In all the great cities, where they are segregated
in slum ghettos by hundreds of thousands and by millions, their
misery becomes beastliness. No caveman ever starved as chronically
as they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered
with rottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard
and for as long hours as they toil.
In Chicago there is a woman who toiled sixty hours per week. She was
a garment worker. She sewed buttons on clothes. Among the Italian
garment workers of Chicago, the average weekly wage of the
dressmakers is 90 cents, but they work every week in the year. The
average weekly wage of the pants finishers is $1.31, and the average
number of weeks employed in the year is 27.85. The average yearly
earnings of the dressmakers is $37; of the pants finishers, $42.4l.
Such wages means no childhood for the children, beastliness of
living, and starvation for all.
Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter whenever
he feels like working for it.
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