As we find less and less Labor jobs in America these days, or should I say well paid Labor jobs. We should note that the shrinking middle class is not by chance but a well designed plan. Take note of FDR's speech on Labor in 1944! I think you will recognize many familiar or similar circumstances of that time period and our current time period. Enjoy the speech at the link in it's entirety!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
[Opening remarks]
Well, here we are. Here we are after four years, and what years they have been! You know, I am actually four years older, which is a fact that seems to annoy some people. In fact, in the mathematical field there are millions of Americans who are more than eleven years older than when we started in to clear up the mess that was dumped in our laps in 1933.
We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor—who even attack labor as unpatriotic—they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune- every four years- just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends.
I got quite a laugh, for example- and I am sure that you did —when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their National Convention in Chicago last July:
"The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws."
You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that Convention Hall would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight. Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy-and much money—in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, and in the press, and in the courts, ever since this Administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation. That is a fair example of their insincerity and of their inconsistency.
The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.
Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery—but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.
Of course, it is perfectly true that there are enlightened, liberal elements in the Republican Party, and they have fought hard and honorably to bring the Party up to date and to get it in step with the forward march of American progress. But these liberal elements were not able to drive the Old Guard Republicans from their entrenched positions.
Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not.
We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back.
I need not recount to you the centuries of history which have been crowded into these four years since I saw you last.
There were some—in the Congress and out—who raised their voices against our preparations for defense—before and after 1939 —objected to them, raised their voices against them as hysterical war mongering, who cried out against our help to the Allies as provocative and dangerous. We remember the voices. They would like to have us forget them now. But in 1940 and 1941— my, it seems a long time ago—they were loud voices. Happily they were a minority and—fortunately for ourselves, and for the world—they could not stop America.
There are some politicians who kept their heads buried deep in the sand while the storms of Europe and Asia were headed Our way, who said that the lend-lease bill "would bring an end to free government in the United States," and who said, "only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy, or Japan contemplates war on us." These very men are now asking the American people to intrust to them the conduct of our foreign policy and our military policy.
The rest of the speech at the link provided:
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kennymotown - 12 comments
Source: http://current.com/news/93299355_american-labor-franklin-d-roosevelt-1944.htm?xid=RSSfeed
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