Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes

“A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing; yet in what corner of this planet was that ever realized?

It is a moral issue how we are going to treat workers. On these issues, these are moral issues, principled issues, where there aren't compromises.

Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

The present miner has had his day; he has been oppressed and ground down and denied the right to live as a human being; but there is another generation coming up, a generation of little children prematurely doomed to the whirl of the mill and the soot and the noise and the blackness of the breaker. It is for them that we are fighting.

And the children? Twelve hours of work for children! 0, misery. But not all the Jules Simon of the Academy of Moral and Political Science, not all the Germanys of Jesuitism, could have invented a vice more degrading to the intelligence of the children, more corrupting of their instincts, more destructive of their organism than work in the vitiated atmosphere of the capitalist factory. work began at five o'clock in the morning and ended at eight o’clock in the evening, summer and winter. It was a sight to watch them arrive each morning into the city and depart each evening. Among them were a multitude of women, pale, often walking bare-footed through the mud, and who for lack of umbrellas when the rain or snow fell, wore their aprons or skirts turned up over their heads. There was a still larger number of young children, equally dirty, equally pale, covered with rags, greasy from the machine oil which drops on them while they work. They were better protected from the rain because their clothes shed water; but unlike the women just mentioned, they did not carry their day’s provisions in a basket, but they carried in their hands or hid under their clothing as best they might, the morsel of bread which must serve them as food until time for them to return home. Thus to the strain of an insufferably long day – at least fifteen hours – is added for these wretches the fatigue of the painful daily journeys. Consequently they reach home overwhelmed by the need of sleep, and next day they rise before they are completely rested in order to reach the factory by the opening time.

The industrial revolution caused unspeakable misery both in England and in America … In the Lancashire cotton mills (from which Marx and Engels derived their livelihood), children worked from 12 to 16 hours a day; they often began working at the age of six or seven. Children had to be beaten to keep them from falling asleep while at work; in spite of this, many failed to keep awake and were mutilated or killed. Parents had to submit to the infliction of these atrocities upon their children, because they themselves were in a desperate plight. Craftsmen had been thrown out of work by the machines; rural labourers were compelled to migrate to the towns by the Enclosure Acts, which used Parliament to make landowners richer by making peasants destitute; trade unions were illegal until 1824; the government employed agents provocateurs to try to get revolutionary sentiments out of wage-earners, who were then deported or hanged. Such was the first effect of machinery in England.

I’ll stop demonizing business when business stops putting their profits before the country and starts putting their workers before their greed.

The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st — When they are neglected in infancy. 2nd — When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd — When they are paid low wages for their labor

What the best and wisest parent wants for his child must be what the community wants for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; it destroys our democracy.

The working class must be emancipated by the working class., Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class. Child labor must be abolished by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. The working class must be employed by the working class ., The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class. War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

It makes no sense that this country has 11 million workers feeding, building this country, making America what it is, and they don't share the same rights of those who are consuming the fruit of their labor.

My on-set, keep-warm jacket is a Patagonia, and they make sure the people who make their clothes are paid fairly, along with a load of other great stuff and initiatives. They're a business, but they put their money where their mouth is in terms of caring and responsibility.

Safe working conditions, fair wages, protection from forced labor, and freedom from harassment and discrimination - these must become standard global operating conditions.

The workers who get hurt by corner-cutting often do not realize they are being wronged. Even when they do, they do not have the support and resources to fight back. Without a union to stand behind them, these workers are forced to stay in bad jobs, or face no job at all.

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.

What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions... These so-called "right to work" laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.

The right to work is a slogan which should be accepted by every democracy.

The clothes make the man. The children working in sweatshops make the clothes. Therefore, the children working in sweatshops make the man.

We cannot allow employers in Germany to pay hourly wages of 50 cents and shift the remainder of the burden to the taxpayer. After all, we want to create jobs, not open a self-service shop for resourceful employers.

The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.

I have little space from the suffering of elephants right now. I wake up with it and go to sleep with it. The plight of animals in shelters, of kids used for labor for the metals in our electronics and endless other things, the fate of our water supply to dye our blue jeans and water our lawns, the sad painful life of conventionally raised meat...For me, I am working to not contribute to this. I really don't want to hurt others for my benefit.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.