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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1917)
G The Commoner YPI),iH7CN02 6 V I II If n'i President's Address to Labor .Following Is the address of President Wilson to tho American Federation of! Labor conven tion, Buffalo, N. Y November 12, 1917: "Mr. President, Delegates of. the American Federation of Labor, Ladies and Gentlemen: "I esteem it a great privilege and a real hon or to be thus admitted to your public counsels. When your executive committee paid me 'the compliment of Inviting me here I gladly accept ed tho invitation because it seems to mo that this, above all other times in our history, is tho time for common counsel, for tho drawing to gether not only of tho energies but of the minds of tho nation. I thought that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some of tho thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during those last momentous months. CRITICAL TIME IN HISTORY "I am Introduced to you aB the President of tho United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put tho thought of the ofllce Into the background and regard me aB one of your fel low citizens who has comd here to speak, not tho words of authority, but the words of coun sel; the words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a moment more critical perht-ps than the history of the world has over yet known; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with tho nobility of a great national and world conception? and act upon a now platform elevated above the ordin ary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of tho long destiny of mankind. "I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel Is it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came about and just what it is for.- You can explain most wars very simply, but the ex planation of this ifa not so s'-ncple. Its roots run deep into all the obscure soils of history, and 1A my viow this is the last decisive issue be tween the old principle of power and the new principle of freedom. WAR STARTED BY GERMANY "The war was started by Germany. Her au thorities deny that they started it, but I am willing to let tho statement I have just made await the verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Ger many in the world was as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful in tellectual and material achievements. All the . intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been sur rounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in tho principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material 'achievement. Her men of science had matTe her industries perhaps the most competent industries of the world, and the label "Made in Germany" was a. guarantee of good workmanship and sound material. She had access to all the mar kets of the world, and every other nation who traded in those markets feared Germany "because of her effective and almost irrestible competi tion. She had a "place in the sun." GERMANY'S INDUSTRIAL GROWTH "Why was she not satisfied? What more aid she want? There was nothing in the world df peace that she did not already have and have in abundance. We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show, with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of the population of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth and grew faster than any American cities ever grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest. And yet the authorities of Germany were not-satisfied. "You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not satisfied in her meth ods of competition. There is no important in dustry in Germany upon which the government has not laid its hands, to direct it and, when necessity arose, control H; and you have only to ask any man whom you meet whois familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of national competition to find out the methods of competition which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage arid support of the government of Germany. You will find that they were the samo sorts of competition that we have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than wo could sell ours at a profit to themselves they could get a. subsidy from the government which made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, and the conditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure by the German government Itself. BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY "But that did not satisfy the German govern ment. All the while there was lying behind its thought and its dreams of the future a political control which would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor and tho industry of the world. They were not content with success by superior achievement; they wanted success oy authority. I suppose very fe.w of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-Bagdad rail way. The Berlin-Bagdad railway was construct ed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries; so that when German competition came in it would not be resisted too far, because there was always the possibility of getting German armies in to the heart of that country quicker than any other armies could be got there, "Look at the map of Europe now! Germany in thrusting upon us again and again tho discussion of peace talks, about what? Talks about Belgium; talks about north ern France; talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Wei- those are deeply interesting sub jects to us and to them, but they are not the heart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. Germany, has absolute control of Austria Hungary, practical control of the Balkan states, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in"9 appropriate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of tho world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can I.eep that, her powe can disturb the world as long as she" keeps i alwavs provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in alwavs provided the present influ ences that control the German government con tinue to control it. I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan-Germans. Power can not be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people. PEACE RUMORS "You know how many intimations come to us from one of the central powers that it is more Anxious for peace than the chief central power, and you know that it means that the people in that central power know that if the war ends as it stands they will in effect themselves bevas sals of Germany, notwithstanding that their pop ulations are compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, and notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dominated. Germany is determined that the po litical power of the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitions before They have been in part realized, but never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination. "May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of persons should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia appar ently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrow them by intrigue or force? Any body of free men that compounds with the pres ent German government is compounding for its own -destruction. But that is not the whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere else that supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the Pan- Qorman ,pjan ,is achieved and German power fastened 'upon .the world is as. fatuous as tho dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not tho feeling, of the pacifists, but their stupid ity. My heart is with them, but my, mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not. 'COL. HOUSE'S MISSION "You will notice that I sent "a friend of mine, Col.' House, to Europe, who is as great a lover of' peace as any man in the world; but I didn't send'himon a peace missipn yet. I sent him to take part in a conference as to how the war was to be won, and he knows, z.s I know, that th.it is the way to- get peace, if you want it for more than a few minutes. "All of this is a preface to the conference that I have referred to with regard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of freedom, our-own or anybody else's, we will see that the power of this country and the productivity oi this country is raised to its absolute maximum, and. that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it. When I say that nobody is al lowed to stand in the way I do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the gov ernment but by the power of the American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do this-great thing and .show America to be what we believe her to be the greatest hope and energy of the world is to stand together night and day until the job is finished. LABOR MUST BE FREE "While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, that labor is free; and that means a number of interesting things. It means not only that we must do what -we have declared our purpose to do, see that the condi tions of labor are not rendered more onerous by the war, but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities by which the conditions of labor are improved are not blocked or checked. That we must do. That has been the matter about which I have taken, pleasure in conferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and it I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriot'c courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in corral. "Now, to stand together mean's that nobody" must interrupt the processes of our energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided w'thout the absolute invasion of freedom. ' Tb puF it con cretely, that means this: Nobody has-a right to stop the processes of labor until all the methods of conciliation and settlement have been ex hausted. And' I might as well say r'ght here that I am not talking to you alone. You some times stop the courses of labor, but there are others who do the same, and I Relieve I am speaking from my own experience not only, but from the experience of others when I say that you are reasonable in a larger number of cases than the cap'taHsts. I am not saying these things' to them personally yet, because I have not'had. a chance, but they have to be said, not in any spirit of criticism, but In order to clear -the atmosphere and come down to business. Everybody on both sides has now got to trans act -business, and aTettlement is never impos sible when both sides want to do the square and right, ihing. . i SETTLEMENT HARD TO AVOID "Moreover, a settlement Is always hard to avoid when the parties can be brought face to-face. I can differ from a man much more radically when tie is not in the room than I can' when he is in' -the room, because then the awkward thing is he can come back at me and answer what I say.' It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. Therefore, we must Insist in every instance that the parties Come into each other's presence and there dis cuss the issues t etween them, and not separately in places which have no communication with each other. I always like to remind myself of a delightful' saying of an Englishman of the past generation, Charles Lamb. He stuttered a little bft, and once when he was with a group of friends he spoke very harshly of some man who was not present. One of his friends said: "Why. Charles, I didn't 'know that you knew so and so." "O-o-h," he said, "I-I 4-d-don't; I-I can't h-h-hate a m-m-manI-I know." There is a great deai of human nature, of very pleasant human nature, in the saying. It is hard to hate . :t