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Life of Albert Parsons

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At Navarre, a mining town of 3,000 people, the "skating rink" had been secured for the 'Anarchist" speaker to address the people in. This town is located on the Tuscarawa river, in a beautiful valley, through which passes a railroad. The soil of the surrounding country is of unsurpassed fertility; the hills abound in coal, iron, stone, and gas. But to what a sad plight has the capitalistic system of wage-slavery brought the American labor! A miner tells me that the 500 or 600 miners living here permitted to work about one-third time the past year. The miner said his family consisted of a wife and three children. His wages the past year amounted to $89.76. Rent was $5 per month; powder for 10 tons of coal which he dug was $15.75; three gallons of oil was $3; sharpening tools, $79.26; balance left for food and clothes, $10.51! This allows less than one-fourth of a cent per day for food and clothes. "Incredible!" you say. Talk of the Chinese, the pauper labor of Europe, but these American sovereigns can discount them. "how did he live?" you ask. Well, in this way. The country round about is the richest farming land in the world. The rich farmers who own it find in these poverty-stricken miners an unfailing supply of cheap labors, paying for odd jobs and a few days' work in the harvests season the sum of 50 cents per day! Sometimes they only give what a hungry man can eat in return for a day's hard work. A miner told me that he had to buy on credit in the year 1884 $5 worth of potatoes from a richer farmer. Last year (1885) he had no money to pay the debt, and told the farmer he would work it out. He worked four days, over twelve hours per day, and finished the job. He asked the farmer to let him have a few bushels of potatoes again on credit, as he had no money, when he was informed that not until he paid what was owing last year could he get any more. The miner replied that he thought his work had paid the debt. The farmer said: "No, sir; you owe me $2.80 yet," and the minder could get no more potatoes.

The wage-slaves of America have to pay such high prices for coal that many of them are forced to stint themselves in the use of it, while the miner is freezing and starving also. This is the legis-

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