Newspapers / The Charlotte Labor Journal … / Sept. 1, 1949, edition 1 / Page 17
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VOL. XIX; NO. 17 CHARLOTTE, N. C„ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER I, 1949 Subscription Price $2.00 Year Editor’s Note—The Labor Journal prints below the entire address of Vice President Alben W. Barkley, which was delivered before the Annual Convention of the South Carolina Federation of Labor. Presi dent Earl R. Britton and his board members are to be congratulated for arranging a program such as they did this year in Sooth Caro lina which included so many prominent persons as guest of the South Carolina AFL Convention. The address follows: President, Mr. Keenan (Jqseph D. Keenan, National Director, LLPE), members and guests of the South Carolina State Federa tion of Labor, I greatly appreciate the generous words with which my good friend Joe Keenan has intro duced me to this fine body of men and women. I am very glad to be able to be here in Spartanburg today. I have long known of this city because friends of mine who have lived here were the former congressman, former senator, for mer justice, former Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes with whom I served in the House of Representa tives for 14 years and in the Sen ate, and my present good friend and colleague in the Senate, your friend also, Olin Johnson. (Ap plause.) I understand that he was to have spoken here today at 11:00 o’clock, but on account of the death of his brother, he has been com pelled to forego that pleasure. I want to say to you that Olin John son, in my judgment, is as good a friend of labor as there is in the Senate of the United States. (Ap plause.) I have long: known the people of South Carolina by what they call on the radio, now, remote control. For during the 36 years mentioned by Mr. Kennan I have known many South Carolinians, conferred with them long before I came here. The speech last night was the first time (I have flown over it, I have driven through it, I have ridden through it on a train) but last night over at Columbia was the first time I have ever had the honor to address an audience in South Carolina, and I was very happy that I could arrange to stop in Spartanburg, on my way home to Kentucky, to address you for just a few minutes here today. Now I appreciate the fact that Mr. Keenan introduced me as Vice President after 36 years in the Senate and the House. I haven’t quite gotten used to being called Mr. Vice President. It is sort of a tongue twister. I’ve been called Senator for so long that most peo ple still call me that and it suits me all right. I told an audience the other day that I don’t care what you call me just so you call me. (Laughter.) And there are other things that I’ve been called that are worse than Vice Presi dent and worse than Senator, too. President Truman is telling a story in Washington about me that I have no right to deny, and don’t, but he is telling this story that after the election on the 2nd of November at which he and I were elected as President and Vice President, to the surprise oi lour or five people in this country (laughter) I went to my home in Paducah and they had a big cele bration. Made a big to do over me. See, I was the only Vice Pres ident in captivity. They hadn’t had one since Roosevelt died and Vice President Truman became President of the United States. We hadn’t had a Vice President for four years. People almost forgot there was such a thing and I went home and they had a big time. I was the only Vice President fur nished by the city of Paducah. (Laughter.) May be the last, no body can tell, because they may get so tired of it that they won’t want another one. But anyhow they closed the stores, built a plat form in the middle of the street, closed off four blocks in four dif ferent directions and we really had a big time celebrating, and during the process I was ushered into the Irvin Cobb hotel, named after a former Paducahan, and I started in some place (this is the Presi dent’s story, I guess it is so) I started in some place where I wasn't supposed to go and the guard of policemen stopped me. Said, "You can’t go in there." And I said, "I’m the Vice Presi dent.” He halted a minute and I stepped forward a couple of paces, and then he had collected himself and addressed me again and said, “What are you Vice President of?” (Laughter.) So, I said, “The United States.” So he said, “Oh, hell, I thought you meant the Irvin Cobb hotel.” (Laughter.) I am very happy in my capacity as Vice President to render any service that I can to the President and to the administration and to the government and to the Amer ican people. When Charles G. Dawes was Vice President in the Coolidge administration they were not very good friends, somehow or other. Dawes had more friends on the Democratic side of the Sen ate than he had on the Republican side. He and I became very good friends. One day he called me up to the Vice President’s rostrum. He said, “Barkley, this is a helluva job I’ve got.” And I said, “What is the matter with it? You’ve still got it. I haven’t heard of your resignation. What is wrong with it?" He said “I can’t do but two things.” I said “What are they?” “Well,” he said, “one of them is to sit up here and listen to you birds talk and I can’t reply, and the other is to look at the papers every morning to see how the President’s health is.” (Laughter.) I’ve often ' wondered if the Vice President didn’t cast fertive glances at the health columns of the paper every now and then; but I’ve got an iron clad agreement with Harry Tru man that I’m not to look at the sick list, even