Working class

“ And until the working class becomes conscious of itself as the only class that has a right to be, until the worker understands that he is exploited and bound by the power which his own unpaid labor places in the hands that exploit and bind him ... ”

“ The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production, that they may have steady employment without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small, and that they may get the wealth their labor produces, all of it, and enjoy with their families the fruits of their industry in comfortable and happy homes, abundant and wholesome food, proper clothing and all other things necessary to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” ”

“ “If they want to hang me, let them,” I said. “And on the scaffold I will shout ‘Freedom for the working class!’ And when I meet God Almighty I will tell him to damn my accusers and the accusers of the working class, the people who tend and develop and beautify His world.” ”

“ But America's strongest element is the wage-working class. Scientifically organized labor is the efficient and bloodless weapon of the proletariat in its accomplishment of industrial revolution; and, at the same time, it is "the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." ”

“ The working class must be emancipated by the working class.
Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.
Child labor must be abolished by the working class.
Society must be reconstructed by the working class.
The working class must be employed by the working class.
The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.
War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class. ”

“ Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,—a distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether. ”

“ 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 working millions who produce the wealth have little or nothing to show for it. There is widespread ignorance among them; industrial and social conditions prevail that defy all language properly to describe. The working class consist of a mass of human beings, men, women and children, in enforced competition with one another, in all of the circling hours of the day and night, for the sale of their labor power, and in the severity of the competition the wage sinks gradually until it touches the point of subsistence. ”

“ The working class, if it suffers only temporarily, never profits by it, since, by your own showing, they displace a portion of the national labour, without diminishing it, it is true, but also without increasing it. ”

“ If the employing class should put itself in opposition to this movement for the emancipation of the working class, the employing class would cease to exist; the wage system would be destroyed; industry would be reorganized on a new basis. ”

“ You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class? ”

“ As we have explained in speeches, tracts, and articles, we include in the working class all those who live exclusively or principally by means of their own labor, and who do not grow rich from the work of others.
"Thus, besides the wage earners, we should include in the working class the small farmers and small shop keepers, who tend more and more to drop to the level of the proletariat—in other words, all those who suffer from our present system of production on a large scale." ”

“ The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. ”

“ There is a working class—strong and happy—among both rich and poor; there is an idle class—weak, wicked, and miserable—among both rich and poor. ”

“ A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged between the exploiting propertied classes on the one hand, and the exploited propertyless class on the other. In this struggle the wage-working class cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of the present order at the hands of the dominant class.
The wage workers are, therefore, the most determined and irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling class. They suffer most from the curse of class rule. ”

“ Only a small part of the working class as yet is at heart of the working class. Most of us secretly—almost openly—despise the life of work, and dream and hope a time of fortune that will put us up among the masters and the idlers. ”

“ When he asserts, farther on, that the sufferings of the working class are inseparable from the progress of industry, and are necessary to the prosperity of the nation, he simply says that the prosperity of the bourgeois class presupposes as necessary the suffering of the laboring class. ”

“ RUFUS CHOATE AND DANIEL WEBSTER labor, say the critics. But every man who reads of the labor question knows that it means the movement of the men that earn their living with their hands; THAT ARE EMPLOYED, AND PAID WAGES: are gathered under roofs of factories, sent out on farms, sent out on ships, gathered on the walls. In popular acceptation, the working class means the men that work with their hands, for wages, so many hours a day, employed by great capitalists; that work for everybody else. Why do we move for this class? "Why," asks a critic, "don't you move FOR ALL WORKINGMEN?" ”

“ Why is it that he working class are in relative misery compared with the enormous amount of wealth that is produced?
I have already given you the answer: the employer is only concerned, while engaging you, to carry through certain operations for the purpose of placing the results of your labour on the market for sale. You know full well, all of you, that when you go into the mill or the factory to produce goods, those goods are not taken by the employer for his own personal consumption. ”

“ The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class. ”

“ The cause of the working class is still here and here to stay and will be crowned gloriously triumphant long after the oppressors and tyrants and all their fawning retainers have gone the way of flesh and passed from memory. ”

“ In addition, the working class is also recruited from the higher strata of society; a mass of small business men and of people living upon the interest of their capitals is precipitated into the ranks of the working class, and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. ”

“ The modern working class, although it has not learned all the needed lessons of the situation in which it finds itself, is nevertheless rapidly becoming free from capitalist illusions and is reorganizing itself accordingly, industrially and politically. ”

“ On the other hand the working class is becoming more and more organized, and the opinion is very generally held among working-men that the causes of material and intellectual poverty can be eliminated only by having the means of production held in common. ”

“ But that vast portion, lastly, of the working class which, raw and half-developed, has long lain half-hidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes,—to this vast residuum we may with great propriety give the name of Populace. ”

“ The harmfulness of these organizations is very clear, but why are there certain kinds of workers who join them? This is, first of all, because the working class is not all of one kind, is not homogeneous. It is not sufficiently united. It is in different stages of development: It is partly connected to the petty bourgeoisie, partly with the peasantry and the individual producers. The culture of the present society—the universities, schools, literature—all influences the working class which is a participant in this society. ”

“ The new system was a system of closely aggregated wage-earners, producing goods for a common employer, who provided the machinery, the power, and the superintendence, and sold the product of their labour for his own profit. This feature of the Industrial Revolution was as important as its redistribution of industry. It meant a considerable loss of independence among the working class, and it meant the birth of an entirely new class, the employers of labour, whose wealth and importance were destined to rival and eventually to surpass that of the landed gentry. ”

“ But the field from which I expect the most direct and extensive harvest to the working class is the development of their own personal [Pg 313] efficiency. At present neither employers nor labourers seem fully alive to the resources which this field is capable of yielding, if it were wisely and fairly cultivated. Both classes are often so bent on immediate advantage that they lose sight of their real and enduring interest. ”

“ The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry. ”