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places which they had reared the workers of Chicago, as elsewhere, were huddled together in hovels and huts unfit for human habitation. The wealth produced by the wage-workers of Chicago the past year were sufficient to furnish them with every comfort--yea, even luxury.
The capitalists and their mouthpieces, the press, pulpit, and politicians, declare that the wage class receive in wages all they earn. By this they may mean that we earn only so much as they compel us to accept. The statistics as given in the capitalistic press showing the productive capacity of labor in Chicago the past year, are the answer to the question why the workers are poor. Let the wage-workers ponder them well and ascertain where the ten and twelve hours' work for which they receive no pay goes to.
The statistics, showing the profit on labor in Chicago the past year, are as follows:
Number of manufacturing establishments................ 2,282
Capital invested.......................................$ 87,392,709
Value of raw material................................. $152,628,378
Value of manufactured product......................... $292,246,912
Number of employees.................................... 105,725
Total wages paid...................................... $48,382,912
Now deduct the cost of raw material and it shows that labor
earned............................................ $139,287,465
Total wages paid...................................... $48,382,912
$ 90,904,553
Or over $857 profit on each laborer. While each wage-worker earned over $1,314, they received on an average $457 each, or less than one-third of what they produced. Each manufacturing establishment average a profit of about $40,000. Some bankrupted, it is true; but others, like Phil Armour, made over $3,500,000.
Manufacturers divide this plunder with landlords, usurers, insurance, the Governments, lawyers, and other leeches and parasites.
Phil Armour reduced his 10,000 laborers 25 cents per day, which on 10,000 amounts to $2,500 per day, $15,000 per week, $45,000 per month, and $540,000 per year. Result, a twelve-story palace worth $1,000,000 in two years.
Potter Palmer builds a $600,000 palace. There are ten million-
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