State of the Union AddressesHarding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel)
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State of the Union Addresses
Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Through the eradication of illiteracy and the diffusion of education
mankind has reached a stage where we may fairly say that in the United
States equality of opportunity has been attained, though all are not
prepared to embrace it. There is, indeed, a too great divergence between
the economic conditions of the most and the least favored classes in the
community. But even that divergence has now come to the point where we
bracket the very poor and the very rich together as the least fortunate
classes. Our efforts may well be directed to improving the status of both.
While this set of problems is commonly comprehended under the general
phrase "Capital and labor," it is really vastly broader. It is a question
of social and economic organization. Labor has become a large contributor,
through its savings, to the stock of capital; while the people who own the
largest individual aggregates of capital are themselves often hard and
earnest laborers. Very often it is extremely difficult to draw the line of
demarcation between the two groups; to determine whether a particular
individual is entitled to be set down as laborer or as capitalist. In a
very large proportion of cases he is both, and when he is both he is the
most useful citizen.
The right of labor to organize is just as fundamental and necessary as is
the right of capital to organize. The right of labor to negotiate, to deal
with and solve its particular problems in an organized way, through its
chosen agents, is just as essential as is the right of capital to organize,
to maintain corporations, to limit the liabilities of stockholders. Indeed,
we have come to recognize that the limited liability of the citizen as a
member of a labor organization closely parallels the limitation of
liability of the citizen as a stockholder in a corporation for profit.
Along this line of reasoning we shall make the greatest progress toward
solution of our problem of capital and labor.
In the case of the corporation which enjoys the privilege of limited
liability of stockholders, particularly when engaged in in the public
service, it is recognized that the outside public has a large concern
which must be protected; and so we provide regulations, restrictions, and
in some cases detailed supervision. Likewise in the case of labor
organizations, we might well apply similar and equally well-defined
principles of regulation and supervision in order to conserve the public's
interests as affected by their operations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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