Secretary of Labor
1953
Citation:
When the Detroit community honored the University of Detroit last December with a great civic banquet to mark the completion of the University's 75th jubilee year, our Reverend President, plans for the inauguration next September of the University of center of service to the Detroit community with which our independent University has been interdependent ever since its modest beginnings seventy-five years ago - a center of service which will embrace the many complex phases of human relations, domestic, community, industrial, political, economic, international. The ideal to be sought after is peace, a tranquility of order in human relations. To achieve the ideal there must be a recognition of right principles and an indefatigable effort to apply them to the world in which we live. The center will be quick to utilize every sound contribution which social science, group dynamics, social psychology, and other allied fields have made, and will make, to the solution of human problems. It will not, however, accept the worldly, naturalistic and secularist approach which dominates all too much of human relations thinking today. For the University's center recognizes that the beginning of wisdom in human relations is acknowledgement of the ever astounding truth that we are all children of God, and that the more profoundly faith works in us the more intensely it will lead us to respect the tights and seek the good of all those children, our brothers. The love of man, apart from the love of God, tends to become a sentimental, snobbish and socially irresponsible worship of an ideal projection, quite compatible with hatred and contempt of real men and women. The University has an exciting vision of its Center for Human Relations. The vision has begun with an idea, it looks forward to a program, it will include a well-trained staff, it foresees men and women coming as individuals and in groups to compose differences which have baffled their most honest efforts. It pictures a home, a new and impressive building, within whose friendly walls human problems will be adjusted, not by arbitration or calculating compromise, but in the spirit of prudence and of justice blended with brotherly love. This building will be far less massive than the Hague Tribunal, less stately than the halls of Geneva, less pretentious than the home of the United Nations, but it will be a home in which real men and women will find real solutions to their disagreements and contentions. For within this home will be enshrined the New Commandment of Christ, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Visions are often thought of as unsubstantial. But tonight tour vision will take on substance. The University presents to you two men who represent all that is best in two of the most influential and indispensable groups in our society, two necessarily complementary groups - those who initiate, finance and direct, and those who produce, assemble and transport the vast output of goods and services for the material wellbeing of our people. These men have already achieved with distinction, each in his chosen sphere, what the University has at heart to do in its many-sided program of Human Relations, and so their presence here tonight is both a symbol of our hopes and an augury that they will be realized. Reverend President, I have the honor of presenting for the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honorable Martin Patrick Durkin, a son of the Industrial Midwest, who began to practice the gospel of brotherly love in the crowded playgrounds of a vast metropolis, who carried it on to the busy marts of trade and to the worker's bench where he shared the daily toil, the hardships, the confidences and the counsels of the skilled and the unskilled alike. A born leader of men, Martin Durkin understood his fellow men and he loved them. He also loved his family and he loved his God, and from the union of these loves there emerged a spirit of service, of self-effacement and of granite-like integrity which have won him the universal respect and confidence even of men of divergent interests and affiliations. His fellow workers trusted him and elected him to many important offices in their union. The Governor of his native state trusted him and appointed him Director of Labor. His fellow governmental officials trusted him and elected him president of the International Association of Governmental Labor Officials. He returned to his union in 1941, and was immediately elected to office. And now the President of the United States has shown his confidence in Mr. Durkin's ability and integrity by appointing him a member of his Cabinet. Commencement, University of Detroit, June 9, 1953.