Campaign Address in Newark, New Jersey

Real wages and standards of living of our labor have improved more during the past 7½ years of Republican rule than during any similar period in the history of this or of any other country.

When I speak of wages I refer both to those who work at the bench and those who work at the desk. Nor is this addressed to men alone. More than 10 million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and the wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.

I wish to lay down the proposition that the very prerequisite, the very foundation, of economic progress to our industrial and business employees is full and stable employment. A continued surplus of unemployed workers means decreasing wages, increasing hours, and fear for the future. To protect labor, to maintain its prosperity, to abolish poverty, we must so organize our economic system as to provide a job for all who have the will to work.

Full employment depends not only upon a strong and progressive economic system but upon the sound policies of and the vigorous cooperation by the Government to promote economic welfare. Labor in its collective efforts has contributed greatly to the maintenance of proper wages and to improved conditions of labor. But collective bargaining cannot overcome the forces that make for unemployment. I, for one, am willing to trust the proved ability of employees to take care of their rights if there is employment to be had. And our workers as citizens at the .ballot box have a large part in the determination of these economic policies.

The problem of insuring full work all the time is a problem of national concern. It is one to which government must give its attention. It is one which government may contribute to solve. Behind every job is a vast, intricate, and delicately adjusted system of interlocked industries dependent upon skilled leadership and upon finding a market for their products at home or in foreign lands. The forces of credit, communications, transportation, power, foreign relations, and what not, must all be kept in tune if steady employment is to be assured. A failure in any part imposes a penalty upon labor through unemployment. Break this chain of relationship at any point and the whole machine is thrown out of order. Close down a New Jersey factory because of inadequate transportation or inadequate tariff and its effect is felt by the New Jersey truck farmer. Cease exporting automobiles to South America or Europe, and automobile workers are thrown out of employment in Michigan. The suffering does not stop there. It only begins. The steel mills slacken in Pennsylvania and Indiana. The mines employ fewer workers at Lake Superior. And every farmer in the United States suffers from the diminished purchasing power and enforced stringency in thousands of homes.

The modern relationships of government and industry are a tangled mass of economic and social problems. They are neither abstract propositions nor statistics. They are very human beings. They can make for the happiness of every home in our country.

The Republican Party has performed unparalleled service to the employees in our commerce and industry throughout its history and notably during the past 7½ years. Continuous employment and prosperity of labor depend upon the continuance of those policies. It is these wider issues of governmental responsibility in laying broad and deep foundations of employment that I wish to discuss tonight. The Republican Party recognizes this responsibility. Proof of this rests upon its actual record of accomplishment. That record can be tested by examination of the situation of labor in the country today.

When we assumed direction of the Government in 1921 there were 5 to 6 millions unemployed upon our streets. Wages and salaries were falling and hours of labor increasing. Anxiety for daily bread haunted nearly one-quarter of our 23 million families.

The Republican administration at once undertook to find relief for this situation. At once a nationwide employment conference was called. It was made up of representatives of both employers and employees. I had the honor to be chairman of that conference. We set up a program for the systematic organization of the whole business community to restore employment. By means of immediate institution of public works, the extension of financial aid to industry during the critical period of readjustment, by cooperation of employers, and by a score of other devices, we started the wheels of industry turning again. We did not resort to the expedients of some foreign countries, of doles, subsidies, charity, or inflation—all of which in the end are borne by the people.

Within a year we restored these 5 million workers to employment. But we did more, we produced a fundamental program which made this restored employment secure on foundations of prosperity. As a result wages and standards of living have during the past 61/2 years risen to steadily higher levels. This recovery and this stability are no accident. It has not been achieved by luck. Were it not for sound governmental policies and wise leadership, employment conditions in America today would be similar to those existing in many other parts of the world. None of the larger countries engaged in the Great War have as yet restored full employment. Doles to the idle and other devices of desperation still exist abroad.

There have been assertions of wide unemployment at the present time. There was a temporary dip of employment last winter. From this we are now rapidly recovering. Its causes were local and temporary. They were the combined effect of the Mississippi flood, a great shift in the motor industry, and the collapse of real estate speculation. An accurate survey of the Department of Labor showed that, even including the usual winter seasonal unemployment, about 1,800,000 employees were out of work as contrasted with 5 to 6 millions in 1921. During the past 2 months there has been a higher record of production and consumption of goods than during corresponding months of any previous year. There could not be such a record unless employment was steadily recovering.

