Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/22

 misery among the proletarians of the pen and other wage workers—doing brain work. And these comprise, excepting the well-to-do and wealthy classes which in number amount to hardly ten per cent. of the entire population, about the whole nation. Now then, what is the reason that such a condition of affairs is little different from what it is in Europe? I admit that the people in this country are a little better off than European workmen; but, what is the reason that such a condition was possible at all, in spite of the immense advantages we have in the unbounded natural resources of this country?

I have an idea of what may be the cause; but, being so little acquainted with all these things, that are explained to me for the first time in such a comprehensive manner, I hardly dare express my opinion in regard to the matter.

But it is very simple; for, equal causes produce equal results everywhere. The present mode of wholesale capitalistic production in this country is, in all its aspects, entirely equal to that in Europe; in Ohio as well as in Germany, in Pennsylvania as well as in England. Or, what is the difference in the condition of the workmen of a machine shop in Sheffield or Berlin or of those in New York and Philadelphia? What is their situation in life, what are their prospects for the future, what are their wages, and how are they treated by their employers? Is there really any difference perceptible? How do the coal miners of Illinois and Pennsylvania compare with those of Belgium and England? Is there any difference between the agricultural laborers of Great Britain, who are driven like so many sheep by their overseers from estate to estate, and the American farm-hands who are subject to the same process of being herded together like criminals upon the gigantic farms of our celebrated Northwest and of California? What difference is there between the women, girls, children and clerks who are working for starvation wages at the immense salesrooms of the Bonmarché, and other stores in Paris, in London, St. Petersburg and Berlin, and the same kind of poor creatures you see in the stores of New York, Philadelphia and other American cities, where you can buy anything from a pin to a piano? Everywhere the same causes, and consequently the same results, The world over these wage