American Academy of Political and Social Science

“ Ministers have solemnly assured their hearers that the ministry is the highest of all callings while the contempt of lawyers for the skill or knowledge of others has been chronic. And who has not been told that labor produces all goods and who else ever can be "practical" but the business man? In so far as this group-smugness is born of a conviction of the dignity and social value of one's calling, such a feeling will have social value. But in so far as it is indicative of group-selfishness, we must find an antidote for it. ”

“ There has never yet been in the history of the world successful arbitration between those who were powerful and those who were absolutely at their mercy. There has never yet been arbitration between the man who lay prone upon his back and the man who had a heel upon his throat and a sabre at his breast. Arbitration is possible, but only when capital and labor are well organized. Labor is beginning to organize, and when labor shall be better organized than it is to-day we shall have fewer disputes than we have now. ”

“ The illegal leads only to the jail. The unethical is the path in the mud. The ethical is the paved road to public service. Ethics like all paved roads are the result of conscious, persistent, human effort.
One danger to the general good lurks in group codes, and that is that the code may degenerate into the creed of a "make-work" union. We have heard much of late about wage earners making work for each other and not pushing their own jobs to a finish. ”

“ Shall we continue to enforce with precept and penalty the rule of competition, whose cruel creed is “every man for himself,” or shall the effort and industry of the world be hereafter conducted on a more humane and fraternal principle? That is to say, is society—stripped of its polish and altruistic pretences—is society after all only a mass of struggling brutes fighting for the best places and the biggest bones, and is government simply an armed referee standing by to see that every dog has fair play? ”

“ Liberty of the press is, by constitution, statute, and custom, greater in the United States than anywhere else in the world. This liberty exists for our press so that the liberty of the whole people may thereby be guarded. ”

“ A crusade for the extirpation of the slums of Boston has been waged for the last fifteen years, thus far with no great success. Housing conditions are justly to be condemned so long as old, dilapidated and unsanitary buildings are allowed to stand, often so overcrowded upon the land that sunlight and air are practically shut out. Such conditions are a disgrace to any city. They tempt the most wretched of the poor, or vicious, or criminal classes to worse degradation. The breadwinner loses his health, which is his only wealth. Children grow up in shameless loss of self-respect. ”

“ Confidence can never be established merely by preventing the illegal. Laws must by their very nature be the expression of accepted standards of conduct. Unless those standards are generally accepted, laws can be of no avail. For laws enforce the obedience of minorities only. The professions of law and of medicine will never entice the public confidence if the members of those professions organize solely to punish the lawbreaker. The physician, to be worthy of his profession, must do more than refuse to do the illegal act. ”

“ The doctrine that cheapness is the all-sufficient goal of economic progress, the only economic fact of any possible interest or concern to the laborers, has been a corner-stone in political economy. Only within recent years has the idea begun to dawn that an adequate theory of economic welfare must include the interests of the citizen as a producer as well as a consumer; that the conditions under which the man works, and his opportunities of enjoying the fruits of his labor, are quite as vital to his happiness as the price of potatoes or beef or clothing. ”

“ If chambers of commerce may dominate the legislature of Pennsylvania, why may not the farmers dominate the national Congress? If lawyers are to make work for each other, how are we to say that laborers shall not soldier on their jobs? Self-determination by groups there should be; but self-determination in the light of the good of all.
One aspect of group consciousness of late is the belief of each of the professions that it alone should inherit the earth. Engineers have recently claimed that engineering is the one all-inclusive industrial profession. ”

“ For a long time we have made a sort of fetich of the house, and have come to believe that a man has a sense of being at home only when he is within four walls standing alone upon one piece of ground. In reality the idea of a home reaches back so much further than the four walls, and is so much more deeply implanted in the human breast than the ownership of land that we do not need to fear that a new type of house will destroy it. But we are timid and would rather be uncomfortable in a little house than to start out in some reasonable way in building apartments. ”

“ Answer as you may for present or future, this is true now—that child labor in the Wanamaker store means education, physical, scholastic, commercial; development in character, fitness for intelligent work, and fitting into a place in the bread-and-butter belt of the world; an open path and a helping hand to the career of the man or woman who shall add a due part to the sum of life and win the crown fashioned by the Great Father for each of us, His children, who finds his duty and does it. ”

“ In the passing of a generation the railroad and the steamship have transformed the whole realm of commerce, of industry and of social life. They have enriched every occupation, given multiplied value to every pursuit, added incalculably to the means of human enjoyment, and made our vast wealth possible; they are at once the greatest achievement and the greatest necessity of modern civilization.
It is little more than sixty years since the first steam road was constructed, yet at this time, within the limits of the United States alone, nearly 200,000 miles of railway are in active operation ”

