Nearly all those who have expressed opposition to this bill have based that opposition upon the declaration, in substance if not in set terms, that the interests of labor are so divergent from, if not absolutely antagonistic to the interests of commerce that it would be wholly illogical to include both these interests in one executive department. It has been declared here in effect that this new Department, if created, would be dominated so completely by the capitalistic interests that labor would receive but scant consideration, if indeed the interests of labor were not actually sacrificed and betrayed.

To all such expressions, Mr. Chairman, I must emphatically dissent. I have no sympathy whatever with the sentiment which assumes the division of the people of America into distinct and necessarily and inevitably antagonistic classes. It is utterly repugnant to all my instincts as an American citizen to hear "labor" spoken of as a distinct and clearly marked class, and "the interests of labor" alluded to as something wholly differentiated from and necessarily hostile to other American interests. There is no such distinction in fact and there certainly ought to be none in legislation. To strike out from this bill that part of it which provides for the incorporation in the proposed Department a Labor Bureau, with the plain purpose, as we all perfectly understand, of hereafter demanding the establishment of a separate Executive Department devoted to labor alone, is in effect for this Congress officially to declare that the alleged conflict between capital and labor is not only inevitable, but irreconcilable, and that the best the statesmanship of the future can hope to do is to give these two classes a fair field and no favors and let them fight it out.

I can not subscribe to that sentiment. I believe that the interests of commerce and labor are mutual and not antagonistic, and I shall support this bill because I believe it will do more than any measure that has yet come from this House to demonstrate this mutuality of interests, and in that way help to hasten the good day which, however long it may be delayed, we all hope is coming, when strikes and lockouts and boycotts as weapons of industrial and commercial warfare will be as obsolete as the crossbow and the catapult are as weapons of physical warfare. [Applause.]

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Chairman, I now ask unanimous consent that general debate be closed in twenty-five minutes.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. That is agreeable.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Iowa asks unanimous consent that general debate be closed in twenty-five minutes. Is there objection?

There was no objection.

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Chairman, so far as I have been able to observe, the opposition to this measure is not to the bill in its entirety, but to a single section or paragraph of the bill. I think that the greater number of gentlemen upon that side of the House are quite content that this Department of Commerce should be created, but they are unwilling that the present Department of Labor should be included in that Department. That opposition to my mind is based upon two erroneous propositions: First, that there is antagonism between the interests of labor and the interests of employers that we here as a part of the lawmaking power of the United States ought to recognize.

Gentlemen, I believe that that is a fallacy. I do not believe that the Government of the United States should recognize in any official way antagonism or warfare between those twogreat interests, those two great classes in the United States. [Applause.] The interests of labor and the interests of that capital which employs labor must be identical. They are identical. Their interests must move side by side; they must be joined hand in hand if this Government of ours is to be all that we hope it may. Gentlemen, assume that the officer called upon to preside over this great Department would be hostile to the interests of labor. Why do you assume that? What right have you from experience or observation to make statements of that kind? To-day we have an anomalous sort of organization called the Department of Labor, for whatever it is worth; not so much as it should be, not so much as it will be if this union is effected. It has been presided over by one man, and with all the changes of politics in the administration of national affairs no change has been made in the head of that Department.

Democrats and Republicans alike have retained the same officer. He meets all the requirements, I am told, of the labor organizations. They are content that he should remain there. The capitalist is content that he should remain there. The laborers are content, the employers are content. May we not learn something from that experience as to what will probably be the result if this Department is created? This is to be the Department of Commerce and Labor. You gentlemen seem to feel it necessary that you should, in speaking that sentence, always emphasize commerce. It is as much the Department of Labor as it is of Commerce. A gentleman says, "Why, labor is referred to only in the most casual way."

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I am glad to know that that gentleman is from Texas. I understand that if he had read the law, first creating the Bureau of Labor and then the Department of Labor, he would have learned that there was much in the statutes upon that subject, and that whatever there was is continued, and whatever powers are lodged in that Bureau first, and that Department finally, are to be lodged in it still. The only difference is that there will be one other man, one superior, whose genius, whose talents, whose patriotism will augment the qualities possessed by the gentleman who now presides over the Department of Labor.

