WATER POWER

Along with the development of navigation should go every possible encouragement for the development of our water power.  While steam still plays a dominant part, this is more and more becoming an era of electricity.  Once installed, the cost is moderate, has not tended greatly to increase, and is entirely free from the unavoidable dirt and disagreeable features attendant upon the burning of coal.  Every facility should be extended for the connection of the various units into a superpower plant, capable at all times of a current increasing uniformity over the entire system.

RAILROADS

The railroads throughout the country are in a fair state of prosperity.  Their service is good and their supply of cars is abundant.  Their condition would be improved and the public better served by a system of consolidations.  I recommend that the Congress authorize such consolidations tinder the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission, with power to approve or disapprove when proposed parts are excluded or new parts added.  I am informed that the railroad managers and their employees have reached a substantial agreement as to what legislation is necessary to regulate and improve their relationship.  Whenever they bring forward such proposals, which seem sufficient also to protect the interests of the public, they should be enacted into law.

It is gratifying to report that both the railroad managers and railroad employees are providing boards for the mutual adjustment of differences in harmony with the principles of conference, conciliation, and arbitration.  The solution of their problems ought to be an example to all other industries.  Those who ask the protections of civilization should be ready to use the methods of civilization.

A strike in modern industry has many of the aspects of war in the modern world.  It injures labor and it injures capital.  If the industry involved is a basic one, it reduces the necessary economic surplus and, increasing the cost of living, it injures the economic welfare and general comfort of the whole people.  It also involves a deeper cost.  It tends to embitter and divide the community into warring classes and thus weakens the unity and power of our national life.

Labor can make no permanent gains at the cost of the general welfare.  All the victories won by organized labor in the past generation have been won through the support of public opinion.  The manifest inclination of the managers and employees of the railroads to adopt a policy of action in harmony with these principles marks a new epoch in our industrial life.

OUTLYING POSSESSIONS