There are two industries which have only partially recovered to our general industrial prosperity. They are the bituminous coal and the textile industries. Here the difficulties of recovery from overexpansion during the war have been increased by a duplication of part of both industries in the Southern States. They have also been affected by changes in use of textiles on one hand and by the increase of electricity on the other. We have a duty to continue effort to their full recovery by every assistance that the Government can afford. This will be carried forward diligently.

Despite these rare exceptions, the average of real wages is higher today than ever before. And the arduous hours of labor have decreased. We can easily prove this. As a standard of comparison let us take the purchasing power of wages in 1913 or before the war. In purchasing power we consider both the dollars paid and the cost of living. Taking this standard we shall find that real wages at the height of the war inflation were about 30 percent over 1913. Despite the great afterwar slump they have risen until today they are over 50 percent greater than before the war. Viewed in another way, while the cost of living today is about 60 points on the index above prewar, wages are 127 above. Parallel with this increase in real wages the average hours of labor have steadily decreased.

Moreover our real wages and our standards of living are the highest in the world. And I am again speaking of the real buying power of wages. To compare ours with foreign wages we must find a common denominator, because translation of foreign currencies means but little. If we say that 5 percent of butter and 95 percent of flour form the basis of that useful mixture called "bread and butter," then the weekly earnings in each country would buy at retail in those countries the following total of this useful compound. Please note these figures carefully.

WEEKLY WAGES IF APPLIED TO THE PURCHASE OF "COMPOSITE POUNDS OF BREAD AND BUTTER"

(Each pound 95 percent wheat flour and 5 percent butter)

Of course the American employee does not use his higher income to buy unnecessary pounds of bread and butter. He uses it to diversify and expand his consumption of all things. It spells better homes, automobiles, radios, and a thousand things for the family that were utterly unknown a generation ago, and are still utterly unknown to the average citizen in most countries of the world. Fear of poverty has been reduced. Fear of loss of employment has been lessened by stability. Fear of old age and for the future of the family has been lessened through increased payments to the savings banks, to the insurance companies, and to our labor benefit societies.

Before I discuss the policies by which this has been brought about let me say that the Republican administration makes no claim to credit which belongs to the enterprise, energy, and character of a great people. Education, prohibition, invention, scientific discovery, increase in skill in managers and employees have contributed to magnificent progress. But all of these efforts would be incomplete and the margin of employment would have been less had it not been for the cooperative actions taken by the Government. And it is this margin of employment which makes for the safety or the danger of labor.

The first of our policies which have given security and expansion of employment has been the enactment of the protective tariff. The protective tariff has been a fundamental policy of the Republican Party ever since the party was founded. Against it the Democratic Party has battled for these same 70 years. Two months ago their platform hinted that they thought we might be right. However, they declared for a tariff that would maintain effective competition. That must mean a tariff which will maintain effective competition of foreign against American goods. That is not protection. That this is the meaning is borne out by references to the Underwood Tariff of the last Democratic administration as the ideal. The reenactment of that tariff would let in a flood of foreign goods, destroy employment and lower wages, and demoralize our farmers all over the United States. I would suggest that the employees of industries in New Jersey and the country should directly investigate as to what would happen to their employment with lowered tariffs.

The Republican administration imposed restrictions upon immigration largely to protect the American workman. With the bars of immigration down the flow of those seeking relief from the poverty of Europe would create a horde of job hunters around every employment office and every industrial gate in the United States. The pressure of this flood would break our wages toward the levels of Europe.

No one places a higher worth upon the foreign-born citizen than I do. He brings many elements of great value in our cultural development. We welcome his help in building our new civilization. The immigration laws should be amended to remedy the hardships to families. I have urged before that this be done. In my acceptance speech I stated my opposition to any increase in immigration. The restriction upon immigration is a boon not only to those of my hearers who were born on American soil but to those who have come from the old countries, for everyone would suffer equally by the lowering of our wages and standards of living.

The enactment of this law was opposed on economic grounds. I do not here propose to enter into the arguments which were advanced in perfect good faith that production in America would shrink because we would have too few workers, that the cost of living would thus increase, or that it would destroy America's ability to compete in the shipment of her goods into foreign markets. I did not agree with those arguments. I believe that the maintenance of the higher standards of living stimulates the development of laborsaving devices, increases skill in our workmen and in our managers, and that in this way we compensate for higher wages. It is proving itself so today. We are exporting more goods abroad than ever in our history. We are gradually lowering the cost of living by greater efficiency.

