Social labor

“ The problem, which is both social and political, appears in a class that cannot or will not engage in manual labor, the well-educated or fairly-educated sons of men of fair income and a social position. ”

“ By virtue of his private ownership of the social tool—made and used by the co-operative labor of the working class—the employer has the economic power to appropriate to himself, as a capitalist, what is produced by the social labor of the working class. ”

“ Permit me to-day to make the Labor Movement, the so-called Social Question, the subject of my remarks. In view of the close connection between the political and the social conditions of a nation, every constituent has a well-founded right to demand of his representative a social confession of faith besides his political one. ”

“ So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society—so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes.... ”

“ The division of social labor [102] is a law of society. It is traceable back to the primitive household itself, and is a result of underlying differences. The great “cause which determines the manner by which work is divided is diversity of capacity.” ”

“ I know these social work fellows and they are a white-livered lot. And the men they try to deal with respect and understand only one thing—strength.”
“But labor doesn’t work through social workers. It’s a force by itself.” ”

“ There is no logical reason why a social worker should not be active in the service of either or both and yet remain in his calling, as the bricklayer, lawyer, or laborer may.
The labor movement and social revolution and social work are three things of three entirely different kinds. The labor movement is a tide in human affairs. ”

“ Hence the moral obligation of every owner of property so to use his fortune that it may be of use not to himself alone but to the community as well, especially to those of his fellow men who are less favorably placed than himself.
The grand Labor Movement of the last forty years has had a wholesome effect in this respect. As it has awakened in the workman the consciousness of his social rights, so has it sharpened in the possessing class the sense of social duty. ”

“ It is, in fact, the recognition that the class struggle of the workers inevitably leads to a higher social order that furnishes common ground for the intellectual idealists and practical trade unionists in the political and economic struggles of organized labor. ”

“ Moreover, it concentrated the laboring population in great centres of industry, thus creating a class consciousness which demanded that attention should be given to the rights of labor, created a new ideal of the dignity of toil and gave to the world that vision of the inclusive cause of labor which was destined to advance in a marvelous way to the social progress of mankind. ”

“ Turning from this pitiful picture of the English laborer of the sixteenth century, from the horrible social tyranny that found expression in every page of the English statute book, More tells us that in Utopia the aim of legislation is the true social, industrial, moral, and intellectual welfare of the whole community, of which the labor-class is the most important. ”

“ But can we deny that our present social life, founded upon Capitalist rule and Wage-Labor, moves in a direction which, if it should continue unchanged, must bring us with every passing day nearer to the social conditions just depicted? ”

“ There has never been a free people, a civilized nation, a real republic on this earth. Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric.
Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact. ”

“ The disputes and struggles connected with labor, and the conditions of the poorest classes of the community, have directed the attention of many thoughtful men and women to the social and economic problems of the day, and in all parts of the world these are presenting themselves to educationists, social reformers, politicians and statesmen, as the matters which above all others are urgently demanding careful study and investigation. ”

“ The principal expressions of class-consciousness in the hand-working classes in our day are labor unions and that wider, vaguer, more philosophical or religious movement, too various for definition, which is known as socialism. ”

“ In the socialist period, indeed, all those who shall wish to work will be able to do so, by choosing freely their favorite kind of socially useful labor, and all will be able to consume the social products proportionally to the labor they have furnished. ”

“ The multiplication of activities, the choice of occupation, and the division of labor have multiplied the economic groups by the thousand. Following this, natural voluntary social groups spring up on every hand. ”

“ Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work. ”

“ In exchange for the labor that they furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. ”

“ This fact sums up the whole socialistic philosophy: to gradually train the workingman to justice, encourage him to labor, lift him to the sublimity of devotion, by increase of wages, profit-sharing, distinctions, and rewards. ”

“ Then there is the apparently inevitable antagonism between labour and capital, between the employer and employed, which drives the worker to Social Democracy, as offering the prospect of his becoming his own master and enjoying the whole fruits of his labour. ”

“ Then the workers will be the sovereign-citizens, the rulers of this earth. They will build houses and live therein; they will plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof. The labor question will have been settled, and the working class, emancipated from the fetters of wage-slavery, will begin the real work of civilizing and humanizing the human race. ”

“ Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor, arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society; the direction of labor, State business, law, science, art, etc. ”

“ I think it plain that this voice of communities and ages, ‘Give us wealth, and the good household shall exist,’ is vicious, and leaves the whole difficulty untouched. It is better, certainly, in this form, ‘Give us your labor, and the household begins.’ I see not how serious labor, the labor of all and every day, is to be avoided ”

“ Turning to the breadwinner as an employee, we are confronted with the gravest questions now occupying public attention: with the organization of labor, the strike, the lockout, the rights of capital, the problem of the unemployed, and of the unskilled laborer. The truth about these matters, even if one were so fortunate as to possess the truth about them, is not to be stated in a paragraph or a chapter. {29} Only in so far as they directly concern the friendly visitor to the families of the least fortunate class of workers, can questions of employment be even mentioned in these pages. ”

