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Then there was the Conciliation Service to be dealt with. I thought of the U. S. Department of labor as having functions more like the New York State Department of Labor. I thought that pattern would be about what we should have on a federal scale, recognizing that such matters as regulation of hours and working conditions by the federal government probably was not constitutional. There were no such federal laws and there was a general belief that statutes regulating these aspects would not be constitutional.

I thought of the Department of Labor as taking the lead in everything that would be good for the working people. The labor unions are private organizations established by various groups of working people for their own protection and for the pursuit of their own individual and group interests. but not for the promotion of the welfare and interests of all the people. The carpenters are working for the benefit of the union carpenters, The textile workers for the union textile workers. And the bookbinders for the union book-binder. They have no way by which they could exercise a larger function. The Department of Labor, as I thought of it, has a duty to promote the welfare of all the wage earners of the United States. That's what the basic act says. That means taking account of all kinds of things that a union has no business with and would not take account of.