Political Quotes

“I rise to speak briefly to the important issues my friend, the Senator from North Carolina, has raised and to suggest that we have the necessary international agreements already in place to address the more fundamental issues with which he is concerned, as is my friend from Minnesota. It happens I have spent a fair amount of my early years as a student of the International Labor Organization which was created as part of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1918. Samuel Gompers of the AFL-CIO was chairman of the commission in Paris that put it together. A very major matter in the mind of President Wilson as he campaigned for the treaty, he talked about the ILO as much as any other thing. The first international labor conference met here in Washington, just down Constitution Avenue at the building of the Organization of American States. It was a dramatic time. President Wilson had been struck down by a stroke. The Congress, the Senate was tied up with the question of ratifying the treaty. But the treaty provided that this meeting should take place in Washington, and it did. It did so with great success. International labor standards were set forth, and China was one of the nations present at the international labor conference. The person who provided most of the facilities for it was the young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a man named Franklin D. Roosevelt, who later became involved. One of the first things he did when he became President was move to join the ILO.”