There is no measure on our statute books today that represents a more fundamental, sound, and important step in true progress than does this new charter of American labor. It is the necessary and natural companion piece of a protective tariff. In the one instance we protect the American worker from the goods of foreign factories, made under their lower standards of living. In the other case, we check the excess labor flooding through our doors to reduce the American wage.

When at the beginning of the Republican administration we were determining those measures which would restore and increase employment, one of our first decisions was vigorously to build up our foreign trade. We determined that we must sell more products abroad if we would have steady and assured employment for labor in our industries. We realize that we must energetically promote the sale of our farmers' surplus abroad both in their interest and in the interest of labor. By so doing we increase the farmer's buying power and in turn his demand for the products of labor.

When we came into office we were confronted with a total disorganization of the world trade due to the war. We had been exporting great quantities of munitions. This business was finished. World trade was demoralized to such an extent that the actual movement of commodities between all nations was some 20 percent less than before the war.

We set out upon a definitely organized campaign to build up the export of the products of American labor and of the American farm. We reorganized the Department of Commerce for the promotion of American trade abroad on a greater scale than had ever been achieved or ever attempted by any government anywhere in the world. We mobilized our manufacturers and exporters; cooperated with them in laying out and executing strategic plans to expand our foreign trade in all directions. That this great part played by the Government is no hypothetical assertion is amply evidenced by the fact that the daily applications for assistance by exporters to the Department have steadily in creased from 500 daily in 1922 to an average of 10,000 a day in 1928. In the last year before the war our total exports were a little under $2,500 million. In 1922, the first year of the Republican administration, they were $3,750 million. The dollar since the war has not been as valuable a dollar as in 1913. If we make a correction so as to estimate them on a quantity basis, we find that our exports for 1922 were, in prewar dollars, about $2,730 million. During the year 1927 our exports were $4,750 million, and if for comparison we convert this figure to the prewar value of the dollar they were $3,840 million. Thus on any calculation our exports have increased by over $1 billion during the past 7 years. This is an increase of 41 percent since 1922 and an increase of 58 percent over prewar.

Now, I want to clearly show what this means. It was not due to world recovery. If we make a survey of the world's trade today, we shall find that the export trade of all countries is only 10 percent above prewar, while ours is 58 percent. Also, if we make a survey of what has happened to the other great trading nations who were engaged in the war, we find that their foreign trade for the year 1927, when it is similarly adjusted for the depreciation of money, shows only a bare recovery to prewar bases. It is no accident which has brought about this unique situation in the United States. It is not chance that has brought this added employment for American workmen, and added markets for American farmers. Things like that don't happen.

More than 2 million families in the United States earn their living today producing goods for export, and another million families earn their living in the manufacture of raw materials which we import in exchange for our exports. This increase in exports has brought a living to a half-million families. This means more than statistics. It means higher standards of living—more jobs make more wages. Foreign trade is no artificial stimulant to employment. Its development is a vital contribution to the welfare of the American workman and the American merchant and the American farmer. I propose that we shall continue this service to our people.

One of the large opportunities for the further improvement of labor lies in the further improvement of agriculture. Some of its most important branches have lagged behind industry in its advance since the war. This is not an occasion to enter upon that question, but by sympathetic policies we should materially further increase the farmers' buying power and thus add to the security of employment in the industries. This becomes one of our first duties in common interest.

American labor has been the first labor body in the world that has had the intelligence and courage to realize and express the fact that increased wages and salaries must in the long run be based upon a sharing of labor in the savings made through industrial and commercial efficiency. Within the past few months British labor has followed this lead of American labor. That is, if we are able by laborsaving machinery and reduction of the wastes in industry to decrease the cost of production of an article, we know by long experience that a train of consequences of the highest importance follow. Wages in that industry will rise, prices decrease, consumption increase at home and in our foreign markets, the demand for labor is enlarged, and our standards of living improve. The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment, which is still maintained in some parts of the world, has no place in the gospel of American progress.

Eight years ago I caused a nationwide investigation to be undertaken of the whole subject. I felt that it was in the interest of our country to know what opportunities we had to improve our methods. It developed that there were great opportunities for increased efficiency in our whole industrial machine. We have the highest ingenuity and efficiency, in the operation of our individual industries, of any nation. Yet there were great wastes which were not the fault of individuals, employers, or employees. These wastes were due to seasonal unemployment and to unemployment during depressions; to speculation and overproduction during booms; to labor turnover and labor conflicts; to intermittent failure of transportation, of supplies, of fuel, of power, and of credit to synchronize with demand; to lack of simplification and standardization in many of our commonly used commodities; to losses in our processes and materials and scores of other directions. They all combined to represent a huge deduction from the goods and services and employment we might all enjoy if we could but eliminate these wastes.

