The Labor Question
Performed by William Jennings Bryan
Recorded July 21, 1908
The wage earners constitute
so large a proportion of our population that all political
and economic questions effect them, but there are
certain questions in which they feel a special interest.
Theyre interested, for instance, in an eight-hour
day, and the Democratic platform declares in favor
of eight-hour day on all government work. The laboring
men are also interested in the Employers Liability
Act, and the Democratic platform endorses this measure.
The antitrust law has been so construed as to apply
to labor organizations, but the distinction between
an association of laboring men or farmers, or other
citizens organized for mutual benefit -- and industrial
combinations known as trusts, is so clear that the
two subjects ought to be treated separately. And the
Democratic platform puts the party on record against
legislation which passes labor organizations with
illegal combinations in restraint of trade. One of
the most acute questions affecting labor is that which
involves the issue of the written injunction. The
Republican leaders have attempted to raise a false
issue and have accused the laboring men of lack of
respect for the courts. They do injustice to the wage
earners. There is no lack of respect for the courts
and there is no thought of interfering with the legitimate
use of the written injunction. Courts, however, are
creatures of law and it is their province to interpret
the laws which the people make. Experience has shown
the necessity for a modification of the law relating
to injunction, and the Democratic party favors the
enactment of a measure which passed the United States
Senate 12 years ago, but which a Republican Congress
has ever since refused to enact. This measure gives
to the accused the right of trial by jury when the
alleged contempt was not committed in the presence
of the court. The demand for a jury trial in such
cases is not revolutionary. It is simply a demand
that those who are known as wage earners shall be
given the protection always accorded to persons who
are tried in a criminal court. The Democratic platform
also insists that injunction should not be issued
in industrial dispute in cases where the injunction
would not lie if no industrial disputes were involved.
In other words, the wage earner should not be discriminated
against, and the industrial dispute itself should
not be a sufficient cause for the issuance of an injunction.
Before an injunction is issued in an industrial dispute,
the conditions ought to be such as to justify the
writ of injunction if there were no disputes between
employer and employee. Our platform goes a step further
and declares in favor of a Department of Labor with
a cabinet officer at its head. This is but a reiteration
of the position taken by the party in 1900, and who
will say that the laborers of the country are not
entitled representation at the Presidents council
table. They have so large a part in the production
of the nations wealth in time of peace, and they are
so prompt to offer their services in time of war,
that no one should begrudge them a spokesman in the
Presidents cabinet.