The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1916-11-10
Woodrow Wilson on
Labor and Capital
| am for the Eight Hour Law be-

The national election has been held
and the publication of Woodrow Will
sons views on the relations of labor
and capital will make good reading
and food for thought. A quarter of a
century ago and less a candidate for
the presidency would not have dared
to make such a speech as the follow
ing if he desired or expected to be
elected
Read his speech, delivered at Long
Branch, New Jersey, on the 23rd of
September:
"Some men seem to think that the
way to advance American business is
to walk backwards and to attempt
again the provincial policies which
have characterized an age when we
shut our doors against the influence
of the world.
But the chief cloud that is upon
| the domestic horizon is the unsatis-
factory relations of capital and labor.
| L
which the relations of capital and
labor can be rendered satisfactory.
That is by, in the first place, regard
ing labor as a human relationship of
men with men; and, in the second
place, to regard labor as part of the
general partnership of energy which
| is going to make for the success of
business men and business enter
prses in this country. So long as
labor and capital stand antagonistic,
the interests of both are injured and
the prosperity of America is held back
from the triumphs which are legiti-
mately its own.
"You know that we have been a
Iegalistic people. I say with all due
respect to some men for whom l have
a high esteem that we have been too
much under the guidance of the law
yers, and that the lawyers have al
ways regarded the relations between
the employer and the employees as
merely contractual relationship,
whereas it is, while based upon con-
tract, very much more than con-
tractual relationship.
ut is relationship between one
set of men and another set of men
with hearts and with interests that
they ought to serve in common with
persons whom they love and must
support on the one side and on the
other.
Labor is not commodity. 1t is a
form of cooperation, and if | can make
a man believe in me, know that l am
profits of success with him, can get
ten times as much out of him as if he
thought l were his antagonist. And
his labor is cheap at any price.
"That is the human side of it, and
the human side extends to this con-
ception, that the Iaboring man is
partner of his employer. If he is
mere tool of his employer, he is only
as serviceable as the tool. His en-
thusiasm does not go into it. He does
not plan how the work shall be better
done. He does not look upon the
aspect of the business or enterprise as
a whole and wish to cooperate the
advantage of his knowledge and his
invention to the success of it as a
whole.
Human relationships, my fellow
citizens, are governed by the heart,
and if the heart is not in it, nothing
is in it.
81 have recently been through an
experience which distressed me. /
tried to accommodate a difference be-
tween some of the employees of the
American railways and the executives
of the American railways, and the dis |
tressing thing | discovered was that
on the one hand there was unlimited
suspicion and distrust of the other,
and that that suspicion and distrust
was returned by the other side in full
measure.
THE executives did not believe in
the sincerity of the men, and the men
did not believe in the sincerity and
fairness of the executives, and while ,
arbitration was being discussed had
this sad thought:
Arbitration is a word associated ,
with the dealings of hostile interests.
1t is an alternative of war. There
ought to be no such thing as the con-
of hostility as between men
whose interests are the same and who
should cooperate together. And
therefore, it came upon me with a
force that it had never had before that |
the real problem of capital and labor
was to bring the two sides to under
stand and believe in one another; that |
the problem of the next generation, if |
America were really to release her
energy, was to be this real, genuine,
fundamental reconciliation between
capital and labor.
81 did not realize until | held those
conferences just how far apart they