EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF LABOR To the PRESIDENT: DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Washington, D. C., October 31, 1920. Inasmuch as the Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Labor is its final report for the period of your presidential administration, with the beginning of which nearly eight years ago its own beginning is identified, a brief historical review of the origin and activities of the Department appears to me to be appropriate and likely to be useful. Such a review seems appropriate because you as President of the United States have sympathetically furthered the statutory purposes of the Department of Labor throughout your double term of office, which coincides with the life of the Department thus far. It is likely to be useful because in the further life of the Department those who are responsible for its work may need information about its origin and are certain to need the benefit of its experience. I am, therefore, devoting Part I of this report to the circumstances that led to the creation of the Department, to those that attended its organization, and to an outline of its principal activities during the seven annual periods preceding the period to which Part II more particularly relates. W. B. WILSON, Secretary of Labor. PART I. The Department of Labor Prior to 1920. AGITATION FOR AN EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. Tenth among the executive departments of our National Government, the Department of Labor came into statutory life on the 4th of March, 1913. Its organic law,' enacted a few days before by a Democratic Congress, was on that day approved by a Republican President, your immediate predecessor, whereupon the obligation of appointing the first Secretary of Labor devolved upon you. This was the climax of an agitation for a Department of Labor, which had begun soon after the close of the Civil War of 1861-1865. At that time the wageworkers of the United States, most of whom had been soldiers on one side or the other in that intranational conflict, found themselves victims of economic circumstances which they could not control, and which nobody seemed to understand. Although a more or less fortunate few of the population lived in luxury without seeming to earn their incomes by commensurate work of any useful kind, wageworkers and their families were suffering from lack of opportunities for profitable employment and consequently from inadequate wages for hard and useful service when employed. Beginning of the Agitation. In those circumstances a conference at Louisville, Ky., in August, 1865, attended by leading representatives of wageworking interests, some of whom had but recently worn the Federal blue and others the Confederate gray, adopted a resolution favoring the creation of a national Department of Labor. The text of this resolution is as follows: Every department of the Federal Government is now and has been officered by professional men, business men, or manufacturers. They are or have been employers of labor or counselors of employers. Naturally their sympathies are not with labor. There should be at Washington a Department of Labor to be officered by men who are of and with labor, the duty of that department to be the guarding of labor interests in every way now known or which hereafter may become known. 1 The text in full may be found in the appendix to this report. |