“Then the woman broke out. She said: ‘You are dressed in a superb satin’--it was at a social function--‘and every dollar of its cost was earned by a negro slave on your plantation.’ I answered, ‘You are equally well dressed. Will you tell me who earned the money that paid for your satin gown?’ Then, Cousin Arthur, I lost my temper and my manners. I told her that while we in Virginia profited by the labor of our negroes, we gave them, as the reward of their labor, every desire of their hearts and, besides that, an assurance of support in absolute comfort for their old age, and for their children; while the laboring class in New York, from whose labor she profited, and whose toil purchased her gown, had nobody to care for them in infancy or old age, in poverty and illness and suffering. ‘It is all wrong on both sides,’ I said. ‘The toilers ought to have the full fruits of their toil in both cases. The luxury of the rich is a robbery of the poor always and everywhere. There ought not to be any such thing anywhere. The woman who made your underclothing was robbed when you bought it at the price you did. You wronged and defrauded the silk spinners and weavers and the sewing women when you bought your gown. Worse than that; you have among you men who have accumulated great fortunes in manufactures and commerce. How did they do it? Was it not in commerce by paying the producers for their products less than they were worth? Was it not in manufactures by paying men and women and children less than they have earned? Was not the great Astor estate based upon a shrewd robbery of the Indian trappers and hunters? And has it not been swelled to its present proportions by the growth of a city to whose growth the Astors have never contributed a single dollar? Isn’t the whole thing a wrong and a robbery? Isn’t the “Song of the Shirt” a reflection of truth? Isn’t there slavery in New York as actually as in Virginia, and isn’t it infinitely more cruel?’