You take nothing from the Department of Labor; you add to the Department of Labor by another with more power, with more influence, and probably with qualities that will enable some additions of usefulness to be made. This proposition is not in derogation of labor. It is not subordinating in any sense the Department of Labor. It is adding to, it is augmenting, it is enlarging the scope and the power of this Department. It places this Department, that now has no voice in the Cabinet, in the councils of the President, as high as the highest. It will have the same place as the interests that cluster around the State Department, or the Interior Department, or the Post-Office Department have. Labor will have its own representative in the Cabinet.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Will the gentleman from Iowa allow me to interrupt him?

Mr. HEPBURN. For a question; yes.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Is it not a fact that no other civilized government or power of the world has undertaken to organize the department of labor in the language and with the title that this bill does?

Mr. HEPBURN. Well, I do not know; I am not a linguist.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Is it not a fact that in many of the great foreign powers a department of commerce exists, single and alone, without mentioning the department of labor?

Mr. HEPBURN. That may be. the other side of the Atlantic.

This is an improvement upon the effete nations on

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Then why should this Government depart from the experience of the world on that subject and create a department that will be different from any other that ever has been created, touching the interests of labor?

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Chairman, the people of this country have on many occasions taken the liberty of passing beyond the precedents that had been established on the other side of the Atlantic. I think our fathers did it when they established this Government.

[Applause on the Republican side.]

Mr. ADAMSON. Will the gentleman allow a question?

Mr. HEPBURN. Certainly.

Mr. ADAMSON. Do you know anything in this bill or any reason elsewhere that would prevent the President, if so disposed, from designating as the Secretary of this new Department a man friendly to labor?

Mr. HEPBURN. Why, surely there is nothing in it that would prevent him from doing that, and there is no inclination, probably existing anywhere that would deter the President of the United States from appointing a man to this office who would be entirely acceptable to all the labor interests of the United States. The President of the United States, no matter who he may be, will be large enough to know what the labor interests of the United States are to our past, to our present, to our future. He will be large enough to know that these men of whom we speak sometimes as the labor interests are the creators of our wealth; that they are the bulwark of our nation; that they are the men who make progress possible. The President of the United States will know that it is as much his duty, his pleasure, as it is that of every other citizen of the United States, to augment, to honor, to promote, to dignify labor. We have long passed, and so has the man who will be President of the United States long passed, that age or period when men look upon labor as a badge of degradation, as a mark that was put upon one to show the wrath of God. Ah, no! We recognize, all of us, the fact that it is labor that creates the state, that it is labor that does all in the great race of progress and in the promotion of the civilization that we enjoy and of which we are so proud.

Gentlemen, how can you, with the ideas of the American, constantly prate as you do upon the differences and distinctions between labor and capital, giving in all instances to labor the inferior place and the place with the least of power? There is no logic, there is no patriotism, there is no Americanism in a proposition of that kind. [Loud applause.] Labor stands first among all true Americans; and so we propose to place it here. We are going to augment, to add to, if it is possible, the dignity of labor by giving it a Department.

Mr. FITZGERALD. Will the gentleman permit a question?

Mr. HEPBURN. Yes; I will yield for a question.

Mr. FITZGERALD. I wish to ask the gentleman if there was any proposition before his committee which, if these Departments had been separate, would have been compelled the President-to appoint any different character of man as the head of the Labor Department than he would as the head of the Department of Commerce? Mr. HEPBURN. I do not think there was. I think that the committee recognized the fact that the President of the United States chooses the heads of departments for their fitness for their capacity to attend to the details of their business and as his constitutional advisers.

Mr. FITZGERALD. The point I wanted to bring out was: Would not the objection that the head of the Department of Commerce and Labor would be hostile to labor apply to the head of the Department of Labor?

Mr. HEPBURN. Why, I think so. If there is a fear that the President might make an appointment hostile to the interests of labor under the provisions of this bill, might not we fear, and ought not the fear to obtain, that if there had been a separate department he would yield to the same influences and bend to the same hostile views on labor?

Mr. Chairman, considerable discussion has been had with reference to the provision of the bill creating a Bureau of Insurance. Learned gentlemen have discussed the constitutional power of this body to legislate upon this subject. I do not care to enter upon that discussion. I will simply hazard this humble opinion: That whenever the question is brought before the Supreme Court of the United States on a question upon an insurance policy-a marine insurance policy, covering merchandise that is a part of interstate commerce-the Supreme Court, in my judgment, then will hold that it is commerce, that it is interstate commerce, and that the Congress of the United States have the power to legislate in regard to it.