“ That this substitution of steam and electricity as the instruments of commerce has been an immeasurable gain is witnessed here and everywhere by half a century of unparalleled progress. Along these modern pathways the world has literally leaped. No longer tied to beasts of burden, the entire realm of industry has been quickened and enlarged; productive energy has been invigorated by new and limitless means of distribution; the products of the whole earth are embraced in wide circles of exchange; all the luxuries of all lands are brought to every household ”

“ Capital is usually, though not always, the owner of material and the direct employer of labor, and therefore must stand for the silent partner in the combination. What is so frequently called a war between capital and labor is simply an effort on the part of the wage-earner and wage-payer to determine what part of the product of labor, as distinct from material, is represented in the price to the public, and after deducting the proper charge for plant, etc., how the balance, which is profit, shall be divided between the employer and the employee,—or wage-payer and wage-earner. ”

“ In short, is personal selfishness the ultimate force and individual greed the bottom fact? For myself, I disbelieve the doctrine. I am not terrified by the cry of paternalism nor dismayed by unreasoning clamor at the dangers of monopoly. The trusts and the unions are here, in money, in labor, in production and in distribution—they came with the railroad and the steamship—and they have come to stay. ”

“ The ponderous engine that moves twice-a-thousand tons across an empire of states, the ocean steamer that carries the population of a village on its decks and the products of a township in its hold, are indeed splendid evidences of constructive skill, but more than this they are economic problems as well which challenge and dismay the present generation. They force us to discredit the venerable maxim that “competition is the life of trade,” and warn us, I think, that the political economy of the future must be built on a nobler hypothesis. ”

“ By this I do not mean to criticise in the least the enactment of less strict regulations as a lower age limit or longer hours of labor, which may be proper under given local conditions, but alone the continued repetition of blunders and faults of construction that have elsewhere proved their character and their power to nullify the intent of the law. Fortunately experience proves in the end an effective, if dear, teacher and one of the lessons that it ultimately drives home is that even a state legislature cannot legislate the laws of nature out of the world arena. ”

“ In conclusion, permit me to say that the powers of the Civic Federation are entirely voluntary, and that its effective force is public opinion. We can advise, endeavor to conciliate, remove misunderstandings, and invite both sides of the controversy to come together and confer. We cannot compel, except by the force of reason and public opinion. We may invite to arbitration; we may upon request of both sides arbitrate. Arbitration is a powerful weapon, and experience has shown that the side in the wrong is the first to object, upon the ground, “There is nothing to arbitrate.” ”

“ One of the acknowledged evils of machinery is the exploitation of child labor which usually follows its introduction. Such was the case in England, and we find it repeated to-day in the new industrial districts of the South. In such industries where the repetition of a small mechanical process enables child labor to be employed, the temptation to take advantage of the opportunity is great; for children have no rights to assert, no wage scale to uphold or working time to protect. In that respect child labor is akin to slave labor. ”

“ A day in a juvenile court is fascinating, and the experiences of a probation officer are not less so. The little, curly-headed culprits are so anxious to tell their story to the judge, or sometimes so stolid, that either way it is pathetic. There is much weeping when children are found guilty, and sudden relief when the meaning of probation is explained to them, and the confidences made to the probation officer are irresistible. ”

“ Organized labor and organized capital are but forward steps in the great industrial evolution that is taking place. We would just as soon think of going back to primitive methods of manufacturing as we would primitive methods of doing business, and it is our duty, those of us who represent the employers, from this time on to make up our minds that this question is one that must be heard.
You are well aware that there has been a tendency in this country, from the very nature of things, to what is called socialism. Everything that is American is primarily opposed to socialism. ”

“ When such words came from a man leading the largest labor organization in the world, a man of advanced thought and of honest intent, I knew that now is the time to strike, now is the time to proclaim to the American people that in the consideration of this question, which sooner or later must be forced upon us, we must consider what is for the best interests of society as well as for our material development. ”

“ But I re-assert that there are some things which are worse than strikes, and among them I include a degraded, a debased, or a demoralized manhood.
Labor insists upon and will never surrender the right to free locomotion, the right to move at will, the right to go from Philadelphia to Camden or California, or vice versa, at will. To achieve that right it has cost centuries of struggles and sacrifices and burdens. Laborers, moreover, will insist upon the right freely to change their employment, a right which they have secured through centuries of travail and sacrifices. ”

“ The feeling against machinery will not cease until the workman profits more directly as a producer as well as a consumer, until he is treated as a human being and not as a mere animated tool, until he becomes more than a tender, an incident in production. The human element must become more evident and the toiler made to feel his partnership. The true mission of machinery, would then be revealed to all as the only means which liberate man from drudgery, increase his control over nature and provide the leisure essential to a higher culture. ”

“ When you are building a house, you begin with the foundations. When you are building up a man, you begin with the child. Germany a century ago, after its exhaustion and humiliation caused by the great wars, fixed the foundation of its new life and development on the rock of education. The country was poor, its people could only exist by hard work, and their education was organized so as to help them with their work.... ”