Our Common Country/Chapter 3

Life is labor, or labor is life, whichever is preferred. Men speak of the labor issue as paramount or imperious or critical—it is always the big thing because it is the process of all progress and attainment, and has been since the world began. The advocate of excessively-reduced periods of labor simply proposes to slow down human attainment, because labor is the agency of all attainment. If by some miracle of agreement we could reduce the hours of labor to four per day—I speak of labor now in the sense of that which is employed for pay—the live, progressive, civilization-creating, progressive labor ​would have to go on working twice or thrice that time, because labor is the ferment of human development. No one will challenge these general truths, but we do have a conflict of opinion as to how labor shall be employed and the measure of its compensation.

I wish it distinctly noted that I shall say nothing to one group of fellow citizens which I could not as cordially utter to another. It was my good fortune to have a call from a committee representing several American farm organizations, and I told them frankly I preferred to greet them as fellow-Americans rather than farmers, because our big thought must be of American consumers, they among them. They were concerned in producing food, which is of first concern to all America. I am thinking of industrial America, that industrial America in which every one of our hundred millions is deeply concerned, and the good fortune ​of whose workers is of highest interest to our people as a whole.

Do not let any one ever tell you that any political party is insensible to the cause of labor. Parties are the agencies of government, and men who assume public responsibility are deeply anxious about the common weal. Demagogues or agitators, most of whom are agitating for the profit therein, "Reds" or reactionaries, all of them deny the high intent and genuine concern of parties and government for the highest good fortunes of all the people. Frankly, I do not think any party is indifferent or unmindful. The only difference is in the program for the greatest good. I want you to understand me definitely. So far as I can be helpful it shall be along the line of promoting the good fortunes of all the American people, because in common good fortune, made secure, we have the field in which to work to adjust the distribution of rewards to ​the highest conception of fairness and justice.

Let me repeat a public utterance of mine. Noting the advanced ground reached through the sufferings and sacrifices of the World War, I said we contemplated a new level, a new order, and would never return to the old pre-war conditions. No such return has ever been recorded in all history. I spoke of high wages, and said I wished the existing high scale to remain, on one explicit condition—that for the high wage, the American workman shall give to his task the highest degree of efficiency. There isn't any other solution. There isn't any other way to keep wages high and lower the cost of living to any appreciable degree.

The menace of the present day is inefficient production. I am not advocating the driving, slavish period of toil, which saps men's energies and oppresses the spirit, but I do advocate honest, efficient ​return for proper pay. I hold that the slacker, the loafer on the job, is not only the greatest obstacle to labor's advancement, but he is cheating his fellows more than he does his employer. The workman who deliberately adds to costs robs a fellow workman who must buy, and impedes the way to that ideal condition where wage exceeds the cost of living, and there is a balance for the bank account, for home acquirement and indulgence in amusement, diversion and the becoming luxuries which contribute to the ideal life.

Let no one beguile you with dreams of idleness, of the passing of employment or the abolition of employer and employee. Life without toil, if possible, would be an intolerable existence. Work is the supreme engagement, the sublime luxury of life. And there will be employers so long as there is leadership among men, and there will be employees until human progress is paralyzed and the development of ​human kind dies on one common altar of mediocrity. Our problem then is to find the high order of employment, the ideal relationship, the conditions under which we may work to the highest attainment and the greatest common good for all concerned.

It is utterly false to assume that labor and capital are in deadly conflict. Such a preachment comes from those who would destroy our social system. More, these two elements do not constitute alone the fabric of our industrial life, and neither of them, alone, ever added to the treasure of mankind. The element of management is as essential to present-day industrial success, amid modern complexities, as breath to the human body. And indissolubly linked with these three is the consuming public.

It is not important to establish which element comes first, since each is essential to the other. We do know that labor, the ​human element, is of deepest public concern. Hence it is that American public opinion, which is invariably the ruling force in popular government, when deliberately crystallized, wishes the labor forces to be satisfied. Not contented, because contentment is the awaiting avenue to paralysis, but so satisfied that there is a soul of interest in all our employments.

