John L. Lewis: "Labor and the Nation"
out of the agony and travail of economic america the committee for industrial organization was born. to millions of americans exploited without stint by corporate industry and socially debased beyond the understanding of the fortunate, its coming was as welcomed as the dawn to the night watcher. to a lesser group of americans, infinitely more fortunately situated, blessed with larger quantities of the world’s goods and insolent in their assumption of privilege, its coming was heralded as a harbinger of ill, sinister of purpose, of unclean methods and non-virtuous objectives. but the committee for industrial organizations is here. it is now henceforth a definite instrumentality, destined greatly to influence the lives of our people and the internal and external course of the republic.
this is true only because the purposes and objectives of the committee for industrial organization find economic, social, political and moral justification in the hearts of the millions who are its members and the millions more who support it. the organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.
the workers of the nation were tired of waiting for corporate industry to right their economic wrongs, to alleviate their social agony and to grant them their political rights. despairing of fair treatment, they resolved to do something for themselves. they, therefore, have organized a new labor movement, conceived within the principles of the national bill of rights and committed to the proposition that the workers are free to assemble in their own forums, voice their own grievances, declare their own hopes and contract on even terms with modern industry for the sale of their only material possession -- their labor.
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