Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/93

 not lived on them? You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you knew, unless they were alive. But here lies your iniquity; you have given the laborer nothing but his daily food—not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your competitive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously (for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?) to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of daily comforts; but what has he saved?—what is he profited by all those years of labor? He has kept body and soul together—perhaps he could have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole profits of his nearly fifty years' labor, and he has nothing. And then you say that you have not eaten him!

Looking Backward

(One of the classics of the Socialist movement, this book sold over four hundred thousand copies in the first years of its publication. Its author was an American school-teacher, 1850-1898)

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than compare