(d) It is the usurer or interest taker that perverts the conditions.
He lays hold of those great inventions and discoveries, like railroads and telegraphs and telephones, and demands a perpetual compensation. He asks that the laborer shall be forever buying his tool, yet it shall be never bought, that the public shall be forever paying for privileges and the obligation remain forever unmet. This is but one of the forms of usury, by which wealth is heaped from the earnings of the many.
- The difficulties between employers and their laborers do not cease. The continued strikes and lock-outs show how general and deep the trouble is. Laborers organize into unions to protect themselves from discharge and to promote their interests. They ask for better wages and shorter hours. They urge their petition with forceful arguments; they make demands with an implied threat; they stop work or "strike." Then follows a test of strength and endurance in which both parties greatly suffer and both are embittered and neither is satisfied.
The correction of this common evil has received close study from those who have the welfare of all classes at heart and wish to be benefactors of the race. The remedies have not been thorough but superficial, and the benefits temporary. The branches have been cut off but they grow again.
(a) The complaint of too small wages implies that more is earned than is received; but there is no standard recognized by which what a man does earn can be measured. The capitalist claims the output as the earnings of his capital and his claim is allowed by the workmen. The workmen may claim that wages are too small for a comfortable living. This is not a plea of free workmen, but of slaves begging to be better fed.