He dies in
charitable institutions. Though his labors are necessary he is yet not
integrated into the national economy. He has no share of his own in the
wealth of the nation. He cannot claim work as a right from the holders
of economic power, and this absolute dependence upon the autocrats of
industry for a livelihood is the greatest evil of any, for it puts a
spiritual curse on him and makes him in effect a slave. Instinctively
he adopts a servile attitude to those who can sentence him and his
children to poverty and hunger without trial or judgment by his peers.
A hasty word, and he may be told to draw his pay and begone. The
spiritual wrong done him by the social order is greater than the
material ill, and that spiritual wrong is no less a wrong because
generation after generation of workers have grown up and are habituated
to it, and do not realize the oppression; because in childhood
circumstance and the black art of education alike conspire to make the
worker humble in heart and to take the crown and sceptre from his
spirit, and his elders are already tamed and obsequious.
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