We adopted a new policy in government. That was, that the Secretary of Commerce should cooperate with industry in organization against such waste, not by law or regulation, but by purely voluntary action in which the joint service of the associations representing the managers of a given industry, its employees, its distributors, and its consumers were all enlisted in a common purpose. We have had magnificent cooperation from the leaders and the employees of American business. I will not take your time to recite the literally thousands of cooperative actions undertaken and carried through with beneficent results, but I will give an illustration.

From time immemorial the building industry has been a seasonal business. It was idle a large part of the winter. The first conference upon reducing its seasonal character was called under my chairmanship in 1923. It was participated in by manufacturers of building material, by contractors, by engineers, by real estate men, by representatives of the employees. An exhaustive examination by this body resulted in the conclusion that the average seasonal unemployment in the building trades was about 100 days out of the year. A number of specific remedies were initiated by organized cooperation in different centers. By this cooperative action and by improved methods the average days of unemployment have been decreased by nearly one-half.

There has been no decrease in daily wages. In fact, there has been increase in wages; but far more important, the annual income of workers in the building trades has been substantially increased by the decrease in idle days. It has enabled us to increase the total annual volume of building with the same complement of labor and equipment. It has decreased the unit cost of building and contributed to the expansion of building generally. Nor are the benefits confined to the construction industries. They give greater stability to all the manufacturers of building material and to transportation.

As another instance of an action of fundamental importance to labor I might mention the organization of measures in the Government to mitigate the violence of the so-called business cycle. That is, the recurrent periods of boom and false hope, waste and extravagance, followed by hard times with their hideous unemployment, decreasing wages, bankruptcy in business, and ruinous prices to the farmer. These booms and slumps have occurred periodically for 75 years, although less than half as often under Republican as under Democratic administrations. The great unemployment period of 1921 was the direct result of war inflation and the boom of 1920. No one has suffered more from these movements than our salary and wage earners.

Time forbids a discussion of the intricate problems involved or the remedies which we have inaugurated. They include better organization of credit, advance information as to demand for industrial products, as to volume of their production, as to the use of public construction in slack times, and many other methods. As a result of cooperation with industry and banking and public officials, we have greatly mitigated this most dangerous of all disasters to our breadwinners. The proof lies in the fact that we have had a far longer period of stability in industry and commerce and in the far greater security of employment than ever before in our history.

In my speech of acceptance I outlined our national programs of prospective public works, including the development of water resources, public roads, and the construction of public buildings. In that speech I pointed out that these projects would require upwards of $1 billion within the next 4 years. I there recommended that, so far as practicable, this work should be carried on in such a way as to take up the slack of occasional unemployment.

While the judicious arrangement of government construction work can aid in wiping out the unemployment caused by seasonal variations in business activity, the Federal Government can do more. The Department of Labor should be authorized to undertake the collection of regular statistics upon seasonal and other unemployment. We must have this fundamental information for further attack upon this problem, from the further solution of which will come still greater stability and prosperity in the world of employer and employee.

We have gained enormously in efficiency in our whole economic machinery in the past 7 years. I cannot take the time to recite to you the extraordinary evidence of this. I hesitate to express it statistically lest I appear to exaggerate. Taken as a whole we have swelled our production on a quantity basis by nearly 30 percent. Parallel with it wages have risen and the prices of manufactured goods have fallen.

I have heard voices raised in protest that the effect of these activities is to destroy employment. This is a re-echo of a century ago. As a matter of fact we have gone through an extraordinary industrial revolution in 7 years and we do not find any such unemployment as would be implied by these protests. There are individual cases of unemployment in these shifts, but wise policies and cooperation with industry have rendered them but momentary. The reasons why no dangers lie in store are simple enough.

As we transfer the burden from the backs of men to machines we increase the wages of workers. We increase their buying power. We create a demand for new commodities and new services. By the energies and capital which we have released through increased efficiency of the older industries we have been able to expand other industries and to create new ones to further employment and to supply new additions to the comfort of every home.

