Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
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, every 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,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account