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the union was a natural and a good institution; that it was important; and that in a modern, industrial, mass-production world it was about the only way you could expect working people to assist in getting good conditions for themselves and spreading good conditions to others of their own trade and industry. One began to realize how much the Consumers' League and other organizations like that might do toward the education of the employer - and we did a great deal - and by way of legislation. But it was important for the working people to help themselves too.

This I know to be true. The trade unions in this country have never at any time, either then or later, taken the lead in labor legislation. It's always been done by the so-called reformars who saw that something ought to be done; that this ought not to be allowed; and that people ought not to have to go on strike in order to get these simple, natural, effective protection like reasonable hours, subsistence wages, protections, against damage to life and limb, protection against bad sanitation and all that kind of thing.

I still thought, and I still think, that the most important things that we do for labor are the mass protections that come out of law, out of legislation. I think it's important for labor to organize into trade unions for the raising of their own self respect, for the raising of their