June 3, 1940 — 24th International Convention, ILGWU, Court of Peace, New York World’s Fair, New York City

I feel very happy to be with you this afternoon for I feel very much at home with the members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Some of the women who are leaders of the organization today were among the women many years ago who gave me my first lesson in a better understanding of what labor relations meant and what they really should be; and so I owe them a debt of gratitude, and I wish that I could know each and everyone of you as well as I have known some of them.

Now, I have a very brief message for you today. We meet here under blue skies, with the sun shining, and yet there hangs over all of us a pall because of the horror which engulfs so many people in this world, and I want to say to you, just as the Senator said, labor must come together and be unified again in order to attain its maximum strength. So, we, as a nation, must work with unity to meet the problems that lie before us.

Democracy means that we have respect for the individual and it also means that each and every individual carries a greater responsibility than under any other form of government. You cannot trust your responsibility as an individual to anybody else. In a trade union, each member, while he may have his own preferences and the freedom to say and do as he likes, must, in the interest of the union, discipline himself to achieve results for all of the members. That is so in the labor movement as a whole. You have to learn unselfishness and respect for the individual. That is so in a democracy. You have to learn respect for the individual but you have to learn also that each individual must have self-discipline and unselfishness in the interest of the whole group.

We, in this nation, face a serious time. Perhaps, we are going to hold up the banner of Democracy for the whole world. Perhaps, what we do will mean hope for the world or resignation to a complete change in all that we have held dear. For that reason, today I have but one thing that I would say to you. I think it is the thing that, for myself, I would wish. The courage to face whatever comes to us with calm, and to act always with reason and without bitterness and without fear. If we do that, we can hold the beacon of hope before the world. I trust all of you, and I hope that this nation will prove that we can carry forward the banner of Democracy.

Source: ILGWU Report and Proceedings: Twenty-fourth International Convention, New York, 27 May-8 June 1940, p. 335.