Speech 27
DESIRABILITY OF A   SECRETARY OF COMMERCE AND LABOR

FROM THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE AT THE OPENING OF THE FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY SEVENTH CONGRESS, DECEMBER 3,

THERE should be created a Cabinet officer, to be known as Secretary of Commerce and Industries, as provided in the bill introduced at the last session of the Congress.  It should be his province to deal with commerce in its broadest sense; including among many other things whatever concerns labor and all matters affecting the great business corporations and our merchant marine.

The course proposed is one phase of what should be a comprehensive and far reaching scheme of constructive statesmanship for the purpose of broadening our markets, securing our business interests on a safe basis, and making firm our new position in the international industrial world, while scrupulously safeguarding the rights of wage worker and capitalist, of investor and private citizen, so as to secure equity as between man and man in this Republic.

With the sole exception of the farming interest, no one matter is of such vital moment to our whole people as the welfare of the wage workers.  If the farmer and the wage worker are well off, it is absolutely certain that all others will be well off too.  It is therefore a matter for hearty congratulation that on the whole wages are higher today in the United States than ever before in our history, and far higher than in any other country.  The standard of living is also higher than ever before.  Every effort of legislator and administrator should be bent to secure the permanency of this condition of things and its improvement wherever possible.  Not only must our labor be protected by the tariff, but it should also be protected so far as it is possible from the presence in this country of any laborers brought over by contract, or of those who, coming freely, yet represent a standard of living so depressed that they can undersell our men in the labor market and drag them to a lower level.  I regard it as necessary, with this end in view, to reenact immediately the law excluding Chinese laborers and to strengthen it wherever necessary in order to make its enforcement entirely effective.

The National Government should demand the highest quality of service from its employees; and in return it should be a good employer.  If possible legislation should be passed, in connection with the Interstate Commerce Law, which will render effective the efforts of different States to do away with the competition of convict contract labor in the open labor market.  So far as practicable under the conditions of government work, provision should be made to render the enforcement of the eight hour law easy and certain.  In all industries carried on directly or indirectly for the United States Government women and children should be protected from excessive hours of labor, from night work, and from work under unsanitary conditions.  The government should provide in its contracts that all work should be done under “fair" conditions, and in addition to setting a high standard should uphold it by proper inspection, extending if necessary to the subcontractors.  The Government should forbid all night work for women and children, as well as excessive overtime.  For the District of Columbia a good factory law should be passed; and, as a powerful indirect aid to such laws, provision should be made to turn the inhabited alleys, the existence of which is a reproach to our Capital City, into minor streets, where the inhabitants can live under conditions favorable to health and morals.

American    wage workers    work    with    their heads as well as their hands.  Moreover, they take a keen pride in what they are doing; so that, independent of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job.  This is the great secret of our success in competition with the labor of foreign countries.

The most vital problem with which this country, and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has for one side the betterment of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and for another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far reaching questions which we group together when we speak of " labor." The chief factor in the success of each man — wage worker, farmer, and capitalist alike — must ever be the sum total of his own individual qualities and abilities.  Second only to this comes the power of acting in combination or association with others.  Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations or unions of wage workers, when managed with fore thought, and when they combine insistence upon their own rights with law abiding respect for the rights of others.  The display of these qualities in such bodies is a duty to the nation no less than to the associations themselves.  Finally, there must also in many cases be action by the government in order to safeguard the rights and interests of all.  Under our Constitution there is much more scope for such action by the State and the municipality than by the nation.  But on points such as those touched on above the National Government can act.

When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we strive.  Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else, yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him.  To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all.