are chimerical, but the agitation will doubtless go on until another
element is introduced into work and wages than mere supply and demand. I
believe that some time it will be impossible that a woman shall be forced
to make shirts at six cents apiece, with the gaunt figures of starvation
or a life of shame waiting at the door. I talked recently with the driver
of a street-car in a large city. He received a dollar and sixty cents a
day. He went on to his platform at eight in the morning, and left it at
twelve at night, sixteen hours of continuous labor every day in the week.
He had no rest for meals, only snatched what he could eat as he drove
along, or at intervals of five or eight minutes at the end of routes. He
had no Sunday, no holiday in the year.

Between twelve o'clock at night and eight the next morning he must wash
and clean his car. Thus his hours of sleep were abridged. He was obliged
to keep an eye on the passengers to see that they put their fares in the
box, to be always, responsible for them, that they got on and off without
accident, to watch that the rules were enforced, and that collisions and
common street dangers were avoided. This mental and physical strain for
sixteen consecutive hours, with scant sleep, so demoralized him that he
was obliged once in two or three months to hire a substitute and go away
to sleep. This is treating a human being with less consideration than the
horses receive. He is powerless against the great corporation; if he
complains, his place is instantly filled; the public does not care.

Now what I want to say about this case, and that of the woman who makes a
shirt for six cents (and these are only types of disregard of human souls
and bodies that we are all familiar with), is that if society remains
indifferent it must expect that organizations will attempt to right them,
and the like wrongs, by ways violent and destructive of the innocent and
guilty alike. It is human nature, it is the lesson of history, that real
wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like
nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes
a cyclone, a slight break in the levee 'a crevasse with immense
destructive power.

In considering the growth of discontent, and of a natural disregard of
duties between employers and employed, it is to be noted that while wages
in nearly all trades are high, the service rendered deteriorates, less
conscience is put in