Details
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, President. Typed letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt") to Michael Schaap, a Progressive delegate to the New York state assembly, New York, N.Y., 24 January 1913. 6 pages, 4to, 240 x 196 mm. (9 1/2 x 7 3/4 in.), with approximately 35 words added in ink in various places and seven words added by Roosevelt in pencil [with] Three enclosures: a TLS of Harry Gordon, attorney of the Cotton Manufacturer's of New York, to Schaap, 13 February 1913, 4 pages, 4to; a typed statement of purpose of the CMGNY, 5 pages, 4to; a printed pamphlet: Protocol of Peace in the Dress and Waist Industry, New York, n.d., 8vo, 12pp., disbound. (4)
ROOSEVELT ON THE EARLY LABOR MOVEMENT AND THE RIGHT OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: "WE CANNOT AS A COMMUNITY SIT IN APATHY"
A very important letter to a Progressive Assemblyman. Roosevelt (who had split the Republican Party ticket in the November elections to run for President as the candidate of the progressive wing) urges an investigation of garment industry sweatshops, unequivocally states his support of the workers' right to collective bargaining and tells of his visits to sweatshops and his conversations with the young women employed there: "...it is now imperatively necessary that the Legislature...undertake a thorough investigation into the labor conditions of the special industries severally designated as white goods, wrapper and kimona [sic]. In the dress and waist industry an investigation has already been arranged...by the joint action of the employers and the union. No such joint action...[can] be arranged...until the employers in those industries recognize the fundamental need that the employees shall have the right to combine into unions recognized by the employers...." Roosevelt encloses the protocol between the International Ladies' Garment Workers ' Union and the manufacturers, and a statement by Gordon (the manufacturers' attorney), but he "emphatically dissents" from the manufacturers' "attitude towards trade unionism....the position that the employer ought to treat his employees well and humanely, but should be held responsible only to God and his own conscience for his actions - a position taken throughout history not only by absolute monarchs who were good, but by absolute monarchs who were bad....[T]hese young girls are absolutely helpless if they are obliged to bargain for their rights individually. They must possess the right of collective bargaining....For the employer to discharge a good man as 'incompetent,' when the real reason is that the man has stood for the rights of himself and his fellows, is an outrage; and it is equally an outrage for the union to support the kind of workingmen whose actions within and without the shop represent applied anarchy...."
He describes his visits to striking garment workers in New York, and their stories of labor and living conditions: "Here we have young girls, many of them...children, toiling excessive hours each day, often...in dark, unsanitary shops, without any adequate fire protection, sometimes under grossly unsanitary conditions, generally for low wages, diminished in many cases by charges for machines, electric power, for needles and even for drinking water....Aside even from the feeling of deep sympathy for them personally...there is the larger question of the social good of the whole race. We cannot as a community sit in apathy and permit these young girls to fight in the streets for a living wage and for hours and conditions of labor which shall not threaten their very lives...." Roosevelt quotes from the "Protocol" and concludes: "Surely this represents the ideal towards which we should strive....to establish hearty cooperation between employer and employed, individually and collectively, each side temperately insisting on its own rights, freely recognizing the rights of the other side, and both sides recognizing the larger right of interest of the community as a whole...." rovenance: A direct descendant of Michael Schaap, the recipient. (4)
ROOSEVELT ON THE EARLY LABOR MOVEMENT AND THE RIGHT OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: "WE CANNOT AS A COMMUNITY SIT IN APATHY"
A very important letter to a Progressive Assemblyman. Roosevelt (who had split the Republican Party ticket in the November elections to run for President as the candidate of the progressive wing) urges an investigation of garment industry sweatshops, unequivocally states his support of the workers' right to collective bargaining and tells of his visits to sweatshops and his conversations with the young women employed there: "...it is now imperatively necessary that the Legislature...undertake a thorough investigation into the labor conditions of the special industries severally designated as white goods, wrapper and kimona [sic]. In the dress and waist industry an investigation has already been arranged...by the joint action of the employers and the union. No such joint action...[can] be arranged...until the employers in those industries recognize the fundamental need that the employees shall have the right to combine into unions recognized by the employers...." Roosevelt encloses the protocol between the International Ladies' Garment Workers ' Union and the manufacturers, and a statement by Gordon (the manufacturers' attorney), but he "emphatically dissents" from the manufacturers' "attitude towards trade unionism....the position that the employer ought to treat his employees well and humanely, but should be held responsible only to God and his own conscience for his actions - a position taken throughout history not only by absolute monarchs who were good, but by absolute monarchs who were bad....[T]hese young girls are absolutely helpless if they are obliged to bargain for their rights individually. They must possess the right of collective bargaining....For the employer to discharge a good man as 'incompetent,' when the real reason is that the man has stood for the rights of himself and his fellows, is an outrage; and it is equally an outrage for the union to support the kind of workingmen whose actions within and without the shop represent applied anarchy...."
He describes his visits to striking garment workers in New York, and their stories of labor and living conditions: "Here we have young girls, many of them...children, toiling excessive hours each day, often...in dark, unsanitary shops, without any adequate fire protection, sometimes under grossly unsanitary conditions, generally for low wages, diminished in many cases by charges for machines, electric power, for needles and even for drinking water....Aside even from the feeling of deep sympathy for them personally...there is the larger question of the social good of the whole race. We cannot as a community sit in apathy and permit these young girls to fight in the streets for a living wage and for hours and conditions of labor which shall not threaten their very lives...." Roosevelt quotes from the "Protocol" and concludes: "Surely this represents the ideal towards which we should strive....to establish hearty cooperation between employer and employed, individually and collectively, each side temperately insisting on its own rights, freely recognizing the rights of the other side, and both sides recognizing the larger right of interest of the community as a whole...." rovenance: A direct descendant of Michael Schaap, the recipient. (4)