From these and other causes we see a great expansion in the automobile industry, in telephones and electric lights. In 7 years we have seen the radio industry emerge from a few hundred thousands to hundreds of millions in its product. We have seen the airplane industry develop from almost nothing 7 years ago to a most potent industry today. Due to increased efficiency hundreds of thousands of men and women have been transferred from the factories to our expanding insurance and banking to take care of enlarged savings; other hundreds of thousands have been transferred to our filling stations, our garages, our hotels, and our restaurants. We have in this period seen a half-million families find occupation in increased export of goods, and, above all, we have seen an increase of nearly 2 million youths taken largely from the potential rank of labor and placed in institutions of education. This is proof of real progress. It is the road to further progress. It is the road to abolition of poverty.

I have already stated the position of the Republican Party in positive support of free collective bargaining. I have stated that it is necessary to impose restrictions on the excessive use of injunctions. It is my desire and the desire of every good citizen to ameliorate the causes of industrial conflict, to build toward that true cooperation which must be the foundation of common action for the common welfare. The first requisite to less conflict is full employment. By full employment we are steadily reducing conflict and loss.

The whole relationship between employer and employee has shown great improvement in these past 7 years. During these years there has been a revolution through shifting of basic ideas on the part of both business and labor. The large majority of both sides today willingly accept the fundamental principle that the highest possible wages are the road to increased consumption of goods and thereby to prosperity. Both accept the fundamental fact that greater efficiency, larger application of mechanical devices, and full personal effort are the road to cheaper costs, lower prices, and thus again to wider consumption and larger production of goods. Both discard the ancient contention that labor is an economic commodity. Both realize that labor is entitled to participation in the benefits of increased efficiency by increased wage, either directly or through the decrease in living costs. Both have joined in repelling socialism and other subversive movements.

He would be a rash man who would state that we are finally entering the industrial millennium, but there is a great ray of hope that America is finding herself on the road to a solution of the greatest of all her problems. That problem is to adjust our economic system to our social ideals. We are making progress toward social peace and contentment with the preservation of private industry, of initiative, and full development of the individual. Working out of this ideal cannot be attained by compulsory settlement of employee and employer conflicts by the hand of the Government. It cannot be attained by placing the Government in business and reducing our people to bureaucracies.

It is idle to argue that there are no longer any conflicts of interest between employee and employer. But there are wide areas of activity in which their interests should coincide, and it is the part of statesmanship to organize and increase this identity of interest in order to limit the area of conflict. Conflict diminishes and common purpose flourishes only in prosperity and in an encouraging atmosphere of sound governmental policies.

At such a time as this a change in national policies involves not only a choice between different roads by either of which we may go forward—as some may lightly think—but a question also as to whether we may not be taking the wrong road and moving backward. The measure of our national prosperity, of our stability, of our hope of further progress at this time, is the measure of what we may risk through a change in present policies. More than once in our national history a change in policies in a time of advancement has been quickly followed by a turn toward disaster.

Our economic system has abuses; it has grave faults in its operation. But we can build toward perfection only upon a foundation of prosperity. Poverty is not the cause of progress. Enduring national life cannot be builded upon the bowed and sweating backs of oppressed and embittered men and women. It must be uplifted and upheld by the willing and eager hands of the whole people. They will uphold it if our economic life be built for the whole people, not for any special group.

To assure this sort of progress our first necessity is to assure the ability and character of our leadership. It requires that we secure into its ranks all of the intelligence and character of our race—that it be sympathetic with the life and aims of all of our 23 million homes. At no time have we had more able leaders in economic life than today. At no time have we been more certain that the fiber and intelligence of our people furnishes a vast reservoir of such leadership adequate to the future. But able administrators, skilled workers, professional and moral leaders cannot be made by birth or money. They cannot be selected by divine right or through bureaucracy. Nor can their ranks be filled from a limited class.

Our leadership can be found and it will be sympathetic to our ideals if we maintain the decency and dignity of family life through a stable economic system; if we maintain free and universal education and thus provide them the open stair to leadership; if we maintain for every individual an equality of opportunity to attain that position in the community to which his character and his ability entitle him. Then our supply of leadership will stream forward of its own impulse. It is in this insistence upon an equal chance and a free road to rise in leadership that our great American experiment has departed from those of history. It is our sure guarantee of the future. In its vast possibilities is the hope of every mother for her boys and her girls.

Under such leadership, replenished constantly from the great mass of our people, we can aspire to a democracy which will express a common purpose for the common good. We can build a civilization where national conscience is alert to protect the rights of all, curtail selfish economic power, and hold to the ideal of distributed contentment among the whole people.