g it too high for a long while to come.
And if they concede shorter hours today, next year they may want them
shorter still. Everybody is working for shorter hours, especially the
people who don't work. And they are all working for bigger pay; even
those who get all there is, they want more. And of course, there will
be no stopping, there will be no end to the demand, until we get it
all, and that is a long way off.

And the question is how? And that is not so easy. It is easier to tell
how you can't get it than to tell how you can get it. It is easier to
tell how you haven't got it than how you are going to get it.

There is another thing that they are fairly well satisfied with: They
don't worry much about voting. They have been satisfied to let all the
men vote, and they have still kept their property. (Laughter). They
will be satisfied to let all the women vote, and they will still keep
their property. Voting has not done very much. We have been
practicing at it for more than a hundred years, and it is a nice
little toy to keep people satisfied, but that is all it has done so
far. (Applause).

Of course, here and there we have been able to pass a few laws. For
instance, we have statutes which forbid women from working in a
factory more than ten hours a day. (Laughter). Now, we have done
something. (Laughter and applause). We have statutes forbidding men to
labor more than a certain number of hours a day. That is, people like
to work; they love it so dearly that you have to pass a law to keep a
working man from working. (Laughter).

When we pass laws to keep men and women from working it ought to show
the stupidest mind that there is something terribly wrong with the
industrial conditions under which we live. If men had a chance to work
and get all the proceeds of their work, you would not have to pass
laws to keep them from working. They would stop soon enough. And if
every man could employ his own labor and receive the full product of
his toil it would make no difference how hard your neighbor worked, it
would not hurt you in the least, and you could let him work himself to
death if he wanted to.

The only difficulty is under the patch work industrial system of today
where a few men own all the earth, and all the factories and mills and
are compelled to sell their product to the workingman, they give him
such a small share of that product that the workingmen haven't
anything to buy it with. They can't buy it