Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 4 (of 7)

Gentlemen:

If your body objects to the passage of the proposed anti-injunction bill, I have no question that you can stop it, for there is not a capitalist concerned who simply as capitalist is not against it; though I believe that a goodly number both of capitalists and wage-workers who are concerned primarily as citizens favor it. The law was worked over and substantially whipped into its present shape at a number of conferences between representatives of the railroad organizations, of the Department of Justice, and of the Bureau of Corporations with me. It goes as far as I personally think it should go in limiting the right of injunction; at any rate, no arguments have hitherto been advanced which make me think it should go farther. I do not believe it has any chance of passing, because there has been great criticism in both Houses of Congress against the attitude of the Administration in going so far as we have gone; and if you think it is not far enough, why, you will have no earthly difficulty in killing the bill. Personally, I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely wish it would be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is absolutely necessary to have this power lodged in the courts; though of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener. Thus, though we have secured the issuance of injunctions in a number of cases against capitalistic combinations, it has happened that we have never tried to secure an injunction against a combination of labor. But understand me, gentlemen; if I ever thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply for an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.

Now I come to the general subject of your petition. I wish in the first place to state my regret that you did not divorce so much of the petition as refers to the action of the Executive from so much as refers to the action of the legislative branch, because I can not consider any petition that you make that reflects upon the co-ordinate branch of the Government, or that makes any charges whatever against it. I would not even receive it save for the fact that in part it affects the Executive. Therefore in what I have to say I shall limit myself solely to what you assert in reference to the acts of the Executive.

You speak of the eight-hour law. Your criticism, so far as it relates to the Executive, bears upon the signature of the appropriation bill containing the money for expenditure on the Panama Canal, with the proviso that the eight-hour law shall not there apply. If your statement is intended to mean that no opportunity was given for a hearing before me, then the statement is not in accordance with the facts. There was ample opportunity, but not a single request for such a hearing came to me. I received, however, some hundreds of telegrams and letters requesting the veto of the entire appropriation bill because it contained that proviso. Frankly, I found it difficult to believe that you were writing and telegraphing with any kind of knowledge of the conditions in the case. I believe emphatically in the eight-hour law for our own people in our own country. But the conditions of labor, such as we have to work with in the tropics, are so absolutely different that there is no possible analogy between them; and an eight-hour law for the Panama Canal is an absurdity. Every one of you knows that we can not get white labor, can not get labor of the United States, to go down to Panama and work. We are driven to extremities in the effort to get any kind of labor at all. Just at the moment we are working chiefly with negro labor from the West Indies. The usual result in the employment of those men is that Monday and Tuesday they work fairly well, Wednesday and Thursday there is a marked falling off, and by Friday and Saturday not more than a half, sometimes less than a fourth, of the laborers will be at work. The conditions that make the eight-hour law proper here have no possible reference to the conditions that make the eight-hour law entirely improper there. The conditions are so utterly different on the Isthmus, as compared to here, that it is impossible to try to draw conclusions affecting the one from what is true about the other. You hamper me in the effort to get for you what I think you ought to have in connection with the eight-hour law, when you make a request that is indefensible, and to grant which would mean indefinite delay and injury to the work on the Isthmus.

As to the violations of the eight-hour law, Mr. Morrison, you give me no specifications. At your earliest convenience please lay before me in detail any complaints you have of violations of the eight-hour law. Where I have power I will see that the law is obeyed. All I ask is that you give me the cases. I will take them up, and if they prove to be sustained by the facts I shall see that the law is enforced.

Now, about the Chinese exclusion. The number of Chinese now in this country is, if I remember aright, some sixty or seventy thousand. So far from there being a great influx of the Chinese, the fact is that the number has steadily decreased. There are fewer Chinese than there were ten years ago, fewer than there were twenty years ago, fewer than there were thirty years ago. Unquestionably some scores of cases occur each year where Chinese laborers get in either by being smuggled over the Mexican and Canadian borders, or by coming in under false certificates; but the steps that we have taken, the changes in the consuls that have been made within the last few years in the Orient, and the effort to conduct examinations in China before the immigrants are allowed to come here, are materially reducing even the small number of cases that do occur. But even as it is the number of these cases is insignificant. There is no appreciable influx of Chinese laborers, and there is not the slightest or most remote danger of any; the whole scare that has been worked up on the subject is a pure chimera. It is my deep conviction that we must keep out of this country every Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled—every Chinaman of the coolie class. This is what the proposed law will do; it will be done as effectively as under the present law; and the present law is being handled with the utmost efficiency. But I will do everything in my power to make it easy and desirable for the Chinese of the business and professional classes, the Chinese travelers and students, to come here, and I will do all I can to secure their good treatment when they come; and no laboring man has anything whatever to fear from that policy. I have a right to challenge you as good American citizens to support that policy; and in any event I shall stand unflinchingly for it; and no man can say with sincerity that on this, or indeed on any other point, he has any excuse for misunderstanding my policy.

You have spoken of the immigration laws. I believe not merely that all possible steps should be taken to prevent the importation of laborers under any form, but I believe further that this country ought to make a resolute effort from now on to prevent the coming to the country of men with a standard of living so low that they tend, by entering into unfair competition with, to reduce the standard of living of our own people. Not one of you can go farther than I will go in the effort steadily to raise the status of the American wage-worker, so long as, while doing it, I can retain a clear conscience and the certainty that I am doing what is right. I will do all in my power for the laboring man except to do what is wrong; and I will not do that for him or for any one else.

We must not let our national sentiment for succoring the oppressed and unfortunate of other lands lead us into that warped moral and mental attitude of trying to succor them at the expense of pulling down our own people. Laws should be enacted to keep out all immigrants who do not show that they have the right stuff in them to enter into our life on terms of decent equality with our own citizens. This is needed, first, in the interest of the laboring man, but furthermore in the interests of all of us as American citizens; for, gentlemen, the bonds that unite all good American citizens are stronger by far than the differences, which I think you accentuate altogether too much, between the men who do one kind of labor and the men who do another. As for immigrants, we can not have too many of the right kind; and we should have none at all of the wrong kind; and they are of the right kind if we can be fairly sure that their children and grandchildren can meet on terms of equality our children and grandchildren, so as to try to be decent citizens together and to work together for the uplifting of the Republic.

Now a word as to the petitioning of employees to Congress. That stands in no shape or way on a par with the petitioning of men not employed by the Government. I can not have and will not have when I can prevent it men who are concerned in the administration of Government affairs going to Congress and asking for increased pay, without the permission of the heads of the departments. Their business is to come through the heads of departments. This applies to postmasters, to Army and Navy officers, to clerks in the Government departments, to laborers; it applies to each and all, and must apply, as a matter of simple discipline.