avert the suffering and bitterness caused by strikes. Moreover, a conciliation committee can do best work when the trouble is in its beginning, or at least has not come to a head. When the break has actually occurred, damage has been done, and each side feels sore and angry; and it is difficult to get them togetherdifficult to make either forget its own wrongs and remember the rights of the other. If possible the effort at conciliation or mediation or arbitration should be made in the earlier stages, and should be marked by the wish on the part of both sides to try to come to a common agreement which each shall think in the interests of the other as well as of itself. When we deal with such a subject we are fortunate in having before us an admirable object lesson in the work that has just been closed by the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission. This was the Commission which was appointed last fall at the time when the coal strike in the anthracite regions threatened our Nation with a disaster second to none which has befallen us since the days of the Civil War. Their report was made just before the Senate adjourned at the special session; and no Government document of recent years marks a more important piece of work better done, and there is none which teaches sounder social morality to our people. The Commission consisted of seven as good men as were to be found in the country, representing the bench, the church, the army, the professions, the employers, and the employed. They acted as a unit, and the report which they unanimously signed is a masterpiece of sound common sense and of sound doctrine on the very questions with which our people should most deeply concern themselves. The immediate effect of this Commission's appointment and action was of vast and incalculable benefit to the Nation; but the ultimate effect will be even better, if capitalist, wage-worker, and lawmaker alike will take to heart and act upon the lessons set forth in the report they have made. Of course the National Government has but a small field in which it can work in labor matters. Something it can do, however, and that something ought to be done. Among other things I should like to see the District of Columbia, which is completely under the control of the National Government, receive a set of model labor laws. Washington is not a city of very large industries, but still it has some. Wise labor legislation for the city of Washington would be a good thing in itself, and it would be a far better thing, because a standard would thereby be set for the country as a whole. In the field of general legislation relating to these subjects the action of Congress is necessarily very limited. Still there are certain ways in which we can act. Thus the Secretary of the Navy has recommended, with my cordial and hearty approval, the enactment of a strong employer's-liability law in the navy yards of the Nation. It should be extended to similar branches of the Government work. Again, sometimes such laws can be enacted as an incident to the Nation's control over interstate commerce. In my last annual message to Congress I advocated the passage of a law in reference to car couplings-to strengthen the features of the one already on the statute-books so as to minimize the exposure to death and maiming of railway employees. Much opposition had to be overcome. In the end an admirable law was passed "to promote the safety of employees and travelers upon railroads by compelling common carriers engaged in interstate commerce to equip their cars with automatic couplers and continuous brakes and their locomotives with drivingwheel brakes." This law received my signature a couple of days before Congress adjourned. It represents a real and substantial advance in an admirable kind of legislation. |