Quotation from: War of the Classes

Written by: Jack London


A capitalist such as Collis P. Huntington, and his name is Legion,
after a long life spent in buying the aid of countless legislatures,
will wax virtuously wrathful, and condemn in unmeasured terms "the
dangerous tendency of crying out to the Government for aid" in the
way of labor legislation. Without a quiver, a member of the
capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-
laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep
maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with
a brick. He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an
unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take
it or leave it," knowing that to leave it means to die of hunger,
and in the next breath, when the organizer entices that laborer into
a union, will storm patriotically about the inalienable right of all
men to work. In short, the chief moral concern of either side is
with the morals of the other side. They are not in the business for
their moral welfare, but to achieve the enviable position of the
non-scab who gets more than he gives.

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