Lindsey established a moral Juvenile Court system which made a difference to the future of thousands of the nations delinquents, as judicial strategy gradually shifted from punishment to rehabilitation.”[12]  Lindsey was more than ably assisted by none other than Josephine Roche.  Monnett and McCarthy detail Roche’s involvement:  “Joining with Lindsey, Denver’s celebrated ‘children’s judge,’ she became a probation officer with the same furious diligence she gave to women of the night.”[13]  Roche became an authority on children’s issues, worked with the United States Children Bureau on issues of child labor, and established significant connections that linked economics (poverty) to juvenile delinquency (i.e. poverty = crime).[14]

            Though she was clearly a factor in Denver’s development during the early twentieth century, Josephine Roche truly gained prominence with the acquisition of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company following her father’s death in 1927.[15]  Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith report: “Josephine Roche already had made some Colorado as Denver’s first police woman (1912), an officer with Edwin P. Costigan in the Colorado’s Progressive Society, and in various capacities with the Denver Juvenile Court.  Her experiences in social work led her to [conclude] that many of the miners grievances were legitimate complaints.”[16]  It was at this time that she came to prominence primarily because of her business practices that went against the norms established by other mine owners.  Chief among her opposition was John D. Rockefeller who owned the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, a non-union mine.[17]  In 1928, she unionized the company and signed an unprecedented labor contract.[18]  “Its stated purpose was ‘to establish industrial justice, substitute reason for violence, integrity and good faith for dishonest practices and a union of effort for the chaos for present economic warfare.’”[19]  There is tragic irony in this set of events because in November of the preceding year five striking miners had been killed at the Columbine mine, which was owned by Rocky Mountain Fuel when they attempted to picket on the property.  Had liberal Roche come to power sooner the tragedy could have been avoided because she had clearly broken ranks with the traditional industry and was dedicated to providing the best working conditions possible for her employees.[20]

            The signing of the contract was only the first in a series of outrageous business maneuvers executed by Roche.  She actually invited the United Mine Workers Union (U.M.W.) to her mines to convince her workers to unionize.  She paid her workers “phenomenal” wages—$7 a day.[21]  Additionally, Roche “insisted on decent housing, built schools, and [established] tough safety standards in her mines.”[22]  And these novel practices were successful and productive:  “The Miners loved Miss. Roche.  They worked harder for her than the miners at other coal companies.  The coal miners and the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company made money.  Josephine once said, ‘Being good to your workers is not only the right thing to do, it is a better way to make money.’”[23]  But these practices also gained Roche the contempt of her fellow mine owners who retaliated.  According to Ubbelohde, et al, “in addition to the competition of gas and oil, the relatively high wage contract placed a financial burden on the company at the same time that rival companies were conducting a price-cutting campaign against Josephine’s experiment.”[24]  But what Roche’s workers refused to let her and the Rocky Mountain Fuel go under:  “When rival companies struck back by cutting prices Miss. Roche’s employees placed with her three months of their pay as a loan.”[25]  In essence, Roche received some eighty thousand dollars to keep the company solvent.[26]

            Unfortunately, for Josephine there were several variables that together constituted doom for her company.  The first variable came in the form of natural gas.  Researcher Robe4rt G. Athearn recounts:  “The coal industry, already sick, was struck a hard blow in the late twenties when a natural gas line was brought into Colorado from the Texas panhandle.”[27]  The second apocalyptic occurrence was the Great Depression.  As a direct result of this disastrous state of economics in 1932, Roche was compelled to lower miners’ wages from $7 to $5.25 a day just to stay solvent.[28]

            Even as her mine was struggling Josephine, ever the crusader, found another arena to do battle.  In 1934, she reentered the world of politics, running for governor of Colorado.  Historians Richard N. Ellis and Duane A. Smith relate:  “When New Dealers and others tried to unseat Johnson in 1934 they selected progressive mine owner and social worker Josephine Roche.  One of Colorado’s outstanding twentieth-century women, to run against him.”[29]  The “Johnson” in question was Edwin Carl (“Big Ed”) Johnson characterized as “the most discussed and often the most cussed Colorado politician” of the time.[30]  Though not necessarily the ideal governor Johnson was a savvy politician with significant political clout.  He managed to defeat Roche at the polls with 76,240 votes to Roche’s 63,000 votes.[31]  Monnett and McCarthy detail:  “In defeat, Roche still salvaged something.  Among others President Franklin D. Roosevelt had noticed that Roche was ‘the very embodiment of the New Deal in Colorado.’”[32]  She had continually fought for industrial stability and accountability; she had used the federal administration’s National Recovery Administration program in her own business world, saving the state of Colorado millions of dollars by doing so.[33]  Because of this and, as Fay reveals, “[b]ecause of her humane treatment of her employees, she attracted the attention of the First Lady and then of President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself.  He named her Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1934.  She was only the second woman to hold even a sub-cabinet rank in the Federal Government.”[34]  She was also Public Administrator of the Public Health Service.  As always her goals were simple yet compelling:  “Among our objectives I have placed the security of men, women, and children of this nation first.”[35]  In her new position, Roche commanded some fifty-six thousand government employees and like their predecessors, miners, these people gave their all to assist Roche and the government in the elimination of the devastating poverty left in the wake of the Depression.[36]

            In 1937, Roche resigned, even though “Roosevelt…held her position open in the hope that she would return.”[37]  But Roche was committed to trying to save her company.  Unfortunately, not even a pledge of four hundred fifty thousand dollars from the U.M.W. in 1941 could keep Rocky Mountain Fuel alive.[38]  Historians Monnett and McCarthy eulogize:  “In the end though it did not good.  In 1944, Rocky Mountain Fuel filed for bankruptcy.  The great social experiment was over.”[39]  But the demise of Rocky Mountains Fuel was not a total failure through Roche’s ceaseless efforts resulted in the passage of the Wagnor Act in 1935 that “legalized collective bargaining” and acknowledged the validity of unions.[40]  Though Roche served as the U.M.W.’s pension fund director in the late nineteen forties and though she continued to work for reform, “in 1938 she headed a national commission studying health care for the poor,” Josephine’s life in the public arena virtually ended after the collapse of her company.[41]  She spent the later years of her life in retirement in the Washington D.C. area and eventually died in a private nursing home in Bethesda, Maryland.[42]

            Josephine Aspinwall Roche was a pioneer of many varieties—first female police officer, early juvenile right advocate, humanitarian mine owner, progressive politician, federal cabinet member, and crusader-at-large.  To ask why she was important to Colorado and its people is to ask what it was that she did, because it is what she did that is of importance.  This paper has briefly chronicled Roche’s exploits and accomplishments.  In the first instance, she was a successful woman of action in a man’s world.  That makes both her and her actions important.  In still the next instance, she was a compassionate humane and caring individual, which clearly distinguished her from her contemporaries at a time and in a place when men and exploitation reigned.  Monnett and McCarthy conclude:  “In the wake of her death, people remembered Josephine Roche as one of two persons—as the pragmatic business woman who sustained Rocky Mountain Fuel as a force in the mining industry long after its time had passes, and as progressive humanitarian who wore causes on her sleeves.  In reality, the two persons were always one, and it was the fusion of the two that made Roche as unique as she was.”[43]  The words constitute a fitting epitaph for the great lady and dynamic woman who was Josephine Aspinwall Roche.

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