wage-slaves.

You may, at times, temporarily better your condition within certain
limitations, but you will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves?
For just one reason and no other--you have got to work. To work you have
got to have tools, and if you have no tools you have to beg for work,
and if you have got to beg for work the man who owns the tools you use
will determine the conditions under which you shall work. As long as he
owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the
master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to
his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not.
Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that
humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a
free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence. You will never be
free, you will never stand erect in your own manly self-reliance until
you are the master of the tools you work with, and when you are you can
freely work without the consent of any master, and when you do work you
will get all your labor produces.

As it is now the lion's share goes to the capitalist for which he does
nothing, while you get a small fraction to feed, clothe and shelter
yourself, and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power. That is
all you get out of it and all you ever will get in the capitalist
system.

Oh, my brothers, can you be satisfied with your lot? Will you insist
that life shall continue a mere struggle for existence and one prolonged
misery to which death comes as a blessed relief?

How is it with the average workingman today? I am not referring to the
few who have been favored and who have fared better than the great mass,
but I am asking how it is with the average workingman in this system?
Admit that he has a job. What assurance has he that it is his in
twenty-four hours? I have a letter from an expert glass worker saying
that the new glass machine which has recently been tested, has proven
conclusively that bottles can be made without a glass blower. Five or
six boys with these machines can make as many bottles as ten expert
blowers could make. Machinery is conquering every department of
activity. It is displacing more and more workingmen and making the lot
of those who have employment more and more insecure. Admit that a man
has a job. What assurance has he that he is going to keep it? A machine
may be invented. He may offend the boss. H