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the labor movement in America. I have some knowledge of that movement in consequence of this experience and of the careful study which opportunity has afforded me from time to time to give to the matter, and in what I have to say upon this subject relating to the labor movement, or to myself as connected with it in this trial and before this bar, I will speak of the truth, be the consequences what they may.
The United States census for 1880 reports that there are in the United States 16,200,000 wage-workers. These are the persons who, by their industry, create all the wealth of this country. And now before I say anything further it may be necessary, in order to clearly understand what I am going to state further on, for me to define what I mean and what is meant in the labor movement by these words, wage-worker. A wage-worker is one who works for wages and who has no other means of subsistence than by the selling of his daily toil from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, as the case may be. Their whole property consists entirely of their labor, strength, and skill—or rather, they possess nothing but their empty hands. They live only when afforded an opportunity to work, and this opportunity must be procured from the possessors of the means of subsistence—capital—before their right to live at all or the opportunity to do so is possessed. No, there are 16,200,000 of these people in the United States, according to the census of 1880. Among this number are 9,000,000 men, and reckoning five persons per family, thy represent 45, 000,000 of our population. It is claimed that there are between eleven and twelve millions of voters in the United States. Now, out of these 12,000,000, 9,000,000 of these voters are wage-workers. The remainder of the 16,200,000 is composed of the women, boys and girls—the children—employed in the factories, the mines, farms, and the various avocations of this country. The class of people—the producing class—who alone do all the productive labor of this country, are the hirelings and dependents of the propertied class.
Your honor, I have, as a workingman, espoused what I conceive to be the just claims of the working class; I have defended their right to liberty and insisted upon their right to control their
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