owning the
land, mines, factories, railways, and other agencies of production,
but not using them; and another class, using the land and other means
of production, but not owning them.

Only those things are produced which there is a reasonable hope of
selling at a profit. Upon no other conditions will the owners of the
means of production consent to their being used. The worker who does
not own the things necessary to produce wealth must work upon the
terms imposed by the other fellow in most cases. The coal miner, not
owning the coal mine, must agree to work for wages. So must the
mechanic in the workshop and the mill-worker.

As a practical, sensible workingman, Jonathan, you know very well that
if anybody says the interests of these two classes are the same it is
a foolish and lying statement. You are a workingman, a wage-earner,
and you know that it is to your interest to get as much wages as
possible for the smallest amount of work. If you work by the day and
get, let us say, two dollars for ten hours' work, it would be a great
advantage to you if you could get your wages increased to three
dollars and your hours of labor to eight per day, wouldn't it? And if
you thought that you could get these benefits for the asking you would
ask for them, wouldn't you? Of course you would, being a sensible,
hard-headed American workingman.

Now, if giving these things would be quite as much to the advantage of
the company as to you, the company would be just as glad to give them
as you would be to receive them, wouldn't it? I am assuming, of
course, that the company knows its own interests just as well as you
and your fellow workmen know yours. But if you went to the officials
of the company and asked them to give you a dollar more for the two
hours' less work, they would not give it--unless, of course, you were
strong enough to fight and compel them to accept your terms. But they
would resist and you would have to fight, because your interests
clashed.

That is why trade unions are formed on the one side and employers'
associations upon the other. Society is divided by antagonistic
interests; into exploiters and exploited.

Politicians and preachers may cry out that there are no classes in
America, and they may even be foolish enough to believe it--for there
are lots of _very_ foolish politicians and preachers in the world! You
may even hear a short-sighted labor leader say the same thing, but you
know very well, my fr