in the paper. (Laughter.) He and I are a team. We are friends. We served in the Senate together. We ran on the same platform together. We stand for the same things and I am trying to help his administration help the American people. (Applause.) We have many perplexing prob lems that face this country at this time with which every laboring man is concerned. We talk about politics and we think about poli tics. Many people think about politics as a mere game in which man maneuvers schemes to get power and to get office. But in the real sense of the word politics is the science of government. That is what the dictionary defines it as being and it is correct. Now, there is an intimate connection between politics and economics. I do not pretend to be an economist. A very prominent banker in this countiy the other day defined an economist to me as a financier without any money who wears a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end of his watch chain and has no watch on the other end. (Laugh ter.) I don’t adopt that as my definition of economist, but we do know that economics play a great part tn the welfare of out people and it is a handmate of politics in this sense. Economics is the science of production, dis tribution and use of the things that man makes for his advancement and his welfare and for all the people. Now, political conditions, of any country may determine the kind of economic condition that country has. It may determine the kind of economic condition every man and woman and every family may find themselves in. Bad politics, by which I mean bad government, will make bad eco nomics, bad economic conditions. By the same token bad economics, bad economic conditions undoubt edly have a vital and direct affect on the kind of politics you have. So that, if our economic conditions are good, if we are prosperous and happy, and if every man and wo man and child has a feeling that they are obtaining approximate justice under the government un der which they live, they may take a different attitude towards po litical conditions and political par ties than that which they would uaat pwrww i & & — Am.^pry* take if the reverse is the situa tion, for they know that if we have a government in this country to undertake to deal out justice, to undertake to enact laws that are fair and juat and equitable to all classes of our people, but nobody haa any priority in the adminis tration of justice or in the admin istration of the affairs of our country. Politics and economics may go along hand-in-hand and work out our conditions, our so ciety, the prosperity and happiness of our people with fair justice and equity toward all classes. There is no class of people in this coun try that has any right to demand a monopoly in the use of govern ment and in its power and in the use of its power and that is par ticularly true and recognised as being true by laboring men in this country; and it is in my judgment laboring men, whether organized or unorganised, have never asked any priority. They have never asked any special favors of our government. All they have asked is that our government do justice to them as it does to everybody else. (Applause.) And when they feel that our government is try ing to do justice to them, give them an even break with all other classes of our people, laboring men and women find themselves, like all others, pleased to be satisfied with their government and happy over its success. Now I am here not as a parti san, not as a Democrat, but I hap pen to be a Democrat because I have always believed, and I now believe more firmly than ever, that talcing the record of political par ties in the United States from the day of Thomas Jefferson to the day of Harry Truman, the Demo cratic party has done more to bring about equality of justice to all our people than any other po litical party in the history of the United States. (Applause.) And it has done that because it has been inspired by the original phi losophy of Thomas Jefferson, who in his Declaration of Independence announced for the first time that all men are created equal and as such they are endowed by their creators certain unalienable rights. And we use the word unalienable instead of inalienable, which many people think are interchangeable. But they are not. When he said unalienable he meant that they could not be alienated even by the possessor of these rights or by anybody else, and among those rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And in order to secure those rights the govern ments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. A more profound sentence was never ut tered by any political philosopher in the history of the world. Jefferson is not only the author of the Declaration of Independence. He it not only the author of the statutes in Virginia for religious liberty, not only the founder of a great educational institution as the capstone of the educational system of the State of Virginia. He was also the talented organiser of the Democratic party in oppo sition to the Federalist idea that only the rich and the well-born and the educated had any rights to participate in government so far as voting was concerned. Well, Thomas Jefferson advocated the rights of the people because he be lieved in the education of the peo ple. Because he started out against tremendous opposition in his own state to bring about universal edu cation among the people, he was called a demagogue. If there had been such a word at that time he would have been called a socialist. That word was not coined until a little later. He was called a dem agogue by those who deeired to use the powers of the