Address at the Dedication of a Square in Washington to the Memory of Samuel Gompers.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, distinguished guests:

I am going to open my remarks by reading you a letter:

"My dear Mr. President. I regret very much not being able to be present when you dedicate the Gompers Square, owing to my physical disability. I consider it a great tribute to my late husband. I send my heartlest greetings to those who will participate in this event. Very sincerely yours, Mrs. Samuel Gompers."

I am happy to take part in the dedication of this square to the memory of Samuel Gompers.

Many of the squares and streets in this city are named for famous men. But very few of them did as much for their fellow men as Samuel Gompers did.

In his long life of effort for the working people of this country, he was bitterly abused and viii fled by the forces of special privilege. But he found out, in the end, that this country will always honor a man who dedicates his life to helping others.

Samuel Gompers was a workingman himself, and he fought to better the condition of the wage earner. But he never regarded organized labor as a pressure group concerned only with its own private and selfish gains. On the contrary, he thought of the cause of organized labor as the cause of human justice. He strove to correct the inequities of our industrial system because that was the right thing to do--the right thing not only for labor but for all pans of our society.

In his autobiography, he summed up his beliefs in these words:

"... I have been jealous that the American labor movement should retain the character of a crusade for human justice. I know men and I love them and I also know that the effort to secure justice for the under-man must be a fight."

That is pretty good philosophy for a trade union movement to have.

And it is also good philosophy for a political movement, too. I have always believed that the American people would prefer the political party that proved it was crusading for human justice. I have seen the truth of that proposition in my own experience.

Samuel Gompers was right when he said that the effort to secure justice for the workingman means a fight. It does. It means a long, unending fight. I have seen the truth of that in my own experience, too.

It is an unending fight because the forces of reaction never give up. They have money and they have power, and they never really believe that the people ought to govern themselves. They are always trying to turn the control of the country over to a privileged few.

We have come a long way in our fight for human justice since the days of Samuel Gompers, but the gains we have made are always under attack. The forces of reaction are always trying to undo the progress we have made.

One of the greatest struggles Samuel Gompers had was to prevent our courts and legal institutions from being perverted into instruments of oppression against the workingman. That was a real danger in his day. When he started his great work, labor union activities were considered to be illegal conspiracies in the restraint of trade. Courts were constantly issuing injunctions against unions for the benefit of employers. The labor injunction was used indiscriminately to keep labor in the prison of low wages and poor working conditions.

Gompers fought this kind of thing with all the energies of his great soul and his mind.

He fought the labor injunction because it was used to undermine and destroy free trade unions.

Above all, he fought the labor injunction because it was used to violate the constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.

The fight he led resulted in great victories--the Clayton Act, the Norris-LaGuardia Act, the Wagner Act. Those laws recognized the constitutional rights of labor and made them the basis of our national labor policy.

In recent years there have been attempts to bring back the old ideas that Gompers fought against. There has been a campaign to rewrite our labor relations laws so that they would favor employers against employees. There has been a plot to devise legal machinery to cut the strength of organized labor into little pieces, and to entangle each piece in a snare of legal restrictions and red tape.

This entire effort is harmful not just to labor, but to the welfare of the country. It is a backward step, legally and economically. We have been fighting against it, and we must continue to fight against it.

Our objective is to have what Samuel Gompers wanted: fairness and justice in the law of labor-management relations. We do not want a law that is stacked in favor of either labor or management. We want a law that will insure free unions and free collective bargaining, and be fair to both employers and employees. And I believe we will have that kind of law, in the long run, in spite of all these efforts to turn back the clock of progress.

There is another respect in which we have been moving forward against stiff opposition since the days of Samuel Gompers. That is in creating a stable economy. One of the things that Gompers fought, all his life long, was unemployment. He knew this was not a problem that could be solved by labor alone. He knew that industry and government must work with labor and the farmers to prevent depressions and to maintain high levels of employment.

It is remarkable, when you look back on it, to realize what terrible stupidity and selfishness Gompers had to face in this part of his struggle for human justice. Economists told him that starving, unemployed workers were the result of "natural laws" that nothing could change. Business opposed his suggestion that Government agencies should take such a simple step as collecting statistics on unemployment.

