Indentured laborer

“ Second, The statute does not provide that the employer and the laborer may not agree with each other as to what time shall constitute a day's work. There are some branches of labor, connected with furnaces, foundries, steam or gas works, where the labor and the exposure of eight hours a day would soon exhaust the strength of a laborer, and render him permanently an invalid. ”

“ But provided each one furnishes the quantity of labor demanded of him, whatever be the time he employs, they are entitled to equal wages.
Shall the laborer who is capable of finishing his task in six hours have the right, on the ground of superior strength and activity, to usurp the task of the less skilful laborer, and thus rob him of his labor and bread? Who dares maintain such a proposition? He who finishes before the others may rest, if he chooses ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ Though their employment is steadier than that of the migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and other stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to feed their innate restlessness. ”

“ So scarce had laborers become through the ravages of the Black Death, that wages rose rapidly, to the alarm of the employers, who prevailed upon King Edward III to issue the historic proclamation of 1349, directing that no laborer should demand and no employer should pay greater wages than those customary before the plague. ”

“ They assembled, and on Monday the 6th thousands turned out to work, and continued to labor, unless prevented by the Manager, until arrangements were made.
You will remember, that prior to the 1st of August, a white man who hired out a gang of apprentices to an estate was paid at the rate of 1s. 6d. sterling per diem for each able laborer. ”

“ The spirit of unrest that I have commended, and which I have termed an American type, is not noisy and clamorous in its nature, and it manifests itself mostly through organizations 858of labor, in demands for adequate or increased compensation, or the fixing of a stated reasonable number of hours to constitute a day’s work. With these purposes, and the aims of Labor-Unions generally, I want to state that I am in the fullest accord. The laborer is worthy of his hire, as the Bible says. ”

“ All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it. ”

“ The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. ”

“ If each laborer in performing the labor really creates the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases with the number of laborers, the more laborers, other things being equal, the higher should wages be. ”

“ Labor is like any other commodity in the market—increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor. ”

“ Suppose that an individual working man or woman went to an employer and said: "I make, in my capacity as wage worker in this factory, so many dollars worth of wealth every day and justice demands that you give me at least half." The employer would probably have him removed to the nearest lunatic asylum. He would consider him too dangerous a criminal to let loose on the community! It is neither sympathy nor justice that makes an appeal to the employer. But it is power. If a committee can go to the employer with this ultimatum: "We represent all the men and women in this shop. ”

“ Active labor men have all the dice loaded against them. All labor is on trial with Nichola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. It is bound up with all the fight that is going on for the closed shop and the determinations of the employers to smash the worker’s organizations. ”

“ The sale of labor involves the obeying of orders during certain hours specified in the contract. Here again the evil is greatest in the lowest grades of work, while the great majority of wage-earners are left a large measure of choice in the time and manner of their work. Where labor is severe and without joy to the worker, it appears to be little better than a form of slavery. Contrast the condition of the section hand, cursed and beaten by a brutal foreman, with that of the wage-earner in the locomotive-cab, self-respecting, self-directing, and trusted with the safety of property and lives. ”

“ They were organized out of the necessities of the situation. A single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer. He was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and family. ”

“ There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received. In forms irritating beyond expression employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. Under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and indifference draw high wages? ”

“ For example, the unfair labor practice described in § 8 (b) (1) is one 'to restrain or coerce' employees; in § 8 (b) (2) it is to 'cause or attempt to cause an employer'; in § 8 (b) (5) it is to 'require of employees'; and in § 8 (b) (6) it is to 'cause or attempt to cause an employer'. The scope of 'induce' and especially of 'encourage' goes beyond each of them.
c. To exempt peaceful picketing from the reach of § 8 (b) (4) would be to open the door to the customary means of enlisting the support of employees to bring economic pressure to bear on their employer. ”

“ The slave employer, if he finds he has been so unfortunate as to hire a sulky servant, who cannot be made to work to his advantage, has no remedy but to solicit from his owner a deduction from the price he has agreed to pay for his labour, on the same ground that one would from a livery-stable keeper, if he had engaged a horse to go a journey, but found that he was not strong or skilful enough to keep him upon the road. ”

“ He complains, especially in the matter of being taken on or discharged or put on overtime or night-work, indeed, with respect to the whole conditions of his employment, that little or no regard is paid to him as a human being. He is content to accept the theory of the Labour intellectuals—it is certainly not his own conception—that he is a wage-slave taken on and discharged just as it suits his employer’s interests, and that his labour is bought and sold on the same principles as any other raw material in industry. ”