government for their own use and benefits in stead of for the majority. He founded the party of which I am a member in order to offset the theory that the government of the United States was set up for the benefit of a special class, a special class of men and women who were more fortunate than their brothers in the economic and social world. So that we have tried and are now trying to carry out the philosophy of Jefferson, the philosophy of all those who have believed with him in a government of, by, and for the people. That is what we stand for. Of course the complexity of our national life in growth and de velopment of the industrial age made it necessary for men and women to organize to protect them selves in their employment, in their wages and in their conditions of labor. But no one man now can protect himself against entrenched wealth, and I am not saying that in any invidious term. I believe in the profit system. I believe in the incentive that ought to be held out to government for men to invest their money in private enterprise which gives employment to men and women; but no one man or woman exercising all the power he may possess as an individual can protect himself or herself against the stronger arm of those who are entrenched, who are more fortunately situated in regard to this world’s goods; and that as the industrial age came upon them, it became necessary for labor unions to be organised and founded in order that organised workers, that muscle and brawn and sinews, might have a chance against or ganised money, not to obtain more than they were entitled to, but to obtain approximately what they were entitled to. I might say that in the process of this movement the party of which I am a member was the original, was the pioneer in enactment of laws to justify and protect the organization of labor and of farming, because it was in the days of Woodrow Wil son when we were writing the Clayton Anti-Trust Law for the first time in our history as a re sult of the fact that labor unions, that members of labor unions and members of farm organizations had been arrested and indicted as violators of the anti-trust law be cause they belonged to a labor union or to a farmers organiza tion. And when we came to write the Clayton Anti-Trust Law we put a provision in there, "No man shall be even guilty of a violation of the anti-trust law in restraint of trade because he was a mem ber of the farmers organization set up to protect farmers and their families in the obtaining of ade quate prices for what they pro duce out of the soil. No man who joins a labor union shall be guilty of violation of the anti-trust law”. We enacted that law. That was the first enactment to protect labor men and women of their rights to join and organize that was ever enacted in the history of the United States. (Applause.) Now, there are those in this country who seek to separate labor from agriculture, who try to build up opposition among laboring men and women to the farmer and in reverse try to build up opposition and prejudice among farmers against laboring men. No man who tries to separate labor and agriculture is a friend either of labor or agriculture. (Applause.) Their interests are, in sense, identical. It is to the interest of every laboring man discussed that the farmers receive adequate prices for what they grow in the field because, although the farmers of the nation constitute only 15 per cent of the population, they buy 25 per cent of all the things that are produced in the factories of this country and that difference between their relative strength and what they buy is due to the fact that they raise much or what tney use on the farm themselves and thereby have a larger proportion of their income to use in the pur chase of the products of labor. Therefore, it is to the interest of the laboring man that we have a successful and stable agriculture in order that the farmer may buy the things which he cannot pro duce hinself. And by the same token it is to the interest of every farmer in this nation that there shall be a well paid and satisfied and happy labor group in the na tion so that they may buy the products of the farm which they are so in need of in food and cloth ing and other things that are pro duced by agriculture, so that there is an indispensable partnership be tween labor and agriculture. We have never been prosperous in this country and never will if agricul ture is prostrate. We will never be prosperous in this country if labor is unemployed and not em ployed at a wage rate that will give them purchasing power in order that they may give their families the same advantages en joyed by every other group in the United States. I am happy to be able to say during my 36 years in the Con gress of the United States, and you are bound to recognise, Mr. Keene n, that having been in Con gress for 36 years I must have entered it as a very young man. (Applause and laughter.) 