There is no objection to employees of the Government forming or belonging to unions; but the Government can neither discriminate for nor discriminate against nonunion men who are in its employment, or who seek to be employed under it.  Moreover, it is a very grave impropriety for Government employees to band themselves together for the purpose of extorting improperly high salaries from the Government.  Especially is this true of those within the classified service.  The letter carriers, both municipal and rural, are as a whole an excellent body of public servants.  They should be amply paid.  But their payment must be obtained by arguing their claims fairly and honorably before the Congress, and not by banding together for the defeat of those Congressmen who refuse to give promises which they can not in conscience give.  The Administration has already taken steps to prevent and punish abuses of this nature; but it will be wise for the Congress to supplement this action by legislation.

Much can be done by the Government in labor matters merely by giving publicity to certain conditions.  The Bureau of Labor has done excellent work of this kind in many different directions.  I shall shortly lay before you in a special message the full report of the investigation of the Bureau of Labor into the Colorado mining strike, as this was a strike in which certain very evil forces, which are more or less at work everywhere under the conditions of modern industrialism, became startlingly prominent.  It is greatly to be wished that the Department of Commerce and Labor, through the Labor Bureau, should compile and arrange for the Congress a list of the labor laws of the various States, and should be given the means to investigate and report to the Congress upon the labor conditions in the manufacturing and mining regions throughout the country, both as to wages, as to hours of labor, as to the labor of women and children, and as to the effect in the various labor centers of immigration from abroad.  In this investigation especial attention should be paid to the conditions of child labor and child-labor legislation in the several States.  Such an investigation must necessarily take into account many of the problems with which this question of child labor is connected.  These problems can be actually met, in most cases, only by the States themselves; but the lack of proper legislation in one State in such a matter as child labor often renders it excessively difficult to establish protective restriction upon the work in another State having the same industries, so that the worst tends to drag down the better.  For this reason, it would be well for the Nation at least to endeavor to secure comprehensive information as to the conditions of labor of children in the different States.  Such investigation and publication by the National Government would tend toward the securing of approximately uniform legislation of the proper character among the several States.