and no one need buy unless a profit appears in the labor. No one is responsible for him or to him—he is a free man and all modern obligations are paid in cash. If, through an improved process, the use of a better machine, or overproduction, his services are no longer needed, he may be discharged; and, if he can find no other master before his slender savings are exhausted, he should starve in silence and die with the dignity befitting his high estate as a free man.
WAGE SLAVES ARE DIFFERENT
Environment is the ruling force in the lives of men—they are moulded and moved by the things about them—their ideas come from their experiences—their thoughts and actions are determined by the manner in which they get their livings—and in a world so changed by the use of machinery, we find that the modern working class differs very much from the slaves and serfs that preceded it. The slaves worked with the simplest tools that moved as fast as they moved. Their ignorant, untravelled minds groped but a little way beyond the horizon that bounded them. They took no care of the morrow—their master did that. Besotted by their toil and the very fact of their slavery, they seldom sighed for other than a better master. History records a few great slave rebellions, but usually the servile revolts were not of their own making. In most of them, they furnished numbers, but not initiative, and when the affair was concluded either served new masters, or returned to the old ones and the punishments meted out to them.
The serf differed little from the slave. He worked with very little better tools and endured about the same abuse (in France his condition was particularly abject) and, though he had somewhat more of intelligence, he only stirred in revolt when led by adventurous bandit chieftains, or when urged by the rising and militant Capitalists. Left to himself, he might have continued to
