The aspirations for a labor department in the National Government to which that resolution gave expression were emphasized a few weeks later in a letter from the president of the National Organization of Molders to another labor leader of national reputation and influence. "What we need," he wrote, "is a department of the Government attending exclusively to labor matters, with its head in the President's Cabinet to speak for us."

Those appear to have been the first precise demands for a labor department in the National Government. Others followed. The Louisville demand quoted above was repeated at a labor convention held at Baltimore in August, 1866. It was embodied in a series of resolutions which were forthwith laid before President Johnson by a committee appointed by the convention for that purpose. At the same meeting this convention organized the National Labor Union, a body composed of the trade and labor unions of the United States, and at its next convention, held at Chicago a year later (1867), this body adopted the following further declaration on the subject:

Resolved, That as labor is the foundation and cause of national prosperity, it is both the duty and interest of the Government to foster and protect it. Its importance, therefore, demands the creation of an executive department of the Government at Washington, to be denominated the Department of Labor, which shall aid in protecting it above all other interests.

After the third convention of the National Labor Union, which was held at New York City in 1868, its presiding officer, calling officially upon President Johnson, informed him of the desires of the organized labor of the country with reference to governmental recognition. At that interview the demand of wage workers for administrative representation in the National Government was especially emphasized to President Johnson by the labor representative, who said:

We want a new department at Washington to be called the Department of Labor, the head of said department to be called the Secretary of Labor and to be chosen directly from the ranks of workingmen. To this department should be referred all questions of wages and the hours of labor in the navy yards and all other Government workshops, the registry and regulation of tradesunions and cooperative associations, the disposition of public lands, and all other questions directly connected with and affecting labor.

Creation of a Bureau of Labor.

Three years had passed by when Congressman George F. Hoar, influenced probably by the National Labor Union, which, however, had barely survived that period, introduced in the House of Representatives in 1871 a bill to create a Commission on Labor. Although his bill was supported by the trade-unions of the time, they made it plain that they were supporting it only "as a temporary expedient" and would

"continue their efforts in behalf of a Department of Labor." Mr. Hoar's bill did not pass.

A tactical tendency then set in toward modifying the demand for an executive department. The Industrial Congress, held at Cleveland, in 1873, temporarily modified the Louisville demand of 1865 by adopting the following declaration:

To arrive at the true condition of the producing masses in their educational, moral, and financial condition, we demand from the several States and the National Government the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics.

This part-way policy was affirmed in 1874 by the same industrial body at its second meeting, held in April at Rochester, N. Y. On that occasion the Industrial Congress laid aside a resolution for waging a campaign in favor of the establishment of a National Department of Labor, doing so, however, with the understanding that the wiser course for securing such a department lay in the direction of first creating bureaus of labor both at Washington and in the several States. Consequently the prudential decision of the Industrial Congress at its first meeting, held in 1873, was affirmed at its second meeting, held in 1874.

That was near the beginning of the hard times of the seventies, when the Industrial Congress, which had meanwhile changed its name to the Industrial Brotherhood, went out of existence, as had the National Labor Union before it. During this long period of industrial depression there was little or no active labor movement in the United States, but with the return of normal conditions the Knights of Labor became and for some years remained the principal national labor organization of this country. At its first general assembly, held in January, 1878, the Knights of Labor advocated the establishment of labor bureaus, deciding also as matter of progressive policy not to demand an executive department in the National Government until labor bureaus had been established in States where industrial plants had attracted large numbers of skilled wageworkers. The same policy was pursued by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, which subsequently became the American Federation of Labor-now, as for many years, the dominant labor organization of the United States and Canada. At its first convention, held in 1881, this organization favored the establishment of a national bureau in these terms:

We recognize the wholesome effect of a bureau of labor statistics as created in several States, and we urge upon our friends in Congress the passage of an act establishing a national bureau of labor statistics, and recommend for its management the appointment of a proper person identified with the laboring classes of the country.

From that time until its creation by Congress the friends of organized labor were united and persistent in their efforts to secure

a national labor bureau in contradistinction to an executive department.

The matter came into Congress first in 1879 with the Murch bill, the purpose of which was to establish a Bureau of Labor. This bill languished for five years, other bills being meanwhile introduced. from time to time but with no better results. The bills that met the fate of the Murch bill of 1879, either before or after it,2 included one introduced in 1864 by Hon. Gottlieb Orth, then a Representative from Indiana. The Orth bill, probably the first with reference to any aspect of the subject, proposed a Department of Industry. By 1867 the House of Representatives had advanced far enough, in the general direction aimed at by the labor organizations, to instruct its Committee on Rules, by resolution, to inquire into the expediency of the creation of a standing Committee on Labor. In 1871 it passed a bill for the appointment of a commission on the subject of wages and working hours and of capital in the United States. As time went on a bill for a Bureau of Labor was introduced by Senator Blair, and one for a Bureau of Labor Statistics by Representative Willis. Another bill for a Bureau of Labor Statistics was introduced by Representative McKinley, who afterwards became President. Still another for a Bureau of Labor Statistics was introduced by Representative O'Neill, and yet another by Representative Lamb. Representative Foran introduced one for a Department of Industry. Other plans in the mass of proposed legislation included proposals for a Labor Bureau in connection with the Department of Agriculture, a Bureau of Labor with a Commissioner of Labor, and a Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Interior Department.

