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Fellow Writes on Roche: Biography of an Inspiring Activist

Fellow Robyn Muncy is writing a biography of Josephine Roche, a 20th- century activist who devoted much of her life to protecting labor unions and fighting for coal miners' rights.

While Americans debate public health care options and the future of Social Security, a Wilson Center fellow analyzes the achievements of a brazen lady who helped pioneer U.S. social welfare. Fellow Robyn Muncy, who teaches history at the University of Maryland at College Park, is writing a biography of Josephine Roche, a progressive 20th-century activist who dedicated her life to protecting labor unions and fighting for workers' health and retirement.

"Roche was imbued with a spirit of confidence for making the world a better place, like her cohort of educated women," said Muncy. In this way, she was an ordinary reformer. Roche received degrees from Vassar and Columbia and started her career as Denver's first policewoman. By the late 1920s, she would come to champion another cause: organized labor.

In 1927, Roche inherited her father's shares in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company. Her late father, who headed that company, was staunchly anti-union, but Roche held a different outlook. A great supporter of organized labor, Roche took control of the company, ousted the existing management, and invited the United Mine Workers to organize the miners there. She then survived a price war organized by her competitors, including John Rockefeller, thanks to loyal miners who lent her their wages to save the company.

"Roche was a progressive industrialist in an industry known for pitched and bloody battles," where animosity and arguments between workers and management ran deep, said Muncy. "She brings cooperation to the coal fields of Colorado and gets the attention of [incoming president] Franklin Roosevelt." In 1934, FDR appointed Roche assistant secretary of Treasury, the second highest-ranking woman in government, where she oversaw the Public Health Service. She supervised development of a national health plan that included extending social security to include disability insurance. Other issues she pressed for, that much later would get passed, were federal aid to community hospitals and Medicaid and Medicare provisions.

"To appreciate her legacy," said Muncy, "we must look at private institutions as well as public policy." Roche sold the coal company in the 1940s and became director of the UMW health and retirement fund where she developed a pension plan and a health system that built modern hospitals in Appalachia. In the 1950s and 60s, she pioneered managed care.

Workers could visit any approved doctor and a fund, not the patient, would foot the bill. She also improved work conditions, raising wages, and advocated for worker safety throughout her career. Her policies, including involving miners in company decisions, lowered the accident rates in the mines.

Roche, who did not retire until she turned 85, died in 1976. She left behind an impressive legacy, though, during her later life, she strove for anonymity. In the 1950s and 60s, she tried to drop from public view altogether due to Senator McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, worrying about the consequences of having been a left-wing public figure while developing the national health plan.

Her public career helps explain the war on poverty during the Great Society of the 60s, Muncy said. Simultaneous with the civil rights movement, workers suffering unemployment, including miners, were among the activists who played a critical role during that era. Muncy said, "Roche's life demonstrates important continuities across three reform eras [progressive, New Deal, and Great Society] showing the progressive tradition stayed alive."