Speech 32
RELATIONS   OF ORGANIZED CAPITAL AND ORGANIZED LABOR
FROM THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE AT THE OPENING OF THE SECOND SESSION OF THE FIFTY SEVENTH CONGRESS, DECEMBER 2, 1902

How to secure fair treatment alike for labor and for capital, how to hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee, without weakening individual initiative, without hampering and cramping the industrial development of the country, is a problem fraught with great difficulties and one which it is of the highest importance to solve on lines of sanity and far sighted common sense as well as of devotion to the right.  This is an era of federation and combination.  Exactly as business men find they must often work through corporations, and as it is a constant tendency of these corporations to grow larger, so it is often necessary for laboring men to work in federations, and these have become important factors of modern industrial life.  Both kinds of federation, capitalistic and labor, can do much good, and as a necessary corollary they can both do evil.  Opposition to each kind of organization should take the form of opposition to whatever is bad in the conduct of any given corporation or union — not of attacks upon corporations as such nor upon unions as such; for some of the most far reaching beneficent work for our people has been accomplished through both corporations and unions.  Each must refrain from arbitrary or tyrannous interference with the rights of others.  Organized capital and organized labor alike should remember that in the long run the interest of each must be brought into harmony with the interest of the general public; and the conduct of each must conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to the law, of individual freedom, and of justice and fair dealing toward all.  Each should remember that in addition to power it must strive after the realization of healthy, lofty, and generous ideals.  Every employer, every wage worker, must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do as he likes with his property or his labor so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others.  It is of the highest importance that employer and employee alike should endeavor to appreciate each the viewpoint of the other and the sure disaster that will come upon both in the long run if either grows to take as habitual an attitude of sour hostility and distrust toward the other.  Few people deserve better of the country than those representatives both of capital and labor — and there are many such — who work continually to bring about a good understanding of this kind, based upon wisdom and upon broad and kindly sympathy between employers and employed.  Above all, we need to remember that any kind of class animosity in the political world is, if possible, even more wicked, even more destructive to national welfare, than sectional, race, or religious animosity.  We can get good government only upon condition that we keep true to the principles upon which this Nation was founded, and judge each man not as a part of a class, but upon his individual merits.  All that we have a right to ask of any man, rich or poor, whatever his creed, his occupation, his birthplace, or his residence, is that he shall act well and honorably by his neighbor and by his country.  We are neither for the rich man as such nor for the poor man as such; we are for the upright man, rich or poor.  So far as the constitutional powers of the National Government touch these matters of general and vital moment to the Nation, they should be exercised in conformity with the principles above set forth.

It is earnestly hoped that a secretary of commerce may be created, with a seat in the Cabinet.  The rapid multiplication of questions affecting labor and capital, the growth and complexity of the organizations through which both labor and capital now find expression, the steady tendency toward the employment of capital in huge corporations, and the wonderful strides of this country toward leadership in the international business world justify an urgent demand for the creation of such a position.  Substantially all the leading commercial bodies in this country have united in requesting its creation.  It is desirable that some such measure as that which has already passed the Senate be enacted into law.  The creation of such a department would in itself be an advance toward dealing with and exercising supervision over the whole subject of the great corporations doing an interstate business; and with this end in view, the Congress should endow the department with large powers, which could be increased as experience might show the need.