"I have heard your story. Now listen to mine. I'm not without hope of enlisting your sympathy. Not for myself: I need, and will have, the sympathy of no man; but for the cause for which I fight, for which I hope and believe I shall be able to persuade you to fight. My mother was a poor woman--a woman of the people; my father--my God! the irony of it--a gentleman. He was, if the truth were known, something more than a gentleman. We are all gentlemen to-day, or think we are, and one has to make a distinction. He was more than a gentleman. He was an aristocrat. He was more, even, than an aristocrat; but we will not talk further of that now. She was my mother, but not his wife. She was the mother of his child, and he left her and her child to starve. We did not starve; but I pass over those years. When I was ten, she broke down, worked out, worn out, wearied out. Then I took over her burden. No matter what my work, no matter who my employer. There are thousands of such employers as he; there are millions of such workers as I--workers whom no law protects. You may not be cruel to a cat or dog; you may not over-work a horse. These are offences which are punishable by law. But your fellow-men and fellow-women, your clerk, your shop-assistant, your warehouse-man--these you may starve, sweat, over-work, underpay, these you may do to death if you like, and none shall say you nay. The sweating, the over-work, and the underpay are the least of the evils they endure. "The one and only aim of most employers is making money. And 'making' money means _taking_ money, the money which is the rightful property of others--means, in point of fact, swindling. But a good business man is shy of swindling his customers. The customer is a free agent. If he discovers he is being swindled he will take his custom elsewhere, and loss of custom means loss of money, which will not suit your business man. So he must needs look for somebody else to sweat and swindle--somebody who cannot take himself elsewhere at choice; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the somebodies are the unfortunate employees. They must be made to do the greatest possible amount of work at the least possible rate of pay. And that they be compelled to endure this wholesale blood-sucking and robbery, they must of necessity be kept in a state of subjection, of fear, of slavery, and bondage. All feeling of independence, of having a soul or a conscience to call their own, must be taken from them. They are the chattels of their master, the creatures of his will, depending--they and their wife and child, if wife or child there be--upon his whim and pleasure for the roof which covers their head, for the clothes they wear, for the very food which keeps body and soul together. Let them once feel any sense of independence--let them once feel that they can obtain shelter and clothes and food at the hands of another employer, and they will no longer consent to be sweated and robbed, underfed, underpaid, and