“ You, who have but few dependents, or, perhaps, but one drudge dependent upon you, whether as servant, apprentice, or hired labourer, do not think that you have not an ample opportunity for exercising the duties of an employer of labour. Do not suppose that these duties belong to the great manufacturer with the population of a small town in his own factory, or to the landlord with vast territorial possessions, and that you have nothing to do with them. ”

“ Meanwhile the factory hands were ground down by more and more "economies." Fines were imposed for [229] coming late, for talking, for damages which were often purely imaginary. Those who were unable to do arithmetic had their wages simply reduced. They all cursed their employer and his son, for they saw the debauchery that was going on, and knew that they themselves were paying for it. ”

“ Many workers objected to what was called the waste of labor. It was pointed out that under the Socialistic rule, the product of labor had to go to labor, and as the building of the flying machine factory was not producing food or clothing, and the workers on it had to be supported by the labor of the whole community, it was making a distinct class of them, which was illegal. ”

“ Hence, when in one industrial centre the governing workers should seek better terms, similar demands from fellow laborers, as able to enforce them, would be heard elsewhere.
The employer of our typical city, even now often unable to find outside the unions the unemployed labor he must have, would then, should he attempt it, to a certainty fail. The thrifty wage-working householder, today a tenant fearful of loss of work, could then strike and stay out. ”

“ A striking worker remains an 'employee' at least as long as his job remains unfilled and he has not found other equivalent work. [9] Consequently, as the Court of Appeals stated in this case, 'If their jobs had not been filled or eliminated due to a decrease in production, the strikers were entitled to be treated as employees and to be given preference over other job applicants.' 366 F.2d at 128. ”

“ Labor has generally favored measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting where this extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, 250 mines, factories, and other places of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and safety provisions are enforced. A workman’s compensation law removes from the employee’s mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the ægis of economic liberty, is no longer free from state vigilance. ”

“ For a long time the workman had been drifting towards the status of a hired labourer, and was being pushed into the position of a landless and propertyless man without a guardian. After the plague, he found himself in an advantageous position, for he was a man whose services were sought, and not one who was trying to find an employer. ”

“ From the beginning the Board has recognized that a worker who has obtained equivalent employment is in a different position from one who has lost his job as well as his wages through an employer's unfair labor practice. In early decisions, the Board did not order reinstatement of workers who had secured such equivalent employment. ”

“ The wages paid for slaves, when they are hired for agricultural labour, do not differ at present, he says, from those which he pays for his free labourers. In both cases the hiring party boards the labourer, but, in addition to money and board, the slave-employer has to furnish clothing, and is subject, without redress, to any losses which may result from the carelessness or malevolence of the slave. He also has to lose his time if he is unwell, or when from any cause he is absent or unable to work. ”

“ The worker, wholly separated from the land and the tools, with his skill of craftmanship rendered useless, is sunk in the uniform mass of wage slaves. He sees his power of resistance broken by class divisions, perpetuated from outgrown industrial stages. His wages constantly grow less as his hours grow longer and monopolized prices grow higher. ”

“ The employer is bound by this act to pay the wages fixed and while the worker is not required to work, at the wages fixed, he is forbidden, on penalty of fine or imprisonment, to strike against them and thus is compelled to give up that means of putting himself on an equality with his employer which action in concert with his fellows gives him. ”

“ Another deplorable consequence of this inorganization is the disgust which workmen feel for their employment, in addition to the insufficiency of their wages. And this is quite conceivable, for nothing is done to render their labor attractive, either by variety of occupations, or by honorary rewards, or by proper care, or by remuneration proportionate to the benefits which their toil provides, or by the hope of rest after long years of industry. No—the country thinks not, cares not, either for their wants or their rights. ”

“ Justice BUTLER and I cannot accept the view that a 'labor dispute' emerges whenever an employer fails to respond to a communication from A, B, and C-irrespective of their race, character, reputation, fitness, previous or present employment suggesting displeasure because of his choice of employees and their expectation that in the future he will not fail to select men of their complexion. ”

“ Now it is an undeniable fact that the condition of many of the wage-workers of the country approximates to this: They must have food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their families, and the only thing they can offer in exchange for it is their labor. Suppose an honest and industrious man has some misfortune, as an accident, or illness, and loses employment. When once more able to work, he finds his old place filled and new places hard to find; but at last he finds a mercenary employer who agrees to give him half wages. ”

“ A l'époque de la manipulation l'engagé sera tenu de travailler sans augmentation de salaires suivant les besoins de l'établissement où il sera employé. (The employer can thus overwork his slaves as much as he pleases.) ”