Sunday Chicago bee. [volume], December 05, 1943, MONTHLY PICTURE SECTION, Image 6

About Sunday Chicago bee. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1925-19??

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
The “First Lady” Speaks
MRS. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wife of
the nation’s chief executive, address
ing the Sixth Constitutional Convention of
the Congress of Industrial Organizations,
praised the convention action which unani
mously adopted the no-strike pledge.
Mrs. Roosevelt told the more than 600
delegates of her visit to troops in Great
Britain before there was actual fighting,
and subsequent visits to army camps actu
ally in the combat zones.
“It makes a great difference in one’s
realization of responsibility,” she asserted.
“For this reason I am glad that you have
adopted your no-strike pledge, because I
feel that to those boys out there the impor
tance of production is paramount. They
will tell you that the difference between
hanging on to a part of an island with no
airplanes to cover you, with the knowledge
that your munitions were low isi a very dif
ferent thing from the feeling they have the
best equipment, equipment that far trans
cends the equipment of their enemies.
“But I think for us at home there is some
thing that must go along with that pledge.
It is something that you and your auxiliaries
must do, because nobody else knows as
much about it and can do as well—and I
think sometimes you, haven’t done it quite
as well as vou should do it.
“That is, I believe that you should tell
the story of injustices, of inequalities, of
bad conditions, so that the people as a
whole in this country really face the prob
lems that people who are pushed to the
point of striking know about, but others
know practically nothing about.
“A great part of the public in this coun
try does not know what it is that really
leads to strikes, and that I think is one of
the things that we must do because if work
ers give a no-strike pledge then it is the
responsibility of the citizens of this country
to see that conditions are remedied which
would otherwise lead to a strike.
“. . . We don’t get things unless we plan
for them, unless we organize and work for
them.
“Nothing is ever achieved without work.
You know what work and organization
mean. So today, I wish for you better or
ganization, and at the same time a widen
ing and broadening of your opportunities
for growth, because you who lead the la
bor movement must feel what I have felt
so often in the past years, that every year
as you see more and understand more you
grow, and that with every opportunity you
have had for understanding something new
you perhaps attain a little more ability to
help other people attain that same under
standing.
“And so I wish vo" this ooportunity for
growth, and as you grow may your vision
grow of what we in this country may
achieve in the way of a good life for this
generation and for generations to come,
and in doing it for the peoples of the whole
world.”