The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | Page 9

if our people understand it--in the big industries, in the little
shops, in the great cities and in the small villages. There is nothing
complicated about it and there is nothing particularly new in the
principle. It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the nation
itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no
individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.
Here is an example. In the Cotton Textile Code and in other agreements
already signed, child labor has been abolished. That makes me
personally happier than any other one thing with which I have been
connected since I came to Washington. In the textile industry--an
industry which came to me spontaneously and with a splendid
cooperation as soon as the recovery act was signed--child labor was an
old evil. But no employer acting alone was able to wipe it out. If one
employer tried it, or if one state tried it, the costs of operation rose so
high that it was impossible to compete with the employers or states
which had failed to act. The moment the Recovery Act was passed, this
monstrous thing which neither opinion nor law could reach through
years of effort went out in a flash. As a British editorial put it, we did
more under a Code in one day than they in England had been able to do
under the common law in eighty-five years of effort. I use this incident,
my friends, not to boast of what has already been done but to point the
way to you for even greater cooperative efforts this summer and

autumn.
We are not going through another winter like the last. I doubt if ever
any people so bravely and cheerfully endured a season half so bitter.
We cannot ask America to continue to face such needless hardships. It
is time for courageous action, and the Recovery Bill gives us the means
to conquer unemployment with exactly the same weapon that we have
used to strike down child labor.
The proposition is simply this:
If all employers will act together to shorten hours and raise wages we
can put people back to work. No employer will suffer, because the
relative level of competitive cost will advance by the same amount for
all. But if any considerable group should lag or shirk, this great
opportunity will pass us by and we will go into another desperate
winter. This must not happen.
We have sent out to all employers an agreement which is the result of
weeks of consultation. This agreement checks against the voluntary
codes of nearly all the large industries which have already been
submitted. This blanket agreement carries the unanimous approval of
the three boards which I have appointed to advise in this, boards
representing the great leaders in labor, in industry and in social service.
The agreement has already brought a flood of approval from every state,
and from so wide a cross- section of the common calling of industry
that I know it is fair for all. It is a plan--deliberate, reasonable and
just--intended to put into effect at once the most important of the broad
principles which are being established, industry by industry, through
codes. Naturally, it takes a good deal of organizing and a great many
hearings and many months, to get these codes perfected and signed, and
we cannot wait for all of them to go through. The blanket agreements,
however, which I am sending to every employer will start the wheels
turning now, and not six months from now.
There are, of course, men, a few of them who might thwart this great
common purpose by seeking selfish advantage. There are adequate
penalties in the law, but I am now asking the cooperation that comes
from opinion and from conscience. These are the only instruments we
shall use in this great summer offensive against unemployment. But we
shall use them to the limit to protect the willing from the laggard and to
make the plan succeed.

In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on
their shoulders to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. On
that principle, those who cooperate in this program must know each
other at a glance. That is why we have provided a badge of honor for
this purpose, a simple design with a legend. "We do our part," and I ask
that all those who join with me shall display that badge prominently. It
is essential to our purpose.
Already all the great, basic industries have come forward willingly with
proposed codes, and in these codes they accept the principles leading to
mass reemployment. But, important as is this heartening demonstration,
the richest field for results is among the