Ethelbert Stewart (1857–1936) was the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) from 1921 to 1932. Stewart worked as a coffin-maker, then founded and edited labor newspapers. He was made the commissioner of labor for the state of Illinois in the 1880s. He was made deputy commissioner of the BLS in 1913 along with other roles in the U.S. Department of Labor. In that position he had a public role in how the organization should track women workers, child labor, and occupational injuries and illnesses. In the fall of 1913 he mediated a coal mining dispute involving the Rockefeller interests in Colorado and helped resolve the Indianapolis streetcar strike of 1913. It was hard to keep the Bureau staffed during World War I and Stewart advocated offering pensions to civil servants.