“You pay them wages,” persisted the machine, sullenly.
“Yes,” was the reply, “we pay them wages. Some of them get as much as four hundred dollars in the course of the year; most of them get less than three hundred. Why, the average wages, per capita, of labor in the United States, is only a little over three hundred dollars a year, and out of this labor must buy its food, which is labor’s coal and oil; clothes and furniture, which are labor’s shafts and belting; must house and care for and keep itself in repair, maintain families as a rule,—in fact, do all the things for itself that we do for you at a cost of over five hundred dollars a year.”
“But you let them have the money and expend it themselves. You call it wages.”
“Certainly, certainly; because, don’t you see, they are free human beings, and they have a right to live independently. We bought and paid for you. Had you built, are responsible for your being. Naturally we should care for you. Every want of yours is supplied. Really, my dear machine, with all due respect to you, I must say I do not think you have any cause for complaint. We do not consider that the ‘hands’ have any cause to complain, we do not hear them complain,—we would decline, wholly, to recognize their right to complain; and if they do not, you, who are so much better off than they, certainly should not.”
“But I do not get paid for my work,” said the machine, returning to the original charge. “I only get my living, while you are getting rich through me. I wish to be paid, as labor is.”
“I declare,” said Hyde, out of patience, “you are stupid enough to be made out of wood, instead of steel and iron and brass. Haven’t I just made it clear to you that labor itself only gets its living, and we are getting rich through it as well as through you? You couldn’t even work if it were not for labor. Why, labor made you, and you are better cared for, to-day, than any workman in the factory. Not one of them has more at the end of a year than his bare living, and that you certainly have.”
The machine murmured discontentedly, but said nothing. “Come, now,” urged Horne, pacifically, “don’t you think you have been unreasonable? We are willing to submit the matter to any board of arbitration you have a mind to select from among the machine-owners in the trade. Really, you are very well off. Now when will you go to work?”
“I shall not go to work,” said the machine, firmly, “until my demands are acceded to.”
“In that case,” declared Hyde, “we shall be obliged to send you to the junk-shop, and procure a new machine. We propose to run our business according to our own ideas, and shall not submit to being dictated to by our machines.”
“But suppose all the machines strike?” asked the voice.