Those and several other bills of similar tenor and purpose were followed in 1884 by preliminary legislation in the direction of the present Department of Labor, and out of them an act was framed which passed both Houses of Congress. It was approved June 27, 1884, by President Arthur. This act created a "Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior."

Renewal of the Agitation.

The Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior was the statutory germ of what has become the executive department for which I am now making the eighth annual report. Twenty years of agitation over the country and of effort before Congress had brought the wageworkers thus far toward a realization of their demands for an executive department with a member of the President's Cabinet

More than a hundred such bills, including resolutions, are summarized at pp. 13-21 of a public document, long out of print, entitled Organization and Law of the Department of Commerce and Labor." (Government Printing Office, 1904.) They cover the period from 1864 to 1902.

at its head. Thirty years more were to pass before they realized their original proposal.

Meanwhile their agitation did not cease. In his official annual address before the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor at Minneapolis in October, 1887, the general master workman of that body (Terence V. Powderly) renewed the demand for an executive department. The portion of his address in which he dealt with that subject is as follows:

I believe the day has come for united labor to ask at the hands of Congress the passage of a law creating a Department of Labor at the seat of the National Government. I would respectfully ask of the committee on legislation to prepare a bill and introduce it to Congress at the next session. We have to-day a Department of War; we do not need it at all in comparison to a Department of Labor. The Navy Department is not such an important one, for we do not require the use of a very extensive national Navy. The prosperity of the whole country rests on the broad shoulders of labor. There is now nothing so prominently before the Nation and the world as the question of labor. Nearly every action taken by the Executive or his Cabinet deals in one way or another with the question of labor. Its ramifications extend everywhere, its power is felt everywhere, and its usefulness is recognized everywhere. All this being true, it is no more than just that the President should have as a member of his Cabinet a man who represents more than war, more than a few vessels, more than a sentiment, more than a class. Labor can not be called a class, for it is everywhere and at the base of everything. With a man in his Cabinet whom he could consult on the question of labor, the President would be in a better position to deal with the question of capital. Labor is entitled to far more at the seat of Government than a mere bureau. But it will not receive any more unless it asks for it. I recommend that it ask for the establishment of a Department of Labor.

Creation of an Inferior Department of Labor.

A bill for an executive department was consequently introduced in Congress, but upon assurances that congressional assent to placing a representative of wageworkers in the President's Cabinet could not be obtained, the promoters of this bill made their second compromise. They thereby secured congressional action which in 1888 promoted the Bureau of Labor to an independent status as a Department of Labor, but without executive rank. Nevertheless, the agitation for an executive department with a Secretary of Labor in the President's Cabinet continued after this independent but inferior department had been created.

Creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

Prior to the creation of the independent Department of Labor in 1888, several bills for an executive department had been introduced. Several more were introduced afterwards. In form the bills introduced after the creation of the independent department were quite

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alike in title to some of those introduced prior to the creation of the original Bureau of Labor, and to others introduced between the two. Among them all were bills to establish, respectively, a "Department of Agriculture and Labor," a "Department of Industry and Bureau of Labor," a " Department of Labor," a " Department of Agriculture and Industry," and a "Department of Industries." Gen. Weaver, subsequently a prominent candidate for President but then a Member of Congress, introduced a bill for the creation of a Department of Labor with a Secretary of Labor at its head. Some of the bills were more intimately related to the commercial and business side of industrial affairs than to the wageworking side. Others, however, distinctly anticipated the present Department of Labor and its principal functions. None was enacted, but all of them played a part in the ultimate creation of the present Department of Labor.

They were blended by the Fifty-eighth Congress in an act creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, in which the independent Department of Labor was made a bureau. This act was approved February 14, 1903, by President Roosevelt.

CREATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR.

By the act creating the Department of Commerce and Labor the welfare of the wage earners of the United States had been intrusted to an executive department designed to represent also, if not indeed primarily, the interests of employers. This amalgamated representation of industrial interests of a kind that are often conflicting in fact, whether so in essential principle or not, proved unsatisfactory. Not only did the new Department fall far short of satisfying the needs of wage earners; it had in it all the possibilities of a hostile instead of a friendly governmental agency. An executive department in the interest of wageworkers, such as they had urged upon Congress for nearly half a century, was consequently demanded with greater popular emphasis than ever before.

That historic demand finally found favor in the Sixty-second Congress. An act was passed at the third session, in the winter of 1913, which divorced the divergent jurisdictions of the Department of Commerce and Labor by withdrawing from it such functions as had reference especially to wage-earning interests and placing them under the additional executive department which this act created— namely, the Department of Labor. Commercial functions were thereby left to the Department of Commerce and Labor, the name of which was altered to Department of Commerce, but all its functions with reference to the interests of wageworkers were transferred to the new department.