Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/13

 Rh earth by the people who have inherited some, or have skinned their fellow creatures, or have acquired it under the conditions which capitalism gives.

Suppose by working and scrimping it could be possible for you to buy a home, would it be best to do it? With the present system of living where we must beg for a chance to work, I should say "no." Factory owners try to get their "hands" to buy homes near the factory so they will not be able to move away. They want them to have their money tied up in property so they will have to stay. The factory owners have the "hands" at their mercy then, and can cut down wages, or lengthen hours as much as possible, and the "hands" cannot leave to hunt other places. The following dispatch from Memphis, Ind., came to my notice as I was writing this, referring to a fire at that place and reads: "Two large heading and stave factories were totally destroyed. It is not probable the place will be rebuilt, since most of the people were laborers and carried no insurance on their dwellings and are unable to rebuild. Many will seek employment elsewhere." These laborers are worse off than the ones that only rented the houses they lived in. However, few laborers own their homes, or think of doing so, because they have a hard struggle to pay rent.

Most of us know what kind of houses the working people are forced to live in, but probably none of those who put up with the frightful conditions know that there is a way out. They do not know that it is not a necessary condition and that they can change it for a better one just as soon as they are a mind to by combining together and working together to have things to suit themselves, instead of fixing them to suit their masters—the capitalists. But let us look into the housing problem a little further. It is not hard to pick out the houses of the capitalists