We have come a long way since those days. We have adopted the principle that working people shall have insurance to give them some protection against unemployment. We believe in good wages, and we have legal wage floors to prevent sweatshops. We have set up a system of social security. We have written into our laws the principle that all groups--business, labor, and agriculture-should work together to maintain employment and expand the economy. We have learned to use the great resources of our economy, through government, to prevent economic suffering and to protect against sharp declines in the business cycle.

It is quite clear that since Gompers' time we have made great advances in our economic theories and our economic policies. We no longer believe that "natural laws" make the poor poorer and the rich richer. We no longer subscribe to the nonsensical idea that economic well-being trickles down the scale from the well-to-do to the wage earner.

In fact, we have proved that just the opposite is true. We have proved that if the wage earner and the farmer are prosperous and secure the rest of the people will be prosperous and secure, too. Today, the working people of the United States are better off than any workers in history, and the annual income per person in this country is 40 percent higher than it was in 1939. This is a real gain of 40 percent--after taxes, and taking price increases into account. This gain is a real gain--a real gain of 40 percent. Don't let anybody tell you anything different from that. That's the truth, if it was ever told.

But we have had to fight for these advances, and we will have to keep on fighting in order to hold them. There are still people who cling to the old trickle-down theory, who think that our sole concern ought to be profits, and that wages ought to come after 'profits have been taken care of. This is the same blind attitude that brought on the great depression, but it is still with us.

Let me give you an example. Our defense program has brought with it the threat of inflation--and of runaway prices. Adequate price controls are essential not only for the wage earner, but for business as well. They are essential to the defense of the Nation and to world peace. In this emergency you would think that all citizens would want good, strong price controls to protect themselves and the whole economy.

But this has not proved to be the case. Scores of special interests have ganged up together for the purpose of securing special short-run advantages for themselves at the expense of all the rest of us. These special interests have adopted the principle that price control is all right if it does not require them to absorb one more penny in costs, or forego a penny of profits, no matter how high their profits may be. This is the main idea behind that terrible Capehart amendment, which I tried to have removed from the price control law. It is also the old trickle-down idea, in a new setting-take care of the profits first, and the general welfare last.

This administration will do its best, with the tools the Congress has given us, to curb inflation. But the tools are not good enough to do this job as it should be done.

Here is part of the fight for human justice which I hope the working people--and all other patriotic Americans--will carry on with increasing vigor in the months to come. We can win this fight for a strong antiinflation program. We must not lose heart. Think of the difficulties that confronted Samuel Gompers 50 years ago.

We have far less reason to be discouraged than he had. We have seen the crusade for human justice bring about tremendous improvements in our living standards and in the stability of our economy.

These gains have brought new responsibilities to organized labor. Today labor unions are a major element in our economy. Their policies affect the whole Nation and help to shape our national destiny.

In this present time of crisis, the defense of the free world depends on the production of American mines, farms, and factories. Labor--organized labor--has the great responsibility of using its strength to increase defense production. It has the responsibility for helping to make wage stabilization work. It has the responsibility, along with management, of preventing the interruption of defense production.

I am confident that the American labor movement will measure up to these responsibilities. For labor understands what is at stake in this struggle against aggression and the threat of war.

Labor knows that communism is the mortal enemy of free trade unions. Labor knows that free trade unionism--the international unity of free workingmen--forms one of the greatest bulwarks against communism. Labor knows that we cannot have peace for ourselves if we turn our backs on the needs and desires and hopes for progress of other free people.

That is why the American labor movement has given such firm support to the foreign policy of this country. That is why American labor is working so vigorously with free trade unions throughout the world for peace and human progress.

In all this, the labor movement has been following the principles established by Samuel Gompers. All these principles have been carried forward by great labor leaders such as my friend here, William Green. There was never anyone who worked harder than Samuel Gompers for international collaboration among free nations and free working men. There was never anyone who believed more deeply in the cause of peace and justice for all the people of the world.

That was his goal--and it is ours. It is the goal of all progressive, forward-looking Americans.

Let us go on working, as Samuel Gompers worked, for peace, freedom, and justice for all mankind.