The deplorable side of modern industry, with gigantic factory and the productive machinery, is that too many men are toiling like machines at work. There ought to be more in a day's work than the mere grind and the pay therefor, even though the pay is generous. Men ought to know a pride in the thing done. There ought to be inspiration to skill and glory in accomplishment. One ought to have before him the goal of being best in his line. The mere fulfillment of the requirements to hold a job never made superin​tendent or led to a captaincy in all the world of employment. Contentment with a job, with eyes riveted on pay day, without enthusiasm to accomplish or desire to excel, never made an advance for any man anywhere.

The big inspiration in life is to get on. We can not get on all alike or be regarded precisely alike. God Almighty never intended it to be so, else He had made us all alike. But we may get on according to our talent, our capacity, and our industry, and out of the advancement of those who lead, must come higher standards for all.

I have no patience with those who commend the levels of mediocrity. That would halt the whole human procession. I can read the aspirations in many a breast. Search the hearts of the parenthood. Fathers and mothers are thinking of their children, and they want them to get on. They often deny themselves to ​educate their children and ultimately find compensation in that denial. They educate so that sons and daughters may do better than they—it is the natural desire of aspiring life. This is why the world advances. This is the soul of advancing civilization. When men tell you this is the privilege of the few, they challenge your intelligence. It is the opportunity of all. Not all avail themselves, but the opportunity beckons.

I have seen my home city grow from the village of four thousand to the city of thirty thousand. I know the men who are the captains of industry and the commanders of trade and the leaders of finance. I have associated with the head of one great concern when he was toiling for seventy-five cents a day as a youth in the shops. I have seen another at the bench, and still another trying to make the pay envelope meet his obligations. I knew one bank leader as the boy who ​swept out and did the chores, another as a dollarless farmer boy, another as a struggling youth no more favored than the poorest boy. What's the explanation? Industry, thrift, love of work, interest in tasks, ambition to get on.

I wish I could plant the gospel of loyalty to work and interest in accomplishment. It is the ambition to succeed, the determination to do the most and best—these speed men on to the heights. The pity is that we do not have enough of it under modern conditions. There is too much mechanical grind, too little contact between employer and employee, too little understanding of their mutuality of interest and their joint triumph in success. I hail with equal satisfaction the workman who has pride in the factory and its output, and the employer who has pride and sympathetic interest in his workmen. I want to stress the need of pride. There is little enough to inspire ​under our modern system, and I want to magnify all there is. And above all else I want American workmen to feel that American products are the best in the world. There is only a touch of satisfaction to say our output is biggest, but it sets the heart aglow to proclaim America's output is the best.

I am sorry the old, intimate contact between employer and employee is gone. When there was intimate touch there was little or rare misunderstanding. I wish we could have the intimacy restored, not in the old way, but through a joint committee of employers and employees, not to run the business, but to promote and maintain the mutuality of interest and the fullest understanding. Herein lies the surest remedy for the most of our ills. Nay, more, I will put it more strongly, I have spoken the preventive, the understanding which prevents disputes, or settles them on the spot.

​I never had any trouble with our labor forces in the printing line, though our "boys and girls" have been organized for seventeen years. We know each other pretty well. And yet, with all our intimacy and our freedom from disputes, I may not understand them as I ought nor do they understand all they ought. Let me give an example, because it will illustrate the need of understanding. The basic material, the one thing we must have in the newspaper business is print paper. There has been a shortage of production and the market has been wild. We contracted for our annual supply, but we could not add the amount necessary to meet our normal growth. To meet the volume of business and keep all our men employed we had to buy extra print paper as best we could, and the excess above the contract cost was sufficient to pay out three hundred dollars additional wage to every workman in the shop. But we were ​obliged to meet so excessive an outlay, and could not pass it on to readers, yet no workman had to bear any share of the strain. Never forget that there are two sides, and I want each to understand the other. I want employers to know what is in the hearts of the workmen—their aspirations, their trials, their problems—all the things essential to concord and good spirit.

