nd this goes on--it is systematic, organized, premeditated! And we know
it, and read of it, and take it for granted; our papers tell of it, and
the presses are not stopped--our churches know of it, and do not close
their doors--the people behold it, and do not rise up in horror and
revolution!

"Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you--come home with me then,
come here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are
shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live.
And we know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in the image
of your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters; the child
whom you left at home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the
morning--that fate may be waiting for her! To-night in Chicago there are
ten thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for
a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the awful winter cold!
Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand children wearing out
their strength and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their
bread! There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery and
squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones! There are
a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless, waiting for death
to take them from their torments! There are a million people, men and
women and children, who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil
every hour they can stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive;
who are condemned till the end of their days to monotony and weariness,
to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to
ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then turn over the page with me,
and gaze upon the other side of the picture. There are a thousand--ten
thousand, maybe--who are the masters of these slaves, who own their
toil. They do nothing to earn what they receive, they do not even have
to ask for it--it comes to them of itself, their only care is to dispose
of it. They live in palaces, they riot in luxury and extravagance--such
as no words can describe, as makes the imagination reel and stagger,
makes the soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for a
pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for horses
and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets, for little shiny
stones with which to deck their bodies. Their life is a contest among
themselves for supremacy in ostentation