Why, gentlemen may talk about this particular interest not constituting commerce. Maybe in some phases it does not; but I want to remind you, Mr. Chairman, of this fact: Obliterate the insurance of the United States and you obliterate largely the commerce of the United States. I undertake to say that it would languish wonderfully if you destroy insurance. Who would venture, who would send his cargoes and his vessels upon the high seas, subject to the storms and the vicissitudes of ocean travel, save for the consolations of his insurance policy? Who would engage in interstate commerce among the States if it were not for the possibilities of insurance? Who would engage in the various businesses that make commerce possible if it were not for insurance!

Insurance of three kinds interests every citizen, almost, in the United States. It is an interest colossal. Think of it! There are three insurance companies in the United States that in the aggregate of their assets are worth more than a billion of dollars. Think of the multitude of men, women, and children whose interests are bound up in that colossal interest! This body which we propose to create here is simply one of publicity, of inquiry, to find out the facts, to publish those facts to the world, to put the innocent upon their guard. Here in my hand I hold a list of more than 150 bogus insurance companies doing business in the various States of the Union. It is not the duty of any State, of anybody, to search, to inquire, to ascertain with regard to the status of these companies. No one takes the trouble upon themselves. There is no publicity that is reliable, and hence, in my judgment, infinite good will come from this provision in this law.

Somebody will inquire, somebody will find out, it will be the duty of somebody to place in the public journals, or in the public reports, the character of these unworthy candidates for public favor, who, day by day and year by year, are fleecing the public out of thousands and tens of thousands of dollars for insurance that is not worth the paper upon which it is written.

Mr. Chairman, it is exceedingly difficult, as any gentleman will see who has given any attention to the subject, to prepare a bill of this character, to determine just what bureaus and divisions of the Government shall be placed within it. Some that would strike one gentleman as a proper subject of transfer to this Department, upon a little further investigation would be found was so connected, was so interwoven in their duties with another department, that the change from one to the other would be a dislocation of the public business that would be harmful in the extreme. Then, again, there are certain interests in the departments, perhaps; men had their attachments, they were located in one particular place, they had been accustomed for a long time to doing business right there, and strenuous efforts were made, as my colleagues will bear me out in saying, to prevent these changes that many of us thought ought to be made.

We have done the best we could. We do not assume that the bill is perfect, but it is the groundwork, the basis, and there is within it a provision giving to the President of the United States ample authority for the transfer of a division or a bureau that will in the course of time make it what it ought to be. I confess that it does not exactly suit me; I do not think it exactly suited any member of the committee, but it is the best we could do, and while gentlemen have said “Who asks for this?" it was not, I am glad to say, a member of the committee who made that inquiry, for members of the committee know that from one end of the land to the other there were demands by letter, by memorial, by petition, by the personel presence of eminent men from all over this country, for the creation of this Department. Mr. WOOTEN. May I ask the gentleman a question?

Mr. HEPBURN. Certainly.

Mr. WOOTEN. What objection has the gentleman to an independent Department of Labor. Would the gentleman favor it?

Mr. HEPBURN. I would not.

Mr. WOOTEN. Why not?

Mr. HEPBURN. At this time it is not necessary. I would not do it certainly if I believed as the gentleman from Texas does. His idea, as I understand it, and the reason why he wants an independent Department of Labor, is because there are antagonisms, there is hatred, there is wrath, between him who would be the head of the Department of Commerce and him who will be at the head of the Department of Labor. As I understand it, Mr. Chairman, we do not want to introduce quarrels, contests, and fights into the councils of the Chief Executive. Of all places, there we want peace.

Mr. WOOTEN. The gentleman does not state my position. I have not said that there was any hatred; I said there was antagonism and diversity of interests. I ask the gentleman if he thinks there has not been antagonism in this country between capital and labor?

Mr. HEPBURN. I believe on the part of ignorant men there is a feeling that the gentleman speaks of. [Laughter.] I do not want to be offensive to the gentleman, but I do mean to say—

Mr. WOOTEN. Does the gentleman mean by "ignorant men" the laboring men of this country?

Mr. HEPBURN. No; I do not mean the laboring men; I mean the inferior class of laboring men of this country. I have never talked with an intelligent laboring man in my life who has not been ready to say that there was no real antagonism between labor and capital. [Applause.] That is the opinion of the intelligent laboring men of the land. It is only where ignorant men have their passions played upon by demagogues that this feeling of hatred exists. [Applause on the Republican side.] Mr. WOOTEN. Will the gentleman permit another question?

Mr. HEPBURN. The gentleman can see that I have only a minute. Yes; I will yield.