To be specific, the need of to-day is the extension by employers of the principle that each job in the big plant is a little business of its own. The reason men in modern, specialized industry go crazy from lack of self-expression is that they are allowed to be mere mechanical motion-makers. They ought to be taught by employers the significance of this job—its unit costs, its relations to other operations, the ways to its greater efficiency. In a word the employer owes it to his men to make them feel that each job stops ​being an enemy of the man and becomes his associate and friend, and the success achieved opens the way for his looked-for advancement.

The world is thinking about means to prevent war among nations, and we approve, and share the aspiration. But America is also thinking about preventing industrial conflict and all attending waste, suffering and anxiety. The matter has become of interest to the public, even more than the forces engaged in any conflict.

Our observation is, as an eminent labor leader has said, that "all strikes sooner or later are settled around a table; then why not get around a table before the strike begins?"

We can not have compulsory arbitration, because all parties must consent to establish arbitration and enforce its conclusions. I think we can have and ought to have, voluntary volitional arbitration. ​The best thought of the day commends this way to settlement.

In the broad sense labor's business is selling its skilled or unskilled endeavor, and the basic cost is the cost of living. What labor receives over and above cost of living is pay for its preparation, and a profit for its inspiration.

The insistent thought is to add to this profit, to widen the difference between mere cost and the wage received. All the influence and the organization in the world will not equalize a living cost among a hundred millions. Rentals, until home-owning becomes more wide-spread—as I hope it will become wide-spread—vary according to localities and conditions. 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 developed in the recent railway controversies, and proved ​some very real grievances which the people had not dreamed.

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 it to the railway owners to restore their property, seized for war service, just as we owe the return of the people's money invested in government loans. In free and thoughtful America we do not take advantage of war's tumult to change the regular order of things. I am well aware that many earnest railway workers and advocates 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. I favored it for the additional reason that I do not believe in government ownership.

The government must do many things, ​but it has enough to do without invading the field of private activity, not, at any rate, until government demonstrates its capacity for efficiency.

I do not pretend to say the railway act is perfect; indeed, I know it is not. But Congress was dealing with a problem of first importance, and it had to speed the legislation. There was the conflict of many minds as it was right there should be, and the final act was a compromise. Nevertheless, I believe it to be a good law and cordially supported it. Many railway labor leaders have cried out against it, but I can only wonder why, except for the fundamental objection to the release of government operation.

Let us try out the act and the railway restoration in patience. If we have fallen short, the conscience of America will sanction every modification needed to aim at perfection. America wants her railway workmen justly treated, and will tol​erate nothing less, and America wants her honest investments properly protected, with justice to every agency employed in this great machine of railway transportation.

I have said it before, and I repeat it now, I want the American railway workers to know the best possible working conditions and to be the best paid in the world. Our food, our activities, our exchanges, so much depend on the great railway operations, and above all else, all who travel trust their lives to railway skill and fidelity. Ours ought to be, and must be, the best in the world.

I believe in the protective policy which prospers America first, and exalts American standards of wage and American standards of living high above the Old World. We had little thought of these things during the war, because America was exporting instead of importing—shipping out instead of shipping in—but ​it will soon be a different situation in the world exchange. I do not object to humanity seeking equalized standards of employment and living, but I do insist on Old World standards being raised to ours, not ours lowered to the Old World.

Our enormous balance of trade with foreign nations is fast receding and peoples who seek recuperation from war's wastes and bankruptcy are expecting to sell to us to recuperate, because our people are the ablest to buy in all the world. One must admit the promise of a cheaper cost of living if Europe's cheaper-made merchandise is brought to our markets. But note the peril to labor! If we buy abroad, we will slacken production at home, and slackened production means diminished employment, and growing idleness and all attending disappointments. I want to cheapen the cost of living as much as any one in all the land, but I do not wish it cheapened by the pro​cesses of unemployment and lowered standards of American labor.

