Americanization; Citizenship; Speeches, addresses, etc.
Again: every citizen should be trained sedulously by every activity at
our command to realize his duty to the nation. In France at this moment
the workingmen who are not at the front are spending all their energies
with the single thought of helping their brethren at the front by what
they do in the munition plant, on the railroads, in the factories. It
is a shocking, a lamentable thing that many of the trade unions of
England have taken a directly opposite view. I am not concerned with
whether it be true, as they assert, that their employers are trying to
exploit them, or, as these employers assert, that the labor men are
trying to gain profit for those who stay at home at the cost of their
brethren who fight in the trenches. The thing for us Americans to
realize is that we must do our best to prevent similar conditions from
growing up here. Business men, professional men, and wage workers alike
must understand that there should be no question of their enjoying any
rights whatsoever unless in the fullest way they recognize and live up
to the duties that go with those rights. This is just as true of the
corporation as of the trade union, and if either corporation or trade
union fails heartily to acknowledge this truth, then its activities
are necessarily anti-social and detrimental to the welfare of the
body politic as a whole. In war time, when the welfare of the nation
is at stake, it should be accepted as axiomatic that the employer is
to make no profit out of the war save that which is necessary to the
efficient running of the business and to the living expenses of himself
and family, and that the wage worker is to treat his wage from exactly
the same standpoint and is to see to it that the labor organization to
which he belongs is, in all its activities, subordinated to the service
of the nation.
Now there must be some application of this spirit in times of peace or
we cannot suddenly develop it in time of war. The strike situation in
the United States at this time is a scandal to the country as a whole
and discreditable alike to employer and employee. Any employer who
fails to recognize that human rights come first and that the friendly
relationship between himself and those working for him should be one of
partnership and comradeship in mutual help no less than self-help is
recreant to his duty as an American citizen and it is to his interest,
having in view the enormous destruction of life in the present war, to
conserve, and to train to higher efficiency alike for his benefit and
for its, the labor supply. In return any employee who acts along the
lines publicly advocated by the men who profess to speak for the I. W.
W. is not merely an open enemy of business but of this entire country
and is out of place in our government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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