Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
How to secure fair treatment alike for labor and for capital, how to
hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee,
without weakening individual initiative, without hampering and
cramping the industrial development of the country, is a problem
fraught with great difficulties and one which it is of the highest
importance to solve on lines of sanity and far-sighted common-sense
as well as of devotion to the right. This is an era of federation
and combination. Exactly as business men find they must often work
through corporations, and as it is a constant tendency of these
corporations to grow larger, so it is often necessary for laboring
men to work in federations, and these have become important factors
of modern industrial life. Both kinds of federation, capitalistic and
labor, can do much good, and as a necessary corollary they can both do
evil. Opposition to each kind of organization should take the form of
opposition to whatever is bad in the conduct of any given corporation
or union—not of attacks upon corporations as such nor upon unions as
such; for some of the most far-reaching beneficent work for our people
has been accomplished through both corporations and unions. Each must
refrain from arbitrary or tyrannous interference with the rights of
others. Organized capital and organized labor alike should remember
that in the long run the interest of each must be brought into harmony
with the interest of the general public; and the conduct of each
must conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to the law, of
individual freedom, and of justice and fair dealing toward all. Each
should remember that in addition to power it must strive after the
realization of healthy, lofty, and generous ideals. Every employer,
ever wage-worker, must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do
as he likes with his property or his labor so long as he does not
infringe upon the rights of others. It is of the highest importance
that employer and employee alike should endeavor to appreciate each
the viewpoint of the other and the sure disaster that will come upon
both in the long run if either grows to take as habitual an attitude
of sour hostility and distrust toward the other. Few people deserve
better of the country than those representatives both of capital and
labor—and there are many such—who work continually to bring about a
good understanding of this kind, based upon wisdom and upon broad
and kindly sympathy between employers and employed. Above all, we
need to remember that any kind of class animosity in the political
world is, if possible, even more wicked, even more destructive to
national welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity. We
can get good government only upon condition that we keep true to the
principles upon which this Nation was founded, and judge each man not
as a part of a class, but upon his individual merits. All that we
have a right to ask of any man, rich or poor, whatever his creed, his
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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