Josephine Roche

Josephine Aspinwall Roche (December 2, 1886 – July 1976) was an American humanitarian, industrialist, Progressive Era activist, and politician. As a New Deal official she helped shape the modern American welfare state. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1986.

Josephine Roche was born in Neligh, Nebraska, and raised in Omaha, attending private girls' schools there before matriculating at Vassar College in 1904. There she double-majored in economics and classics, and participated in basketball and track clubs. After graduating in 1908, Roche earned a master's degree in social work in 1910 from Columbia University.

In 1906, her parents, John and Ella Roche, moved to Denver, where much of her life's work would be centered. Roche volunteered for social causes in both New York City and Denver, studied cost of living issues, and in 1912 returned to Denver full-time to become that city's first female police officer. However, her tenure there was short-lived, as her zealous prosecution of sumptuary laws and prostitution caused the city's more lenient law enforcement community to force her resignation.

Over the following decade, Roche held a number of jobs in Denver and Washington, D.C., including serving as chair of the Colorado Progressive Party and campaigning against child labor in the sugar beet industry. While in Washington, she was briefly married to author Edward Hale Bierstadt, a colleague at the Foreign Language Information Service, of which she was the director; the marriage lasted from 1920 to 1922 and ended in divorce. In 1925, she returned to Colorado due to her father's failing health, and in 1927 inherited his holdings in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, a coal mining company which he had founded. By 1929, she had purchased a majority interest in the company and became president. She then proceeded to enact a variety of pro-labor policies, including an invitation for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to return to Colorado and unionize her mines, 15 years after her father and other coal mine owners had broken the unions in the aftermath of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.

In 1934, Roche left Rocky Mountain Fuel to run for Governor of Colorado. After being defeated in the Democratic Party primary by Edwin C. Johnson, president Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. She held that post from 1934 until 1937. In 1936, she had John L. Lewis, president of the UMWA and also of the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) meet with New Deal legal expert Lee Pressman, later an admitted Communist and alleged Soviet spy.

In 1937, she resigned to return to Colorado and run Rocky Mountain Fuel following the death of its president. However, the company was too much impacted by a variety of economic forces, and declared bankruptcy in 1944. The company was ordered by bankruptcy court to liquidate assets and all mines ceased operation but the liquidation was not completed. Roche continued in control of the defunct company and the remaining assets and moved to Washington, D.C. Roche became president of Rocky Mountain Fuel Company in 1950 and maintained control of the company's non-liquidated assets until her death in 1976.

Beginning in 1948, Roche served as one of three directors of the United Mine Workers' welfare and retirement fund. In 1968, the union and its leadership were sued for mismanagement of the fund. The mismanagement charge was eventually proven in court, forcing Roche to step down in 1971.

Over the course of her life, Roche was honored by a number of business and civic organizations, and received honorary degrees from Smith College, Oglethorpe University, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Colorado.