The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-09-07
THE BIRMINGHAM AGE-HERALD TUESDAY SEPTEMBER F. 1920

tin labor's domination of business or
 1 government any more than l believe | that capital shall dominate. We do
 not want to substitute one class for Another, we want to put an end 10 l classes.
 We live in an era of collective en- i deavor. Capital led the way and la bor's organization was not only nat ural, but necessary. It has done more ! than serve it's membership; it has riv-
 eted the thoughtful attention of Amer l ica to social justice and brought the | fruits thereof
 "On this always significant holiday, ! I wanted to look you in the face and ask for the sponsor of that miserable old falsehood about q dollar day be- ing enough for any working man. If | the author was seeking to apply it to me, I think he must have meant dol | lar an hour. You see. I have been
 dweller among you for thirty-eight years. Part of that time 1 was a wage earner myself, all the time I have been Ia laborer, and more than thirty years
 I have been an employer as well as la borer, and man can't preach one doc
 Urine and practice another.
 Let me renew that public utterance l in which l spoke of high wages, and 1 said l wished the existing high scale 1 to remain, on one explicit condition l that for the high wage, the American | workman shall give to his task the highest degree of efficiency. l am not advocating the giving, slavish period l of toil, which saps mems energies, but I hold the stacker and oafer on the job l is not only the greatest obstacle to la- bor's advancement but he is cheating his fellows more than he does his em- ployer.
 Tt is utterly false to assume that la bor and capital are in deadly conflict. It is not important to establish which element comes first, sincei each is es- sential to the other. We do know that labor, the human elemennt, is of deep est public concern. The deplorable side of modern industry is that too many men are toiling like machines at their work. Men ought to know a pride ists in the thing done we'll. The big inspiration in life is to get on. When men tell you this is the privilege of the few, they callenge your intelli- gence
 T am sorry the old. intimate con tact between employer and employe is gone. I wish we could have the in timacy restored, not in the old way, but through a joint committee of em- loves and employers, not to run the business, but to promote and maintain the mutuahty of interest and the fullest fiefe1n Hes the surest remedy for most of our ills. We cannot have compulsory arbi- tration, because all parties must con- sent to establish arbitration and en- force It's conclusions. I think we can have, and ought to have, volatile voca tona1 arbitration. The best demands of the day comments this way for use of settlement.
 The wage scale which contemplates a rental cost in one place, might be wholly inadequate to meet the cost in another and a nationalized scale would work an injustice. This point was de- veloped in the recent railway contro- versies.
 This brings me to the subject of railway legislation, and the enactment of the Cummins- Esch bill restoring the railways to the lawful owners. We owed 1t to the railway owners to re- store their property seized for war service, just as we owe the return of the peoples money invested In govern ment loans. In free and thoughtful America, we do not take advantage of wars tumult to change the regular or der of things. I am well aware that many earnest railway workers and ad vocates of the socialist plan preferred to take the railroads and put them under the operation of the employees, but that was not keeping faith with America or American promises We were honor bound to make the return"