State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
History
State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
I have spoken of labor as another essential in the three great groups of
the population in raising the Nation's income. Definite strides in
collective bargaining have been made and the right of labor to organize has
been nationally accepted. Nevertheless in the evolution of the process
difficult situations have arisen in localities and among groups.
Unfortunate divisions relating to jurisdiction among the workers themselves
have retarded production within given industries and have, therefore,
affected related industries. The construction of homes and other buildings
has been hindered in some localities not only by unnecessarily high prices
for materials but also by certain hourly wage scales.
For economic and social reasons our principal interest for the near future
lies along two lines: first, the immediate desirability of increasing the
wages of the lowest paid groups in all industry; and, second, in thinking
in terms of regularizing the work of the individual worker more greatly
through the year--in other words, in thinking more in terms of the worker's
total pay for a period of a whole year rather than in terms of his
remuneration by the hour or by the day.
In the case of labor as in the case of capital, misrepresentation of the
policy of the government of the United States is deception which will not
long deceive. In both cases we seek cooperation. In every case power and
responsibility must go hand in hand.
I have spoken of economic causes which throw the Nation's income out of
balance; I have spoken of practices and abuses which demand correction
through the cooperation of capital and labor with the government. But no
government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional
and class consciousness ahead of general weal. There must be proof that
sectional and class interests are prepared more greatly than they are today
to be national in outlook.
A government can punish specific acts of spoliation; but no government can
conscript cooperation. We have improved some matters by way of remedial
legislation. But where in some particulars that legislation has failed we
cannot be sure whether it fails because some of its details are unwise or
because it is being sabotaged. At any rate, we hold our objectives and our
principles to be sound. We will never go back on them.
Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its
citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work for
willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardship from
no fault of their own have a right to call upon the Government for aid; and
a government worthy of its name must make fitting response.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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