Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/26

 dren under 16 years of age, or, on an average, about 225,000 persons throughout the year. The aggregate amount of wages paid them was $89,513,934, or per week not quite eight dollars to every person, (these are wages actually paid, deducting the time of enforced idleness). Of course, these people were working in factories and at regular trades. If you add to their number the common laborers, street sweepers, etc., and then figure up the average amount of wages, you will be astounded at seeing with how little the hard working inhabitants of New York are compelled to live. And, consider, that these figures were taken in the good times of 1880, and in the city of New York where, owing to a healthy and powerful labor movement and an influential labor press, wages were comparatively high. To-day the condition has grown worse, and, in the face of these facts and figures, dare anyone say that even five per cent. of the working population of this country can have the faintest hope of ever improving their present miserable standard of life? According to the same statistics during the year of 1880 there were on an average about 50,000 persons engaged in producing men's clothing (64,256 being the largest number of persons working on one day; regularly employed 28,444 men, 16,972 women, and 231 children—an average of about 50,000) who received a little over 14 millions of dollars in wages, or $280 for every person per annum. Or, take—according to the same statistical report—the 15,000 persons engaged in making cigars (17,183 being the largest number working on one day, regularly engaged men 9,323, women 4,575, and children 478—an average of 15,000) who received an aggregate of six millions of dollars, or about $400 annually for every individual worker. How many of these people who are working from ten to fourteen hours per day are enabled to gradually become wealthy and independent by saving any part of their income? And those who say that this be possible are capitalistic demagogues. As Napoleon I. assured his soldiers that every one of them carried the staff of a marshal in his knapsack, while in fact there could be only a few dozens marshals in France, so the capitalists and their organs assure the workers that every one of them could become wealthy by working industriously and saving part of their wages! The result is the same in both cases. While hundreds of thousands of Napoleon's soldiers sacrifized their