The Alaska citizen., 1911-09-25
VICTOR L. BERGER


 market And since the mans labor cannot be separated from the man, the workingman himself has become a commodity. whose time is bought and sold The workingman. or rather his labor power, is subject to the same conditions as every other ware. especially to the condi- tions of supply and demand and to competition.
 The workingman labor. or rather his time. is bought now in the open market by the highest bidder on the one hand from the lowest seller Cn the other.
 And the employers, that is. the master class, care only to buy the workingman's time when he is young. strong and healthy. When he is sick or when he gets old the em- ployer has no use for him.
 The employer is not in business for the sake of charity. He is in business in order to make profits to make money.
 And because of this. we see that our so-Called free workers are some times worse off-from the purely economic point of view-than the blacks were under slavery before the war.
 The negro was property and rep resented about sl.000 in value sometimes more. sometimes less. He was property which his master own ed. Therefore the master. if he had any sense, took good care of his human chattel The master was eager to have the slave as long and is as good condition as posSibl. When the slave became sick or when he died the master lost money,
 The case is entirely different with the white workingman. the so-called free workingman. When the white man is sick or when he dies the employer usually loses nothing.
 And high tariff, or tariff for rev enues only, or free trade, like the flowers that bloom in the spring have nothing to do with the case. UaughterD
 The fact is that the capitalist,
 The fact is that the capitalist. the average employer today. is more con cerned about a valuable horse. about fine dog. about good automobile than he is about his employe ol about his employees family.
 In most cases the employment is absolutely impersonal. The employ name or even by number. This is invariably the case with stock company where the shareholders are scattered all over a city. q state. or all over the country; sometimes over Europe.
 Nor can any individual capitalist or employer, no matter how charit' ably inclined he may be, change any. thing in these conditions. A business or corporation that should try to run its plant on a charity basis would not last long.
 The Worst Employer Sets the Pace
 As matter of fact, under the pres ent system it is usually the worst employer who sets the pace. The em ployer who can fleece and skin his workingmen best is best equipped for the fight in the open market. He can produce his goods the cheapest
 Thus competition has come to have a fearful meaning to the work ing class.
 On the one hand, it compels the employers to get their labor as cheaply as possible; on the other hand, it compels the workingmen to compete with one another for jobs.
 Competition among the worker S h competition. It is a question as to who is to live and who is to starve It is often a question as to whether man is to stay with his family or become tramp.
 And the tariff has nothing to do with that question, either.
 There is always free trade in la bor
 In many cases now the laborer is compelled to disrupt his family and send his wife and children to the shop or factory.
 For this is the greatest curse of machinery-or. rather, the individual monopoly of machinery-that capi- tai can be coined out of women and even out of infancy. Thus, not alone are men turned into wares, govern ed by demand and supply, but they are also made to scramble for a precarious living with their wives. sisters and children.
 In the cotton factories of the South from where my Democratic free trade friends come. the women and children compose two-thirds of the working fierce. Very similar are the conditions in our large cigar and tobacco factories and in the work shops of many other industries.
 Laws against this sort of thing are almost useless as long as the present economic system prevails.
 For while it is notorious that the wages thus earned by whole family do not on an average exceed those of the head of the family in where it has not become habitual to employ women and chil- dren, the abuse is still daily gaining ground.
 And the reason is very simple. Women and children do not go into the factory for the fun of it; they are brought there by dire necessity, by competition And it is competi- tion, too. that compels the little of the Southern poor white people to go to the cotton factory and offer their young lives to be turned into dollars. Here are the figures of children from 10 to 15 years of age, inclusive, employed in 1900 in II Southern states, with the percentage of the total number of of that age period:
 Child Labor in the South. States Males Females.