American worker

“ Yet, American workers want more than unemployment checks-- they want a steady paycheck. (Applause.) When America works, America prospers, so my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs. ”

“ With all these proposals we'll provide American workers with a path to greater opportunity, more freedom and more control over their lives.
American workers built this country and they continue to build our prosperity today. ”

“ I have further shown by most interesting and important statistics that the American workers engaged in manufacturing, mining, transport, agriculture, &c., produce per head about three times as much as their English colleagues because they employ better and three times as powerful machinery and possess a better economic organisation, &c. ”

“ In addition, labor history shows that American workers were in the forefront of the effort to make public education available for every child.
As an American, I am proud of the accomplishments of our labor movement, through which we all enjoy better lives. In issuing this proclamation to observe Labor History Month, I recognize that our work for economic and social progress in America is not over. As we approach the 21st century, the next chapter of labor history must be characterized by a strong voice for America's workers. ”

“ Always the struggle for existence itself has been uppermost. No wonder the conclusion can justly be drawn that the American labor movement has not always played a highly productive role in American industry. ”

“ Those who come to this country, often with preconceived and erroneous ideas as to the independence prevailing here, expecting high wages in return for inexperienced and unskilled labor, [224] must be trained in all the ways not only of American life, but of the family of the individual employer. ”

“ What will the American workman do to express his American temperament through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." ”

“ The American labor movement helped the first generation of industrial employees to express their aspirations and insecurities, empowering them with the necessary tools to define the terms and conditions of their employment and to expand the role of labor in the larger society. ”

“ The age of machinery has brought with it emancipation from slavery, [185] indenture, and imprisonment for debt, and has made possible a new status for the worker and his children. The laborer in America is a citizen with a vote and a right to his own opinion equal to that of his employer; he has time and money enough to buy and read the newspaper; and he is encouraged and helped to educate his children and to prepare them for a place in the sun that is ampler than his own. ”

“ The American workman, as things are organized now, finds himself confronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he get himself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? The other is his employer. ”

“ At the present time the policies of American labor both political and industrial, are a generation out of date; our workingmen are like the Moros in the Philippines, fighting machine-guns with bows and arrows. ”

“ After seeing the ever-present throngs of prosperous-looking people on the streets, he asked in great surprise, “But where are your working people?” He did not know that the happy-faced, well-dressed people he was looking at were working people practising the American standard of living. ”

“ A true American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor, and the fact that honor lies in honest toil. Contented labor is an element of national prosperity. Ability to work constitutes the capital and the wage of labor, the income of a vast number of our population, and this interest should be jealously protected. Our working-men are not asking unreasonable indulgence, but, as intelligent and manly citizens, they seek the same consideration which those demand who have other interests at stake. ”

“ I am sure that you realize here in a large degree the benefit of a policy that keeps the American market for the American workmen. [Cries of "Good!" and applause.] I try to be broadly philanthropic in my thoughts about the human race, but cannot help thinking that an American workman has a stronger claim on my sympathy and help than any other workman. [Applause.]
I believe that our institutions are only safe while we have intelligent and contented working classes. ”

“ You know there is a relation between the wages of skilled and unskilled labor as truly as between the prices of two grades of cotton cloth; that if the first is cut down, the other, too, must come down. [Cries of "That's just so!"] You know, also, that if labor is thrown out of one line or avenue, by so much the more will the others be crowded; that any policy that transfers production from the American to the English or German shop works an injury to all American workmen. ”

“ With almost unfailing regularity those nations with well developed industrial systems also have well developed labor movements, and those that are backward industrially are also backward in working class organization. The one glaring exception to the rule is the United States. ”

“ The United States census for 1880 reports that there are in the United States 16,200,000 wage workers. These are the persons who, by their industry, create all the wealth of this country. And now before I say anything further it may be necessary in order to clearly understand what I am going to state further on, for me to define what I mean and what is meant in the labor movement by these words, wage worker. ”

“ Despite the United States' great industrial advantages over all its competitors, which should have greatly facilitated the unions in winning shorter hours, this country remains preeminently the long hour work-day nation of the world. ”

“ Now, it is possible that a group of American workingmen could be found who would make trouble for an employer who took that attitude and consistently maintained it, but I do not believe that there are many such groups. ”

“ Hard manual labor, and much of it of a disagreeable sort, must for a long time lie at the basis of civilized life. We are continually transmitting some of it to machines, but the residuum remains large. In an ideal society it would be highly-paid work because of its unpleasantness and necessity; and even today, no matter what we may say of the individual worker or of the laboring class, we know that the foundation of America is built on the backs of the manual laborer. ”

“ The million menial workers among us include 300,000 upper servants,—skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food. ”

