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
Just as it is not desirable that a corporation shall be allowed to impose
undue exactions upon the public, so it is not desirable that a labor
organization shall be permitted to exact unfair terms of employment or
subject the public to actual distresses in order to enforce its terms.
Finally, just as we are earnestly seeking for procedures whereby to adjust
and settle political differences between nations without resort to war, so
we may well look about for means to settle the differences between
organized capital and organized labor without resort to those forms of
warfare which we recognize under the name of strikes, lockouts, boycotts,
and the like.
As we have great bodies of law carefully regulating the organization and
operations of industrial and financial corporations, as we have treaties
and compacts among nations which look to the settlement of differences
without the necessity of conflict in arms, so we might well have plans of
conference, of common counsel, of mediation, arbitration, and judicial
determination in controversies between labor and capital. To accomplish
this would involve the necessity to develop a thoroughgoing code of
practice in dealing with such affairs It might be well to frankly set forth
the superior interest of the community as a whole to either the labor group
or the capital group. With rights, privileges, immunities, and modes of
organization thus carefully defined, it should be possible to set up
judicial or quasi judicial tribunals for the consideration and
determination of all disputes which menace the public welfare.
In an industrial society such as ours the strike, the lockout, and the
boycott are as much out of place and as disastrous in their results as is
war or armed revolution in the domain of politics. The same disposition to
reasonableness, to conciliation, to recognition of the other side's point
of view, the same provision of fair and recognized tribunals and processes,
ought to make it possible to solve the one set of questions its easily as
the other. I believe the solution is possible.
The consideration of such a policy would necessitate the exercise of care
and deliberation in the construction of a code and a charter of elemental
rights, dealing with the relations of employer and employee. This
foundation in the law, dealing with the modern conditions of social and
economic life, would hasten the building of the temple of peace in industry
which a rejoicing nation would acclaim.
After each war, until the last, the Government has been enabled to give
homes to its returned soldiers, and a large part of our settlement and
development has attended this generous provision of land for the Nation's
defenders.
There is yet unreserved approximately 200,000,000 acres in the public
domain, 20,000,000 acres of which are known to be susceptible of
reclamation and made fit for homes by provision for irrigation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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