 t the age of 26, Josephine Roche became Denver's first policewoman, fighting against vice and prostitution. Later she became a probation officer in juvenile court and worked against the exploitation of child labor throughout the 1920s. Upon her father's death in 1927, Josephine inherited a majority share in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, not realizing that she had taken on a situation with appalling social injustices. After a bloody strike at a mine near Lafayette brought the miners' miserable conditions to light, Josephine immediately acknowledged their plight and paid her miners seven dollars per day, the highest wages in the coal industry. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt named Roche Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. She continued to work for the rights of miners as the director of the United Mine Workers' Pension Fund until her mid-eighties. |
