West Night High School - Echo Yearbook (Cincinnati, OH)

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l E l THE ADMINISTRATOR SPEAKS EXTRACTS most ADDRESS MADE BY GEN. Hucn S. JOHNSON, OCTOBER 10, 1933 T is AN ACT or ECONOMIC LUNACY in a country such as this to let anything interfere with the power of our people to own and have and enjoy the maximum of their productive power. There is here every element of the greatest prosperity and human welfare the world has ever seen and the keys to it are tweeconfidence and balance. It is not a difficult ptoblem-it is rather an easy one, and again I say the secret of it lies in the basic principles of N.R.A.worganization and control of both industry and label: That is the key to this economic riddle and this is the critical hour. The events of the near future will demonstrate whether there is, in this people, the power to pull themselves 0th of the most desperate hole into which this country ever got The spotlight is on the President's recovery program. It is on industry, which is being organized now with lightning speed. It is on labor, which is also being organized 1H; :1 headlong rate. You have the ball. Will you hold it firm and carry it across the last white line or will you fumble it like an untrained team and ruin the greatest chance that human workers were ever given? I have no words strong enough to implore you to acquit yourselves like men and American leaders in this great crisis. You are like the boy at the Holland dyke with his finger in the crevice. You are in such a position in the life of your country as fate sometimes places men when the welfare of millions tests on the shoulders of a few. If you act as Americans have usually acted in the few cases where these great responsibilities impemdecl, you can assure the future of organized labor. If you fail you will destroy it and with it the one greatest hope of despairing humanity in this country. We cannot stand another vast collapse. You are the principal props against Collapse. You cannot escape your responsibility: For the public to do its part it must know which employers have done their part to put people back to work by making these Agreement; with the President and by Codes. Every industry and employer who has agreed with the President on this plan, or who has had approved 21 code covering the vital subject of re-einployment, will he enrolled as a member of N.RtAt antl given a certificate and 21 Government budge showing the seal of N.R.A. arid the words: i'iszber NRA. Wt do am- part. Our whole organization is planned to maintain balance. It is not our function either to organize or to disorgzuiize either industry or labor. It is simply not true that the Recovery Act imposes on labor any particular form of organization or any particular representation. It is lubor's right to select its Own organization and its own representation, and if I said otherwise I would be reereunt to my duty under the act. This is a test of patriotism, It is the time to demonstrate the faith of our fathers and our belief in ourselves. We ate a people disciplined by democracy to a self-conttol isuHicient to unite out purchasing power, our labor power, our management power 7to carry out this great national covenant. with vigor, with determination, but with the calm composure and fair play which should always mark the American way, I7

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THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS EXTRACTS FROM PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S STATEMENT OUTLINING POLICIES or NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION JUNE 16, 1933 THE LAW I HAVE JUST SIGNED was passed to put people back to worketo let them buy more of the products of farms and factories and start our business at a living rate again. This task is in two stages-first, to get many hundreds of thousands of the unemployed back on the pay roll by snowfall and, second, to plan for a better future for the longer pull. While we shall not neglect the second, the first stage is an emergency 'fob. It has the right of way. Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employ- ment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. This is the principle that makes this one of the most important laws that ever came from Congress because, before the passage of this act, no such industrial covenant was ever possible. On this idea, the First part of the act proposes to our industry a great spontaneous co-operation to put millions of men back in their regular jobs this summer. The idea is simply for employers to hire more men to do the existing work by reducing the work hours of each man's week and at the same time paying a. living wage for the shorter week. The challenge of this law is whether we can sink selfish interest and present a solid front against a common peril. It is a challenge to industry which has long insisted that given the right to act in unison, it could do much for the general good Which has hitherto been unlawful. From to-day it has that right. This law is also a challenge to labor. Workers, too, are here given 21 new charter of rights long sought and hitherto denied. But they know that the first move expected by the nation is a great co-operation of all employers, by one single mass action, to improve the case of workers 011 a scale never attempted in any nation. Industries can do this only if they have the support of the whole public and especially of their own workersi It is, further, a challenge to administration. We are relaxing some of the safeguards of the antitrust laws. The public must be protected against the abuses that led to their enactment, and to this end we are putting in place of old principles of unchecked competition some new government controls. They must, above all, be impartial and iust. Between these twin eEortSepublic works and industrial revemployment-it is not too much to expect that a great many men and women can be taken from the ranks of the unemployed before winter comes. It is the most important attempt of this kind in history. As in the great crisis of the World War, it puts a whole people to the simple but vital test: Must we go on in many groping, disorganized, separate units to defeat or shall we move as one great team to victory ? 16

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, um E-I um m4?! yew : m1 an 13 ! Tu an m A ll! X . . . THE Cincinnan Chamber of Commerce guidss and pro- motes the Industries of our Citj'. It also cncouragcs the establish- ment of dcsirablc busincsscs. DE PA RTMENT OF INDUSTRY 18