1 still am. (Applause and laughter.) I work four times as hard as I did 40 years ago and feel just as well. I never had indigestion in my life. I’ve never had a headache in my life. My habits are as regular as an Elgin watch. I sleep every night just the same as if I was an innocent man. (Lai ugh ter and applause.) All these years, all these years in which I have been a member of the House of Rep resentatives and the Senate, I do (Ceatiaaed On Page » Labor Day Message From Acting Director J. L. Rhodes BY J. L. RHODES Organizer American Federation of Labor Organized labor has ever forged ahead until the people of America built a monument to labor in the form of a day of rest for the na J. L. RHODES tion, created by legislative action. After many years there is a wholesome acceptance of this mon ument to labor by all the citizenry alike. Although the day was spon sored by members of Organised Labor there is the general accept ance of the day—Labor Day—with out a single thought that organ ibed labor sponsored, advocated creation of Labor Day and did se cure the passage of laws through the National Congress setting aside this day, the first Monday in September as a national monu ment to labor. So it goes. Organized labor has secured many public interest bills for the enhancement of all the people’s welfare and when these benefits are secured the sponsors are forgotten. Almost every bill for the benefit of mankind has been placed on the statute books of the states and the nation by strong labor sponsorship. No monument in the general and accepted meaning of the term can be built to labor, for labor builds all things. If money were appropriated to build a huge mar ble and granite monument in a public park to be dedicated to Labor, Labor would have to build that, it would he ueoor Duiunng a monument to itself. You would not bake your own birthday cake, would you? You would not give yourself a Christmas gift, would you? No, of course, you wouldn’t. But Labor Day as a monument to those who toil was about the only type of monument that could be brought about that would not em barrass the recipient. All the accomplishments of La bor are annually brought to the attention of all who read or listen on that day. Many of the prob lems that stand in the way of future and further progress of La bor are brought to the attention of its friends on Labor Day, where remedies are discussed and ways and means considered to further permit the advancement of Labor. 1949 is no year to overlook for the laying of plans and for the making of preparations to carry the Labor program to all the peo ple in this United States of Amer ica. This is a year when full con sideration will be given the per secutory laws that have been sad dled upon the backs of Labor. This is the year when plans will be made to rid the books of the Taft-Hartley law and all oth ers of its type. 'Hus is the year when plans will be made to elect men to public office who have the true concept of value aad the true understanding of the problems ot Labor aad have the conviction to protect the people who build all things. This is the year when men will be chosen for public office who know that America cannot re main healthy or maintain its high standard of living by legislating against the interests of the work ing people. The unfair laws that are made, created and written by the unfair employers have no place on the statute books, and any legislator who votes for or supports such laws must be retired from public office. Labor Day celebrations will be held all over the country and in every city and village of the South land. These celebrations will be days of rejoicing for the many ac complishments of Labor and re dedication to principles that have brought Labor along the road of progress for so many years. It is doubtful that the workers of the South would willingly roll back to the days of the past for they know that by their skill, their brains and their muscle and sinew have come all worthwhile things. The retarding of the interests of Labor would be to upset the econ omy of the country and would cause the standard of life in America to dwindle to a point of destitution. To follow the anti labor forces would mean Labor at low wages. It would mean un employment. The American federation or Labor is found ever in the van* guard of those who fight for the high standard of living the Amer ican laborer is first entitled to— why shouldn’t he be?—he built it. Though there are no bronae plaques or marble shafts or gran ite blocks erected as monuments to Labor there is indelibly en graved upon the hearts and minds of the American people the mem ory of “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the gates of heaven.” Labor Day, 1949, offers those who sincerely believe Labor in America has a rightful and influ ential place in American business and in American public affairs the right to publicly so proclaim and to do honor to those who toil to make and produce the wealth of the nation whether it bo farmer or day laborer. America must be a happy work ing force and one that is well paid, for under other conditions there would be no consumers. A healthy American economy requires a healthy status to the farmer and the city worker, for the economy of both groups is dependent one upon the other. A high income of the city worker will assure the farmer of a market for his prod ucts, and a high income for the farmer assures the city worker a market for the things he builds. The Southern office of the Amer ican Federation of Labor extends Labor Day Greetings to all whose eyes fall upon these lines and wishes for all America a prosper ous and happy year until another Labor Day shall roll around. WIDE POWER IS GIVEN TO PRESIDENT TRUMAN IN EXECUTIVE BRANCH WASHINGTON—Congress com pleted action today on a bill giv ing President Truman broad pow ers to streamline the executive branch of the Government. The Senate, by a voice vet* with no opposition, approved a compromise version of the bill which was worked out by a Sen ate-House committee yesterday. The House passed it a few min utes earlier. Senate action sent tike measure on its way to the White House after a month of bitter wrang ling.
The Charlotte Labor Journal and Dixie Farm News (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Sept. 1, 1949, edition 1
17
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