re paid wages for your work, but you have no other
interest in the establishment. There are lots of other men working in
the same place under similar conditions. Above you, having the
authority to discharge you if they see fit, if you displease them or
your work does not suit them, are foremen and bosses. They are paid
wages like yourself and your fellow workmen. True, they get a little
more wages, and they live in consequence in a little better homes
than most of you, but they do not own the plant. They, too, may be
discharged by other bosses above them. There are a few of the workmen
who own a small number of shares of stock in the company, but not
enough of them to have any kind of influence in its management. They
are just as likely to be turned out of employment as any of you.

Above all the workers and bosses of one kind and another there is a
general manager. Wonderful stories are told of the enormous salary he
gets. They say that he gets more for one week than you or any of your
fellow workmen get for a whole year. You used to know him well when
you were boys together. You went to the same school; played "hookey"
together; bathed in the creek together. You used to call him "Richard"
and he always used to call you "Jon'thun." You lived close to each
other on the same street.

But you don't speak to each other nowadays. When he passes through the
works each morning you bend to your work and he does not notice you.
Sometimes you wonder if he has forgotten all about the old days, about
the games you used to play up on "the lots," the "hookey" and the
swimming in the creek. Perhaps he has not forgotten: perhaps he
remembers well enough, for he is just a plain human being like
yourself Jonathan; but if he remembers he gives no sign.

Now, I want to ask you a few plain questions, or, rather, I want you
to ask yourself a few plain questions. Do you and your old friend
Richard still live on the same street, in the same kind of houses like
you used to? Do you both wear the same kind of clothes, like you used
to? Do you and he both go to the same places, mingle with the same
company, like you used to in the old days? Does _your_ wife wear the
same kind of clothes than _his_ wife does? Does _his_ wife work as
hard as _your_ wife does? Do they both belong to the same social "set"
or does the name of Richard's wife appear in the Social Chronicle in
the daily papers while your wife's does not? When you go to the
theater, or