" All right; admitted.
But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?
Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very
numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will
answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand
eight hours and fair wages of YOU?
You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight
hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal
of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union
wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get
double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she
chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?
The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as
many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little
pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ----
And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand
works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he
paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen
hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the
sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other
poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you
know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man
for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the
men and women who work for YOU.
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