The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American
exploiter of labor.
It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible,
to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.
But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a
nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation
is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of
working people, and that foundation the French have learned to
respect and treat well.
We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn
it more peaceably than the French did.
UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS
WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER
FELLOW-CREATURES?
Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction
of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human
beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either
on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage
basis--which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the
worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every
time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see
increased the number of those who may properly be called men.
The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own
wages?"
OF COURSE they shall.
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