Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/25

 workmen are enabled to economize and save that they may take it easy when old age has arrived, and that many of them may become even wealthy and owners of real estate.

Are you joking, young man? Nobody ever got rich by economizing and saving, but solely by making others work for himself, and by depriving working people of part of what belongs to them; in short, no one can become wealthy except by robbing his fellow-men. May I ask you, Mr. Reporter, the amount of your weekly income?

Well, about twenty dollars.

And how many years have you been in the business at the same rate of wages?

About fourteen years.

Then you have a good, snug sum of money at the bank! If you have saved only $10.00 every week, you would have, at $500 per year with interest for fourteen years

(interrupting excitedly): Hold on, Sir—remember that I have a family of four. How could I save ten or even two dollars per week? It is impossible—impossible!

Why, what, indeed? A man like you, earning $20.00 per week could not save ten, nor even two dollars? How, then, do you expect a workman earning but ten dollars and less wherewith to support his family to save, in order, as you point it, to "become wealthy by economizing and saving?" Haven't I shown you from the figures of the census that the wages of workmen in this country are far from ten dollars per week on an average? Even if you consider, that sometimes the wife and children are helping to earn a living for the whole family.

Indeed, I forgot that.

Then let me assist your memory a little further. Here I hold in my hand the industrial statistics of the City of New York in 1880. They are rather incomplete, as some of the most poorly paid trades have been left out, for instance brewing, weaving, etc.; but there are 163 branches mentioned in the report of the Statistician, The largest number of people working at these trades on one day in 1880 was 262,459; regularly employed were 133,998 men, 63,482 women, 2373 chil-