Pray, do not even believe you are injuring yourself by giving full return for your employment. The call is for maximum production, and factory success is your success. Do not scale down to the inefficient and incapable. Let us train up and build up to the heights of the efficient.

What is the big inspiration in life? The natural desire to excel. Why do we applaud Babe Ruth? Because he has batted out more home runs in a season than any ball player on earth. If you were going to play ball, you wouldn't try to bat at one hundred fifty to two hundred, you would rather be a Babe Ruth. But men say that's different from the humdrum of toil. Well, that's why I am arguing the end of humdrum toil by striving for the heights. The workman who performs his tasks better than another has satisfaction ​in his soul, and he will not long escape the notice that brings him advancement.

Many other things will help to reduce living cost. I want to see profiteering isolated and punished. It is a moral wrong and an economic robbery. The man who practises profiteering is false to business and to country. I do not know of a deadlier foe to our common country, because he creates the unrest that threatens from within and emphasizes the appeal to class.

Reduced cost of government will help, and we can reduce cost of government by quitting the play of politics with the nation's bread and butter. Stage assaults on profiteering, mostly dealing with petty offenders, do not deeply impress the country, and sugar agreements which add a billion to our sugar bills for a year do not indicate a know-how which entitles the bunglers to hold their jobs.

I have not come with promises. I can ​not pledge you the impossible, and do not mean to suggest the impractical. I can only preach the gospel of understanding practically applied. In public service, I have always been ready to hear the appeal of all Americans, and labor will find an ever-ready period to be heard, not for labor alone, but for the good of all our people. We can not prosper one group and imperil another. We can not have, we must not have, a menacing class consciousness. When we look each other in the face, soberly contemplating the great web of American life, we see that the good of one is the fortune of all.

Our system is all right; it is the judgment of the ages, and here in America we have wrought the supreme achievement. There are abuses, perhaps there ever will be. Greed develops and robbery breaks out amid all great processions. Our business is to strike at greed, and outlaw rob​bery, and correct the abuses, without destroying the temple in which we abide.

I do not think we can fabricate the perfect world, but we can and we mean to make it better from day to day and year to year. I do not blow you a bubble of imaginary equality of men or women, but I do proclaim equality of opportunity, proved in America in making America the best land of hope in all the world. The fair chance is here. It isn't in a particular craft, it isn't alone in the closed shop, it isn't in the offerings of the law, it isn't in the revolutionary proposals of those who threaten destruction in return for liberty's blessings. It is in honest endeavor, in thrift, in lofty aspiration, and a resolute determination to do, and to get on in the world.

I believe in unionism, I believe in collective bargaining, I believe the two have combined to speed labor toward its just rewards. But I do not believe in labor's ​domination of business or government any more than I believe that capital should dominate. We had our time at that, and we learned the danger and ended it. We do not want to substitute one class for another, we want to put an end to classes.

We live in an era of collective endeavor. Capital led the way, and labor's organization was not only natural, but necessary. It has done more than serve its membership, it has riveted the thoughtful attention of America to social justice and brought the fruits thereof.

I hold that the advancement of labor's cause in America challenges all the world. We have made, of course, a few thousand millionaires, but we made millions of self-reliant, advancing, creative Americans. The luxury of yesterday is the accepted necessity of to-day. I struggled to own a motor-car after I had been an employer for twenty years, and workmen nowadays ​drive to their tasks at thirty, without realizing the transformation. The progress is the miracle of American opportunity. I want to hold to fundamentals, strike at any developing inequality and halt assault on our system, then go on to greater things.

The way is open. Opportunity is calling, and harmonized capital and labor and management will clear the waiting paths, and individual resolution, the heritage of American freedom, will speed us on. If we only hold fast to the fundamentals, the pride of to-day may be a greater glory to-morrow, and ultimately we shall approach that combination of achievement and happiness for all men which is the divine plan for the triumphs of earth and life and human endeavor.