Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The great unrest throughout the world, out of which has emerged a demand
for an immediate consideration of the difficulties between capital and
labor, bids us put our own house in order. Frankly, there can be no
permanent and lasting settlements between capital and labor which do not
recognize the fundamental concepts for which labor has been struggling
through the years. The whole world gave its recognition and endorsement to
these fundamental purposes in the League of Notions. The statesmen gathered
at Versailles recognized the fact that world stability could not be had by
reverting to industrial standards and conditions against which the average
workman of the world had revolted. It is, therefore, the task of the states
men of this new day of change and readjustment to recognize world
conditions and to seek to bring about, through legislation, conditions that
will mean the ending of age-long antagonisms between capital and labor and
that will hopefully lead to the building up of a comradeship which will
result not only in greater contentment among the mass of workmen but also
bring about a greater production and a greater prosperity to business
itself.
To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the justice
of their complaint in many matters that lie at their basis. The workman
demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live in comfort,
unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age. He demands the
right to live and the right to work amidst sanitary surroundings, both in
home and in workshop, surroundings that develop and do not retard his own
health and wellbeing; and the right to provide for his children's wants in
the matter of health and education. In other words, it is his desire to
make the conditions of his life and the lives of those dear to him
tolerable and easy to bear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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