Ladies and Gentlemen.
The meeting to-night has to do with the questions which relate to the maintenance of industrial peace or to the restoration of peace relationships in industrial relations if they shall be disturbed. Perhaps I may say that question has peculiar interest to myself entirely outside of my academic connections, because many years before I entered the service of the University I was myself a large employer of labor. One of the testimonials, perhaps the testimonial which I most value of any which I have received, was one which the two thousand men in our service gave to us at the time we went out of business.
We do not realize that the conditions under which we are living are totally different from those of twenty-five years ago. During almost all my business life, and I suppose during Senator Hanna’s business life, the maxim on which business was conducted was that competition was the life of trade, and there was a constant struggle of competition between producer and producer and between man and man for a position, and it is only within a few years that it has dawned upon the mind of the world that another economic maxim might have weight, the maxim that where combination is possible, competition is impossible. We are working now under that maxim, and so we have federations of labor and we have federations of capital. So long as justice is not universal there will be a conflict of interests between labor and capital, and the practical question seems to be, how to bring these two interests together.
All these matters are really solvable only in a practical way. Most people need a mediator—somebody to intervene. We know, ourselves, even in the matter of the rental or buying of a house, a man is often not willing to disclose himself fully and must employ a third party. The practical question is, how to get the men together, because in that way difficulties are settled and only in that way. Whosoever takes a part in preserving industrial peace or in adjusting the conditions as between employer and employed confers an extraordinary benefit upon the whole community.
In everything the man is greater than the scheme. What one man finds impossible to do, another man succeeds in doing. The first speaker of the evening is Senator Hanna, a man who translates his oratory into action. He has consented to add to the extraordinary responsibilities of state, which he has borne for so many years, the duty of being one of the members of a board of conciliation or arbitration, and I have the very great pleasure of presenting him to you.
Senator Hanna’s address is printed in full on pages 19–26 of this volume.
The next speaker of the evening was Mr. Samuel Gompers, who spoke on “Limitations of Conciliation and Arbitration.” In introducing Mr. Gompers, the presiding officer said:
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I shall now introduce as the next speaker the President of the American Federation of Labor, who has devoted his life since boyhood towards the betterment of the laboring classes, and not only towards that question alone, but also to the philosophical side of everything which has to do with questions concerning labor. I am glad of the opportunity of introducing to you Mr. Samuel Gompers.
The address of Mr. Gompers is printed on pages 27–34 of this volume.