Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/36

 the factory, and that he pays not more than $30 per week to his superintendent who is working from morning till evening, and who not only works with his hands, but also is doing difficult brainwork? What, in consideration of all these circumstances, is his labor really worth?

Well, according to its quality—may be about $30, the same as the superintendent's?

Be it so; but, let us be magnanimous and let us give him $60.00 per week; I think that will suffice. But now from the values (commodities) produced by the workmen there remains, after the wages having been paid, capital having received its interest, and the boss being munificently rewarded for his looking on, when the superintendent and his men were working, the snug sum of $50,000, which the boss takes to himself to invest it in building a big double-tenement for forty families who have to pay him $5,000 annually in rent; or, he buys a big piece of land in the far west which, after a few years, a lot of poor immigrants will buy from him for ten times the amount he paid for it. I now ask you, who has produced the values represented by that $50,000 with which the boss who takes them for his own use, manages to increase the luxuries and comforts of his own sweet existence?

The workmen produced it.

The workmen, and nobody else—is that it?

So it is.

And now, don’t you think that, according to common sense and justice, the values represented by that $50,000 should be used for the benefit of those who produced them? Isn't that your opinion also?

I see, at least, that after the capital invested having been rewarded and the boss having been taken care of, there is nobody else but the workman who has any just claims upon them.

And yet, they don't "get" anything except their scanty wages; and you see that all the capital held by capitalists, manufacturers, monopolists etc., in whatever form it may be (factories, mines, land, railroads etc.) represents the aggre-