I'm trying to do my part to assist in the day of action. Click "JOIN US" to your left to sign an online petition supporting raising the minimum wage, and enjoy these historical quotes from one of my biggest heroes and likely yours too, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, relating the wages of workers to economics, political fights, and human rights.
FDR's statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (June 16, 1933)
In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
FDR's Brother's Keeper Speech (March 23, 1938)
The purchasing power of the millions of Americans in this whole area is far too low. Most men and women who work for wages in this whole area get wages which are far too low. On the present scale of wages and therefore on the present scale of buying power, the South cannot and will not succeed in establishing successful new industries, as we ought to. Efficiency in operating industries goes hand in hand with good pay and the industries of the South cannot compete with industries in other parts of the Nation, unless the buying power of the South makes possible the highest kind of efficiency.
And, my friend, let us well remember that buying power means many other better things -- better schools, better health and hospitals, better highways. These things will not come to us in the South if we oppose progress -- if we believe in our hearts that the feudal system in still the best system.
And, when you come down to it, there is little difference between the feudal system and the Fascist system. If you believe in the one, you lean toward the other and I am opposed to Fascism as I am opposed to Communism.
FDR's speech before the 1936 Democratic National Convention: "A Rendezvous With Destiny" (June 27, 1936)
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.
FDR letter to the Labor Committee on the Wages and Hours Bill (April 30, 1938)
Today, you and I are pledged to take further steps to reduce the lag in the purchasing power of industrial workers and to strengthen and stabilize the markets for the farmers' products. The two go hand in hand. Each depends for its effectiveness upon the other. Both working simultaneously will open new outlets for productive capital. Our Nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.
Enlightened business is learning that competition ought not to cause bad social consequences which inevitably react upon the profits of business itself. All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.
Nearly twenty years ago in his dissenting opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart, Mr. Justice Holmes expressed his views as to the power of the Congress to prohibit the shipment in interstate or foreign commerce of the product of the labor of children in factories below what Congress then deemed to be civilized social standards. Surely the experience of the last twenty years has only served to reinforce the wisdom and the rightness of his views. And, surely if he was right about the power of the Congress over the work of children in factories, it is equally right that the Congress has the power over decent wages and hours in those same factories.
FDR Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. V (New York, Random House, 1936, pp. 624-25)
While President Franklin Roosevelt was in Bedford, Mass., campaigning for reelection, a young girl tried to pass him an envelope. But a policeman threw her back into the crowd. Roosevelt told an aide, "Get the note from the girl." Her note read,
I wish you could do something to help us girls....We have been working in a sewing factory,... and up to a few months ago we were getting our minimum pay of $11 a week... Today the 200 of us girls have been cut down to $4 and $5 and $6 a week.
To a reporter's question, the President replied, "Something has to be done about the elimination of child labor and long hours and starvation wages."
FDR campaign address at Brooklyn, New York (November 1, 1940)
Back in the 20's, in the years after the last World War, Americans worked and built many things, but few of our people then stopped to think why they were working and why they were building and whither they were tending.
Those were the days when prosperity was measured only by the stock ticker.
There were the factory workers forced to labor long hours at low wages in sweat-shop conditions. They could look forward to no security in their old age. They could look forward to no insurance during periods of unemployment.
There were the farmers of the Nation, overburdened with debt and with farm surpluses, their income vanishing, their farms threatened with foreclosure.
There were the natural resources of the land, being wasted-soil, forests, minerals and water power.
There were millions of workers, unable to organize to protect their livelihoods, unable to form trade unions.
There were the small businesses of the Nation, threatened by the monopolies of concentrated wealth.
The savings of the many were entrusted to supposedly great financiers, who were to lose those savings in fantastic adventures of giant holding companies and giant investment trusts.
The crash came as it had to come. And then for three years the American people waited and suffered. For three years the American Government did nothing to help.
In 1933, the American people began to bestir themselves. They had come to learn that inaction offered no escape from the problems of a troubled and changing world.
The American people determined then and there that what could not be done by individual effort could be done through joint effort; that what the industrial and financial leaders could not do, or would not do, a democratic Government could do and would do!
You all know the history of recovery, beginning in 1933, and progressing ever since
...
Most Republican leaders in our own country for the last seven years have bitterly fought and blocked that forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness. And let us not be deluded that overnight those leaders have suddenly become the real friends of these average men and women.
Do you believe that the bulk of the money to finance this vast Republican campaign is being provided by people who have the interests of the common man at heart? You know, very few of us are that gullible.
Oh, they may say at election time that they approve the social gains and social objectives of the last seven years. But I say that these men have not yet proven that they even understand what these social gains or social objectives have been.
The people throughout this country know how many and how difficult were the battles that we have fought and won in the last seven years.
Do you want to abandon the protection of people's savings from fraudulent manipulators, the curbing of giant holding companies that despoiled investors and consumers alike, by delivering them into the hands of those who have fought those reforms?
Do you want to abandon the responsibility for the well-being of those who live and work on the farms of the Nation to those who fought against the farm program every inch of the way?
Do you want to abandon collective bargaining, the outlawing of child labor, the minimum wage, the time-and-a-half for overtime, the elimination of sweat-shop conditions, by turning them over to the proven enemies of labor?
Do you want to hamstring the old-age pension system, or unemployment insurance, or aid for children, or maternity welfare, or vocational training for the physically handicapped, or financial aid to the blind by delivering them into the hands of those who have fought and misrepresented those reforms?
Do you want to abandon slum clearance to those Republican leaders who have fought against every appropriation for decent housing?
Do you want to turn over your Government to those who failed to have confidence in the future of America and who now preach fear for the future of America?
FDR speech at Madison Square Garden (October 31, 1936)
Of course we will continue to seek to improve working conditions for the workers of America—to reduce hours over-long, to increase wages that spell starvation, to end the labor of children, to wipe out sweatshops. Of course we will continue every effort to end monopoly in business, to support collective bargaining, to stop unfair competition, to abolish dishonorable trade practices. For all these we have only just begun to fight.
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