Legislated Security is Bondage; S. Gompers

The first step in establishing compulsory social insur ance is to divide people into groups, those eligible for benefits and those considered capable of caring for them selves. The division is based upon earning capacity. This [413 ] governmental regulation must tend to fix the. citizens of the country into classes, and a long-established insurance system would tend to make those classes rigid. Governmental power grows upon that on which it feeds ..Give an agency power, and it at once tries to reach out after more. Its effectiveness depends upon increasing power. Fleeing Social Security Recently a gentleman of the highest standing stated to me that during the time he was in Germany, and in a position to know, German workmen came to him seeking aid to get out of that country to the United States. They told him that by reason of the taxes which they were compelled to pay into compulsory social insurance schemes, they had no money left except for absolute necessities of life, and were unable to secure sufficient funds to come to the United States even in the steerage.

He said to me further that in Germany, where compul sory social insurance has been more extensively worked out than in any other country, the workmen of that coun try, by reason of their property interests in compulsory social insurance, have been compelled to remain in Ger many and work under circumstances, wages, hours, and conditions of employment which forced them to endure conditions below standards of a living wage. Is it not discernible that the payments required of workmen for this compulsory social insurance interfere very materially with mobility of labor, and constitute a [414 ] very effectual' barrier to the workers determining their whole lives? Industrial freedom exists only when and where wage earners have complete control over their labor power. To delegate control over their labor power to an outside agency' takes away ·from the economic power of those wage earners and creates another agency for power.

Whoever has control of this new agency acquires some degree of control over the worker. There is nothing to guarantee control over that agency to employees. It may .also be controlled by employers. In other words, giving the government control over industrial relations creates a fulcrum which means great power for an unknown user. The introduction of compulsory social insurance in cases of sickness, or compulsory social insurance in cases of unemployment, means that the workers must .be sub ject to examinations, investigations, regulations, and limi tations. Their activities must be regulated in accordance with the standards set by governmental agencies. To that we shall not stand idly by and give our assent. A Warning Men and women, I trust I may not be sounding my warnings upon the empty air. I hope that they may find a lodgment in the minds and the hearts of my country men. I bid you have a care in all these attempts to regulate the personal relations and the normal personal activities of the citizenship of our country ere it be too late.

[415 ] There is in the minds of many an absence of under standing of the fundamental essentials of freedom. They talk freedom, and yet would have bound upon their wrists the gyves that would tie them to everlasting bond age. And no matter how sympathetic or humanitarian is the gloss over the plan and the scheme, I again bid you beware. We know not when or how this great struggle going on in Europe will terminate, or what it shall mean for the future of those countries; but at least let the people of the United States hold their liberties in their own hands, for it may come to pass that our America, the America whose institutions and ideals we so much revere, may be the one nation to hold the beacon light of freedom aloft, and thus aid in relighting the torch, re kindling the heart flame of the world's liberty. For a mess of pottage, under the pretense of compul sory social insurance, let us not voluntarily surrender the fundamental principles of liberty and freedom, the hope of the Republic of the United States, the leader and teacher to the world of the significance of this great anthem chorus of humanity-liberty!

[416 ] ONE WORLDISM TEN YEARS ago the United Nations was ushered into the world as the guarantor of peace. It has failed. Despite that obvious fact, there are many whose faith in some sort of Superstate as an instrument of peace is unshaken, and who lay the failure of the UN to the limitations put upon it by the autonomy of its members. That is to say, they believe in peace through coercion; the more coer cion, the more peace. History cannot give this faith the slightest support. The grandeur that was Rome did not prevent the parts of that empire from coming into conflict with one an other nor from rising up against the central authority. Even our American coalition of commonwealths came near breaking up in war, and uprisings have all but dis integrated the British Empire. Centralization of power has never been a guarantor of peace. The best that can be said of any coalition of nations is that it can keep smoldering fires from breaking out only so long as one of its members can dominate the others. It can maintain an armed truce. The UN has not done even that, simply because no one State has shown sufficient strength to take control. The. two most power[417 ] fnJ members have been in contention since its beginning a.nd are now Hexing their muscles for a test of strength.