|
"Since last July fifteen of these concerns have locked out their employes, and their inability to find work has brought starvation nearly unto death. The cases of squalor and misery are too numerous to recite. In the severity of the winter young girls have tramped from place to place in search of work, have begged shelter and food, slept in outhouses and barns, and are to-day the victims of hunger and exposure. Wholly defenseless they are thrown into temptation and the lowest forms of vagrancy. The males tramp out further in the State and become desperate and vicious, while the old people and infants remain in the villages, starving by inches. The farmers are besieged by these vagrants and plundered. Common necessities of life are unknown to hundreds of fathers, mothers, and children. There is scarcely any beef to be found at the stores because of the almost total abstinence from its use among these destitute people. To add up to these miseries it has been announced that the mills will not start up until next June."
___________
CHATTEL SLAVERY AND WAGE SLAVERY
Chattel slavery and wage slavery are but two forms of the same thing—the robbery of labor.
Through competition among wealth produces, and combination on the part of non-producers, all wealth and power is passing into the hands of the latter.
To work is not slavery—to work and be stripped of the proceeds of labor is slavery. A man is a slave to the extent the wealth created by his labor is appropriated by another.
Under the competitive system the struggle for existence between manufacturers on the one hand, and workingmen on the other, brings, in the long run, ruin and virtual slavery to all save a few who may become enormously rich.
|
