The National Government should demand the highest quality of service from its employees; and in return it should be a good employer.  If possible legislation should be passed, in connection with the Interstate Commerce Law, which will render effective the efforts of different States to do away with the competition of convict contract labor in the open labor market.  So far as practicable under the conditions of Government work, provision should be made to render the enforcement of the eight-hour law easy and certain.  In all industries carried on directly or indirectly for the United States Government women and children should be protected from excessive hours of labor, from night work, and from work under unsanitary conditions.  The Government should provide in its contracts that all work should be done under “fair” conditions, and in addition to setting a high standard should uphold it by proper inspection, extending if necessary to the subcontractors.  The Government should forbid all night work for women and children, as well as excessive overtime.  For the District of Columbia a good factory law should be passed; and, as a powerful indirect aid to such laws, provision should be made to turn the inhabited alleys, the existence of which is a reproach to our Capital city, into minor streets, where the inhabitants can live under conditions favorable to health and morals.

American wage-workers work with their heads as well as their hands.  Moreover, they take a keen pride in what they are doing; so that, independent of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job.  This is the great secret of our success in competition with the labor of foreign countries.

The most vital problem with which this country, and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has for one side the betterment of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and for another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions which we group together when we speak of “labor.”  The chief factor in the success of each man—­wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—­must ever be the sum total of his own individual qualities and abilities.  Second only to this comes the power of acting in combination or association with others.  Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations or unions of wage-workers, when managed with forethought, and when they combine insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of others.  The display of these qualities in such bodies is a duty to the nation no less than to the associations themselves.  Finally, there must also in many cases be action by the Government in order to safeguard the rights and interests of all.  Under our Constitution there is much more scope for such action by the State and the municipality than by the nation.  But on points such as those touched on above the National Government can act.