n't work, and
they have got to leave him enough strength and ambition to propagate
his species or the rich people can't get their work done in the next
generation. And that is all that they are bound to leave him.

They own the railroads, the mills, the factories, and all the tools
and implements of trade and commerce, and the workingman has only one
thing to sell. That is his labor, his life; and he has to sell that to
the highest bidder.

There are only a few of these men who own the earth and all of its
fullness. There are millions and millions of the people who do the
work, and if you can keep these millions and millions disorganized and
competing with each other, they will keep wages down themselves
without any help from the bosses. (Loud applause). On the other hand,
there are so few men who own the earth and the tools that they find it
perfectly easy to combine with each other and regulate the price of
their products, and they have learned better than to compete, and
there is no way for the wit of man to make and interpret any law which
will ever set them to competing again. They have managed to control
the price of their products, and charge what they see fit and all they
need is to buy their raw material in the open markets of the world as
cheaply as they can, and labor is the principal raw material that they
use. So of course they want free trade in labor, and protection in
commodities; and they have always had it, and our wise Americans that
are the marvel of the day, including the working people, have
cheerfully given them protection in the commodities that they sell and
free trade in the labor which they buy. (Applause). And they thought
by protecting the Steel Trust, so there can't be any foreign
competition that it will make the Steel Trust so rich that they can
afford to pay high prices to their working men. It is one thing to
make a man rich enough so he can afford to pay high wages; it is
another thing to make him pay. (Laughter).

So the employer and the capitalist have combined in all industry, and
they fix the price to suit themselves and insist that the workingman
shall come to them individually and unorganized and compete with each
other for a day's labor, so they can buy labor at the smallest cost
and if, perchance, there are not working men enough here, they want
the ports of the world opened so they can draw on China or Japan or
any other country on the face of the earth, and get working men