According to the most reliable reports at our command, as I speak here
this afternoon there are at least four millions of workingmen vainly
searching for employment. Have you ever found yourself in that
unspeakably sad predicament? Have you ever had to go up the street,
begging for work, in a great city thronged with humanity—and, by the
way, my friends, people are never quite so strange to each other as when
they are forced into artificial, crowded and stifled relationship.
I would rather be friendless out on the American desert than to be
friendless in New York or Chicago. Have you ever walked up one side of
the street and come back on the other side, while your wife, Mary, was
waiting at home with three or four children for you to report that you
had found work? Quite fortunately for me I had an experience of similar
nature quite early in my life. Quite fortunately because, had I not
known from my own experience just what it is to have to beg for work,
just what it is to be shown the door as if I were a very offensive
intruder, had I not known what it is to suffer for the want of food, had
I not seen every door closed and barred in my face, had I not found
myself friendless and alone in the city as a boy looking for work, and
in vain, perhaps I would not be here this afternoon. I might have grown
up, as some others have who have been, as they regard themselves,
fortunate. I might have waved aside my fellowmen and said, “Do as I have
done. If you are without work it is your own fault. Look at me; I am
self-made. No man is under the necessity of looking for work if he is
willing to work.”
Nothing is more humiliating than to have to beg for work, and a system
in which any man has to beg for work stands condemned. No man can defend
it. Now the rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.
Suppose you happen to be the one who has no work. This republic is a
failure so far as you are concerned.
Every man has the inalienable right to work.