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
I remind you that Congress provided a Joint Commission of Agricultural
Inquiry which made an exhaustive investigation of car service and
transportation, and unanimously recommended in its report of October 15,
1921, the pooling of freight cars under a central agency. This report well
deserves your serious consideration. I think well of the central agency,
which shall be a creation of the railways themselves, to provide, under the
jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the means for financing
equipment for carriers which are otherwise unable to provide their
proportion of car equipment adequate to transportation needs. This same
agency ought to point the way to every possible economy in maintained
equipment and the necessary interchanges in railway commerce.
In a previous address to the Congress I called to your attention the
insufficiency of power to enforce the decisions of the Railroad Labor
Board. Carriers have ignored its decisions, on the one hand, railway
workmen have challenged its decisions by a strike, on the other hand.
The intent of Congress to establish a tribunal to which railway labor and
managers may appeal respecting questions of wages and working conditions
can not be too strongly commended. It is vitally important that some such
agency should be a guaranty against suspended operation. The public must be
spared even the threat of discontinued service.
Sponsoring the railroads as we do, it is an obligation that labor shall be
assured the highest justice and every proper consideration of wage and
working conditions, but it is an equal obligation to see that no concerted
action in forcing demands shall deprive the public of the transportation
service essential to its very existence. It is now impossible to safeguard
public interest, because the decrees of the board are unenforceable against
either employer or employee.
The Labor Board itself is not so constituted as best to serve the public
interest. With six partisan members on a board of nine, three partisans
nominated by the employees and three by the railway managers, it is
inevitable that the partisan viewpoint is maintained throughout hearings
and in decisions handed down. Indeed, the few exceptions to a strictly
partisan expression in decisions thus far rendered have been followed by
accusations of betrayal of the partisan interests represented. Only the
public group of three is free to function in unbiased decisions. Therefore
the partisan membership may well be abolished, and decisions should be made
by an impartial tribunal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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