Mr. WOOTEN. The gentleman speaks of the inferior class of laboring men. Will he define what he means by "inferior class?”

Mr. HEPBURN. I do not hesitate to answer that. I mean the sort of creatures that year by year we are allowing to come into the country from the south and east of Europe. That is what I mean.

Mr. WOOTEN. Why don't you shut them out?

Mr. HEPBURN. I would if I could have my way, but I have found whenever a contest was made every Democrat voted against it. [Applause on the Republican side.] It we could abolish the Democratic party, we could abolish this evil. [Applause and laughter on the Republican side.]

Now, Mr. Chairman, I ask that the reading of the bill be commenced.
The clerk read the first section of the bill as follows:

Be it enacted, etc.. That there shall be at the seat of government an executive department to be known as the Department of Commerce and Labor, and a Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who shall be the head thereof, who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, who shall receive a salary of $5,000 per annum, and whose term and tenure of office shall be like that of the heads of the other Executive Departments.

MR. HEPBURN. I move that the committee now rise.

The motion was agreed to.

The committee accordingly rose; and the Speaker having resumed the chair, Mr. Gillett, of Massachusetts, reported that the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, having had under consideration the bill (S. 569) to establish the Department of Commerce and Labor, had come to no resolution thereon.

January 17, 1903, debate was resumed in the House:

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Speaker, I desire to call up the special order.

The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Iowa calls for the regular order, which is Senate bill 569. The Chair is of the opinion that the better and safer form is to move that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole.

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill S. 569.

The motion was agreed to.

Accordingly, the House resolved itself into Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for the further consideration of the bill (S. 569) to establish a Department of Commerce and Labor, with Mr. Hull in the chair.

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Chairman, the first paragraph of this bill was read and then an adjournment took place, cutting off the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Richardson] from offering an amendment which he proposed. I ask unanimous consent to return to that paragraph, in order that the gentleman may offer that amendment.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Iowa asks unanimous consent that the committee return to the first paragraph of the bill. Is there objection?

There was no objection.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike out the words "and labor."

Mr. HEPBURN. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Alabama will allow me, I understand that the first paragraph that was read was of the Senate bill, which our committee have recommended to be stricken out. Now, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the Senate bill be dispensed with, and that the reading of the amendment proposed by the House committee be taken up.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Iowa asks unanimous consent that the reading of the Senate bill under the five-minute rule be dispensed with and that the reading of the House amendment be taken up in lieu thereof. Is their objection? There was no objection.

Mr. HEPBURN. Now if the Clerk will read, then the gentleman can offer his amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

That there shall be at the seat of government an executive department to be known as the Department of Commerce and Labor, and a Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who shall be the head thereof, who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, who shall receive a salary of $8,000 per annum, and whose term and tenure of office shall be like that of the heads of the other Executive Departments; and section 158 of the Revised Statutes is hereby amended to include such Department, and the provisions of Title IV of the Revised Statutes, including all amendments thereto, are hereby made applicable to said Department.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike out the words "and labor" where they occur in lines 20 and 21, in the section of the bill just read. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Alabama moves to strike out the word “and,” in line 20, and the word “labor," at the beginning of line 21.

Mr. RICHARDSON, of Alabama. Mr. Chairman, I shall detain the committee but a very few minutes in the remarks that I propose to make on this subject. I believe that this amendment is the gist, at least, of the objection of a great many gentlemen on this side to this bill, and I also believe that a great many gentlemen on the other side of this Chamber coincide with me and those that I think that I represent upon this motion.

The objection, Mr. Chairman, that I myself have to this creation of a new Department of Commerce and Labor is the inclusion of the Department of Labor in this new Department of Commerce and Labor. As I have said before, I do not believe that it is in the interest either of labor or of commerce to include the independent Department of Labor in this new Department proposed, with a Secretary in the Cabinet of the President. I do not hesitate to say that I am not individually opposed to the establishment of a proper Department of Commerce, if the Department of Labor is not included; but, as I said just now, I do not think it is necessary or to the interest of labor or to the advancement of the commercial interests of our country to transfer the independent Department of Labor as it is now organinzed and operated and the good that has been accomplished by it, and submerge it and overshadow it as I believe conscientiously it will be when placed in the Department of Commerce and Labor.

Now, I have been somewhat surprised, Mr. Chairman, at the contention that has been made by gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber, particularly, contending that labor should be transferred to this new department, and notably surprised at the remarks made by the distinguished chairman of the Interstate and Foreign