“ The principles of Labour policy which I have outlined are generally in the direction of freedom and in its best sense [306] individualism, looking rather to the development in industry of co-operation than to struggle and the use of power to settle differences and express the balance of economic forces. But industrial freedom and individualism impose correlative responsibilities on all citizens, especially in regard to the maintenance of efficient social services. ”

“ We now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organisation of the workers. What should be the remuneration of labor—what the share of the product taken respectively by the individual, the municipality, and the State?
The answer depends on the answer to a previous question. Is the organisation of the unemployed to be undertaken in order to transform them into self-supporting, self-respecting citizens; or is it to be carried on as a form of exploitation, utilising pauper labor for the production of profit for non-paupers? ”

“ Our object is to labor for the benefit of the whole, to retrench in our expenditures; to be prudent and economical; to study well the necessities of the community, and to pass by its many useless wants; to study to secure life, health, wealth, and union, which is power and influence to any community ”

“ Imagine such a suspension of labor in any community, and you will see how true it is that mankind really live from hand to mouth; that it is the daily labor of the community that supplies the community with its daily bread. ”

“ But such education, such choice of work, such short hours of labor, such leisure for self-culture, where are all these to-day for our laboring population? A tremendous individuality, joined to robust health, may make its way upward out of the ranks of the handworkers to-day; but all normal individuality is crushed out between the grinding-stones of the industrial mill. ”

“ They find themselves subjected to almost identical conditions in all sections and begin to recognize themselves as a class, regardless of races, nationalities or creeds. Recognition of class generates that sense of duty known as the social conscience—the moral sense of the working class. ”

“ Labor and Politics—Put a community in possession of knowledge by means of which they can obtain what they need by the labor of their bodies and their brains, then, instead of being paupers they will be free, independent and happy, and these distinctions of classes will cease, and there will be but one class, one grade, one great family. ”

“ The same is true of the large array of people who, in the domestic and ecclesiastical institutions, are teaching the children at home or in the schools and churches ; of the policemen and prison officials who are dealing with anti-social classes ; of the charity workers and pauper overseers who are dealing with the sub-social classes ; these are fitting social material for society, just as the other technical workers are fitting natural material for society's uses. ”

“ In our perverted society—in the society called civilized—we need, above all things, to speak of manual labor, because the chief fault of our society has been, and up to the present time still is, the striving to rid ourselves of manual labor, and without mutual concessions to profit by the labor of the poor, uneducated, and indigent classes who are in a state of slavery akin to that which obtained in antiquity. ”

“ Privately owned industry and production for individual profit are no longer compatible with social progress and have ceased to work out to humane and civilized ends. ”

“ I. Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture, and since universal productive labor is possible only through society, therefore to society, that is to all its members, belongs the collective product of labor. ”

“ The other requisites for rendering labour attractive would, they think, be found in the execution of all labour by social groups, to any number of which the same individual might simultaneously belong, at his or her own choice: their grade in each being determined by the degree of service which they were found capable of rendering, as appreciated by the suffrages of their comrades. ”

“ The industrialist and the communist alike belong to this class. To them, human nature is uninteresting, and the ends of life are simple—usually the maximizing of production. The purpose of social organization is to secure these simple ends. ”

“ An ill service was done to the working class by utterances on marriage and the family, which gave the ruling classes who keep the workers out of their rights the plea that they were maintaining the fundamental principles of social order. ”

“ Others think the same; they see that the laborer's discontent is not all a protest against his hard physical conditions. He wants more social equality, more equality of status in the industrial world. ”

“ The problem of the social unrest must seek for its source in all three classes of society! Two classes are employer and employee, the third is the great middle class, looking on. What is the relationship between the dominating employing figure in American industrial life and the men who work? ”

“ But I wish to make it clear, in closing this chapter, that the social worker as a citizen is as much interested in these hopes for radical economic reforms as any one else can be, though she does not regard them as her special business. ”

“ The working class will be free, and all humanity disenthralled.
The workers are the saviours of society (applause) ; the redeemers of the race; and when they have fulfilled their great historic mission, men and women can walk the highlands and enjoy the vision of a land without masters and without slaves, a land regenerated and resplendent in the triumph of Freedom and Civilization. ”

“ The Society farms out no girls of sixteen with strong arms. For them it finds ways of earning an honest living at such wages as their labor commands, homes in the West, if they wish it, where good husbands, not hard masters, are waiting for them. ”

“ In a million new directions forms of honoured and remunerative social labour are opening up before the feet of the modern man, which his ancestors never dreamed of; and day by day they yet increase in numbers and importance. ”

“ It increases strength, by placing the individual in a vital organization, which is in communication with the source of life, and which distributes and circulates life with the highest activity; and at the same time, by its [636] compound economies, it reduces the work to be done to a minimum.
27.—In vital society labor will become attractive. Loving companionship in labor, and especially the mingling of the sexes, makes labor attractive. The present division of labor between the sexes separates them entirely. The woman keeps house, and the man labors abroad. ”