The Irish standard., 1914-09-12
Social Service Bulletin

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PROMINENT MEN TO Or
GANIZED LABOR.
Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President OF
the United States.
| believe in workmen's compensa-
ton. believe in the eight-hour day
for men in continuous industries and
for women and children everywhere,
and eventually for all workers in all
industries. l believe in social insur-
ance. l believe in minimum wage leg
islation for those industries in which
labor is not itself in position to en-
force fair living conditions. I believe
in unions. I believe that labor Or
CARNATIONS have been one of the
greatest factors in improving the ma
terial and moral conditions of the
wage-earner and in raising the stand
ard of industrial citizenship. The
union is necessarily an outgrowth of
our modern industrial system as is
the corporation. The wise and far
sighted employee will recognize this
fact. He will appreciate that the
men in the employ of a great corpora
ton have the right of collective bar
gaining.
But the. union must accept the re-
sponsibility that comes with power.
1t must recognize its obligation to the
industry and to the community as a
whole. 1t must be judged by its con-
duct precisely as a corporation is
judged by its conduct. 1t must do its
utmost to promote the efficiency of
its members, for unless the business
is increasingly productive there will
be no sufficient reward for anybody,
no profit to the shareholders, no. ade-
quate wage for the working man, no
proper service to the public.
William H. Taft, ex-President of the
United States.
am very much in favor of the Or
ganization of labor. am in favor of
it not only because of the advantages
it has effected and is effecting in the
interest of those who earn their liv-
irg by manual labor, skilled and un-
skilled, but also because of the ad-
vantages it brings to the community
at large. No one can deny that the
organization of labor has secured
prompter advance of wages when
conditions justified it, and less sud-
den reduction in wages when de-
pressed business and falling profits
required it. Modern trades unions
have made condition in which the
capitalist employer could match him
self with all his resources against the
poverty and dependence of the indi-
vidual laborer impossible and un-
thinkable. Nor can anyone deny the
real benefit that has been brought to
wage-earners and society through the
Legislation influenced directly by the
activity of labor organizations. 1
have, therefore, said that were I a
wage-earner, l would feel it my duty
to join labor organization, but I
would dissent from some of the prin-
ciples that they are supposed to stand
for and advocate. One is that of a
closed shop, which involves curtail-
ment of the personal liberty of the
individual laborer, and the operation
Of duress upon him to compel him to
Join labor organization that I think
utterly inconsistent with the funda-
mental principles of a free govern
ment and of a useful freedom of the
individual in society.
/ look forward to a great benefit
from the workman's compensation
acts. I cannot for the life of me I'M
derstand why the present congress,
which assumes to be so full of alleged
reforms, should not adopt this one for
the federal jurisdiction. 1t will not
only result in the uniform assumption
by society of the risk of injurious &C.
cident in all industries and branches
of labor, but it will remove from the
forum litigation a class of cases that
now consume a greater part of the
time of the courts, with results that
are so lacking in uniformity as tc
seem to be nothing but game Of
chance.
William B. Wilson, Secretary of
| Labor.
The labor movement is as broad as
humanity itself. It reaches out into
all of the ramifcations of human &C
t;vity. 1t is the motive power that is
moving us forward to that higher civ
;lization which will ultimately cause
the "man before the hoe" to stand
erect before his Maker and all the
world, the peer of every other mar
not only in his rights which we now
theoretically concede, but in his
rhysical and mental opportunities and
endowments. The individual who
puts forth his efforts to advance the
welfare of mankind is, may be uncon'
sciously, part of the movement. The
societies which are organized to pre-
vent the exploitation of children, tc
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