health, never knowing the joys
of a real vacation, cooking, scrubbing, washing, mending, nursing and
pitifully saving, the wife of such a worker is in truth the slave of a
slave.

At the very best, then, the lot of the workingman excludes him and his
wife and children from most of the comforts which belong to modern
civilization. A well-fitted home in a good neighborhood--to say
nothing of a home beautiful in itself and its surroundings--is out of
the question; foreign travel, the opportunity to enjoy the rest and
educative advantages of occasional journeys to other lands, is
likewise out of the question. Even though civic enterprise provides
public libraries and art galleries, museums, lectures, concerts, and
other opportunities of recreation and education, there is not the
leisure for their enjoyment to any extent. For our model workman, with
all his exceptional advantages, after a day's toil has little time
left for such things, and little strength or desire, while his wife
has even less time and even less desire.

You know that this is not an exaggerated account. It may be questioned
by the writers of learned treatises who know the life of the workers
only from descriptions of it written by people who know very little
about it, but you will not question it. As a workman you know it is
true. And I know it is true, for I have lived it. The best that the
most industrious, thrifty, persevering and fortunate workingman can
hope for is to be decently housed, decently fed, decently clothed.
That he and his family may always be certain of these things, so that
they go down to their graves at last without having experienced the
pangs of hunger and want, the worker must be exceptionally fortunate.
_And yet, my friend, the horses in the stables of the rich men of this
country, and the dogs in their kennels, have all these things, and
more!_ For they are protected against such overwork and such anxiety
as the workingman and the workingman's wife must endure. Greater care
is taken of the health of many horses and dogs than the most favored
workingman can possibly take of the health of his boys and girls.

At its best and brightest, then, the lot of the workingman in our
present social system is not an enviable one. The utmost good fortune
of the laboring classes is, properly considered, a scathing
condemnation of modern society. There is very little poetry, beauty,
joy or glory in the life of the workingman when taken at its