Red Lodge Daily News Combined With Carbon County News

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15, 1933.

Our Government
-How It Operates

By William Bruckart

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

There is every evidence that when, in 1913, Congress passed a law creating the Department of Labor, few of those who were most vociferous in support of the proposal had any conception of what the new department of the government was to do. A review of the debates of the time indicates rather clearly that somebody wanted to do something for labor, but they did not know exactly what that something should be.

So I am prepared to say that it was the administrative officers who have filled the several posts from secretary of labor down the line of rank who have made the Department of Labor something of value. Some of those observers who watched proceedings when Congress enacted the law tell me that the movement had every appearance of a "sop" to organized labor, and if their conclusion be true, it certainly can be said now that the legislators builded much better than they knew.

The law which those legislators passed said the Department of Labor was to promote the interests of labor, of the working people of the country, that their working conditions might be improved and that their opportunities might be advanced. While I still entertain some doubt concerning what Congress thought this would mean, it has become quite evident that it is possible for the great intangible thing, called government, to act in a very personal capacity when occasions require. It has so acted through the Department of Labor.

Here is an illustration:

In a great textile mill of New England, the workers clamored for better conditions; they wanted shorter working hours; they wanted assurance that they would not be dismissed without notice; they wanted certain agreements with the owners as to the rates of pay, and they sought an agreement with their employers to reach these understandings through a committee of their own numbers. The employers turned a deaf ear to the proposals and would not even discuss them. A strike was the alternative which the workers offered.

One might say that was a private matter and that the government had no right to mix into it. But the Constitution's preamble says that the government is, among other things, "for the people." Surely, here was an instance where something could be done for the people, for workers and employers alike.

The Department of Labor did mix into the controversy. It sent several men to the scene. They listened to the grievances of the workers and to the statements of the employers. They suggested ways out, one after another, until they were able to get a committee from the workers and a committee from the owners to sit in the same room. Eventually, these secret discussions, always with a conciliator from the Department of Labor participating, developed a compromise on which each side had yielded certain concessions.

The terms are not material here, but suffice it to say there was no strike in that mill and there probably never will be one, for the reason that each side learned something about the fairness and the rights of the other fellow.

That controversy was simple compared with some that arise and with which the department has to deal in order to do what its officials regard as their public duty that there may be peace in commerce and industry. It shows, nevertheless, how the multiple eye of the government is upon us all.

And in connection with this last reference, one must recall that in this same department there is what has come to be known as the children's bureau. It goes beyond the working man in its course of duty. The welfare of children of all classes comes within its surveillance, and throughout the country one now finds juvenile courts, orphanages and other institutions having to do with children who are receiving constant advice from the bureau in Washington, D. C. It watches industry, too, that there may be no undue dangers developed, that conditions conducive to disease may not be continued and that every aid within the power of the national government is extended to correct them.

Another phase of the department's work gives it control of the entry into the United States of foreigners. Our immigration law is perhaps the most stringent in the world, because it is our policy to conserve our racial standards. The "melting pot" is receiving no more foreign blood in quantity. The department watches this closely, and it sees to it that those who are admitted either become American citizens, swear allegiance to our flag and adopt our traditions, or else they go back home. And this job of Americanizing foreigners is one which obviously must strengthen our nation in order that it may live in the future.

© 1932, Western Newspaper Union.