“ The point is, looked at without the tinted glasses of either capital or labor, that the psychology of the American employer for the past, assuredly the present, and at least the near future, has been, and is, and will be, so inimical to organized labor that the movement would not be allowed to function as a constructive industrial force. Too much of its energies must go to fighting. ”

“ When labor-saving machinery is introduced, special care should be taken—by the Government if necessary—to see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit, and that it is not all absorbed by the employer or capitalist. ”

“ Due regard should be also accorded in any proposed readjustment to the interests of American labor so far as they are involved. We congratulate ourselves that there is among us no laboring class fixed within unyielding bounds and doomed under all conditions to the inexorable fate of daily toil. We recognize in labor a chief factor in the wealth of the Republic, and we treat those who have it in their keeping as citizens entitled to the most careful regard and thoughtful attention. ”

“ We should also deal with the subject in such manner as to protect the interests of American labor, which is the capital of our workingmen. ”

“ What is American labor? It is best described by saying, it is not European labor. Nine tenths of the whole labor of this country is performed by those who cultivate the land they or their fathers own, or who, in their workshops, employ some little capital of their own, and mix it up with their manual toil. No such thing exists in other countries. Look at the different departments of industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or mechanical, and you will find that, in almost all, the laborers mix up some little capital with the work of their hands. ”

“ An American workman will "give equal attention simultaneously to three, four, or six machines or tools, while the British workman is compelled by his trade union to limit his attention to one, so that employment may be given to half a dozen men." ”

“ In any great labor disturbance not only are employer and employe interested, but a third party--the general public. Every considerable labor difficulty in which interstate commerce is involved should be investigated by the Government and the facts officially reported to the public.
The question of securing a healthy, self-respecting, and mutually sympathetic attitude as between employer and employe, capitalist and wage-worker, is a difficult one. All phases of the labor problem prove difficult when approached. ”

“ Nevertheless, he hoped to see "our old free, coöperative life restored," and individual opportunity widened. To the working class he addressed a word of assurance and confidence: "The working people of America ... are of course the backbone of the Nation. ”

“ If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and of the trades unions of the world—the attitude of doing as little work as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways of not being of any use to employers—would face about in a day. ”

“ In fact, they will compare with the average European labor bodies. Most of the criticisms of the American labor movement, outlined in Chapter I, do not apply to these organizations, made up chiefly of immigrants. They are the one bright spot in a generally dismal movement. ”

“ Certainly you do not need to be told that the wages now enjoyed by our American workmen are greatly larger and the comforts they enjoy greatly more than those enjoyed by [179] the working people of any other land. [Cheers.] Certainly you do not need to be told that if the American Government, instead of patronizing home industries, buys its blankets for the public service in England there is just that much less work for American workmen to do. ”

“ Let us do all we can to help labor. Give it a square deal—an honest and generous wage for an honest day's work. Labor is neither a commodity or a chapel; it's human. Let us inject more of the human element into our dealings with labor and with those of others. ”

“ In the chapters Work in the Factory, and The Material Condition of my Fellow-Workmen, the American student and operative will recognize abuses still existing in Germany which our more progressive establishments have eliminated. The contrast also in rates of wages and quality of living with wage-earners in America will excite sympathy, but will also weld the American more firmly to the belief that the condition of the wage-earner in this country is a happy and fortunate one by comparison ”

“ Consider, for example, the Industrial Workers of the World: The amount of energy and unselfish devotion lavished upon that organization would have wrought miracles in developing and extending the trade unions ”

“ American labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. It is the American temperament.
They will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to their employers, "We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three sums of money—ours, yours, and everybody's." ”

“ Then the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose.
Suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills in America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and suppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workers of the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheap clothes. ”

“ We hear a great deal of schemes for "improving the condition of the working-man." In the United States the farther down we go in the grade of labor, the greater is the advantage which the laborer has over the higher classes. A hod-carrier or digger here can, by one day's labor, command many times more days' labor of a carpenter, surveyor, bookkeeper, or doctor than an unskilled laborer in Europe could command by one day's labor. ”

“ By the first group, the labor or class-conscious group, is meant the members of the American Federation of Labor, Industrial Workers of the World, four railroad Brotherhoods, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, socialist and communist organizations—workers whose affiliations with certain bodies tend to make them ultraconscious of the fact that they are wage workers and against the capitalist system. ”

“ This man was a slave, but hired his time of his master at two hundred and fifty dollars a year, which he said he paid in monthly instalments. He did what he called job work, which consisted of undertaking jobs, and hiring men to work under him, if the job was too great to be performed by himself. ”

“ It is clear, therefore, that the American idea is the betterment of the American workingman regardless of trade. In saying this, we state the whole case.
The American workingman is an American citizen. He has the same sovereign rights and prerogatives as any other citizen. If he can secure sufficient wages, he will be in a position to appreciate his privileges and dignity, his sovereignty. ”