Excerpt: ...not until 1874, after many further bitterly-contested strikes, that the Masachusetts Legislature was prevailed upon to pass a ten-hour law, twenty-four years after the British Parliament had passed such an enactment. The commercial class, high and low, was impregnated with deceit and dissimulation, cynicism, selfishness and cruelty. What were the aspirations of the working class which it was to uplift? The contrast stood out with stark distinctness. While business men were frantically sapping the labor and life ...
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Excerpt: ...not until 1874, after many further bitterly-contested strikes, that the Masachusetts Legislature was prevailed upon to pass a ten-hour law, twenty-four years after the British Parliament had passed such an enactment. The commercial class, high and low, was impregnated with deceit and dissimulation, cynicism, selfishness and cruelty. What were the aspirations of the working class which it was to uplift? The contrast stood out with stark distinctness. While business men were frantically sapping the labor and life out of their workers, and then tricking and cheating one another to seize the proceeds of that exploitation, the labor unions were teaching the nobility of brotherly cooperation. "Cultivate friendship among the great brotherhood of toil," was the advice of Uriah Stevens, master workman of the Knights of Labor, at the annual meeting of that organization on January 12, 1871. And he went on: And while the toiler is thus engaged in creating the world's value, how fares his own interest and well-being? We answer, "Badly," for he has too little time, and his faculties become too much blunted by unremitting labor to analyze his condition or devise and perfect financial schemes or reformatory measures. The hours of labor are too long, and should be shortened. I recommend a universal movement to cease work at five o'clock Saturday afternoon, as a beginning. There should be a greater participation in the profits of labor by the industrious and intelligent laborer. In the present arrangements of labor and capital, the condition of the employee is simply that of wage slavery-capital dictating, labor submitting; capital superior, labor inferior. This is an artificial and man-created condition, not God's arrangement and order; for it degrades man and ennobles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who eschew labor and live (no matter by what pretence or respectable cheat-for cheat it is) without...
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.