Speech 6
THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD LABOR PROBLEMS

FROM   AN   ADDRESS DELIVERED   IN   THE   COLISEUM, HARTFORD,   CONNECTICUT,   AUGUST   22,   1902

BEFORE beginning the speech that I had intended, and still intend, to make to you tonight, I wish to allude to an incident that happened this afternoon.  In being driven around your beautiful city, I was taken through Pope Park, and stopped at a platform where I was presented with a great horseshoe of flowers, the gift of the working men of Hartford to the President of the United States.  In Father Sullivan's speech he laid primary stress upon the fact that it was a gift of welcome from the wage workers, upon whom ultimately this government depends.  And he coupled the words of giving with certain sentences in which he expressed his belief that I would do all that I could to show myself a good representative of the wage workers.  I should be utterly unfit for the position that I occupy if I failed to do all that in me lies to act, as light is: given me to act, so as to represent the best thought and purpose of the wage worker of the United States.  At the outset of the twentieth century we are facing difficult and complex problems —• problems social and economic — which will tax the best energies of all of us to solve aright, and which we can only solve at all if we approach them in a spirit not merely of common sense, but of generous desire to act each for all and all for each.  While there are occasions when through legislative or administrative action the governmental representatives of the people can do especial service to one set of our citizens, yet I think you will agree with me that in the long run the best way in which to serve any one set of our citizens is to try to serve all alike well, to try to act in a spirit of fairness and justice to all — to give to each man his rights — to safeguard each man in his rights; and so far as in me lies, while I hold my present position I will be true to that conception of my duty.