It is adjudged and awarded that no person shall be refused employment or in any way discriminated against on account of membership or non-membership in any labor organization, and that there shall be no discrimination against or interference with any employee who is not a member of any labor organization by members of such organization.
I heartily approve of this award and judgment by the commission appointed by me, which itself included a member of a labor union. This commission was dealing with labor organizations working for private employers. It is of course mere elementary decency to require that all the Government departments shall be handled in accordance with the principle thus clearly and fearlessly enunciated.
Please furnish a copy of this letter both to Mr. Palmer and to the Civil Service Commission for their guidance.
Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
Hon. Geo. B. Cortelyou,
Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
September 29, 1903
Pursuant to the request of Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, the President granted an interview this evening to the following members of the executive council of that body: Mr. Samuel Gompers, Mr. James Duncan, Mr. John Mitchell, Mr. James O’Connell and Mr. Frank Morrison, at which various subjects of legislation in the interest of labor, as well as executive action, were discussed. Concerning the case of William A. Miller the President made the following statement:
I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. It will always be a pleasure to see you or any representatives of your organizations or of your Federation as a whole.
As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what I have already said. In dealing with it I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely with the relation of the Government to its employees. I must govern my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and can not and must not be construed as permitting discrimination against some of the people. I am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social condition. My aim is to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the employment and dismissal of men in the Government service I can no more recognize the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him.
In the communications sent me by various labor organizations protesting against the retention of Miller in the Government Printing Office, the grounds alleged are twofold: 1, that he is a non-union man; 2, that he is not personally fit. The question of his personal fitness is one to be settled in the routine of administrative detail, and can not be allowed to conflict with or to complicate the larger question of governmental discrimination for or against him or any other man because he is or is not a member of a union. This is the only question now before me for decision; and as to this my decision is final.