It may seem exorbitant to say that the "immense majority" of us are economic slaves, yet a very little consideration will, I think, convince that we are.
Workingmen are dependent on their employers under conditions worse than negro slavery. For a slave owner had an interest in the life of his slave just as a farmer has an interest in the life of his stock. He therefore fed his slaves and did not overwork them. Nor was a slave subject to losing his job. The factory owner, on the contrary, not being the owner of his factory hands, is free to dismiss them as soon as they are worn out, and it is to his interest, by speeding up his machinery, to get the most work out of his hands possible, regardless whether he is overworking them; for as soon as they show signs of overwork he has but to dismiss them and employ a younger generation. Nor can it be said of workingmen that they have leisure for education, politics, or enjoyment. Now the last census shows that our industrial population numbers 21,000,000.
In the second place, the farmer works himself as hard—if not harder—than the factory owner works his factory hand. He is driven by the same necessity as the factory owner—the necessity of making money.[21] There are of course a few large farmers who own enough land to work it as the factory owner works his factory—by the use of machinery and men. But these are few, and it is the extraordinary economy that these men make in working their farms that obliges the small farmer to work night as well as day to make a bare living out of his land. Now by the last census the farming population in the United States numbers 30,000,000.
And what has been said of the workingman is true of the clerk and domestic; and what has been said of the small farmer is true of the small tradesman. Now clerks, domestics, and tradesmen number 30,000,000. Summing up we have:
| Industrial population | 21,000,000 |
| Farmers | 30,000,000 |
| Clerks, domestics and tradesmen | 30,000,000 |
| 81,000,000 |
out of a total population of 90,000,000 are economic slaves.
And of the 9,000,000 that remain, how many are economically free?
These are in part teachers, physicians, and lawyers. I leave it to teachers to tell us how much time they can call their own. As to the rest, it is the dream of a young doctor to get a large practice; and when his dream is realized, how much leisure does he enjoy? He is at the mercy of his practice, not only weekdays, but Sundays—days and nights. He is the slave of his own practice. It is the dream of the young lawyer to get rich clients and handle big cases. When he gets them, he discovers that he must have an office that costs between $30,000 and $50,000 a year to take care of them, and that he must earn these large sums before there is a penny left for himself. So he too is the slave of his own office.
But further than this: Our great business men—amongst them the very greatest—I have seen with my own eyes slowly sink under the burden of the very institutions their own genius had created. They too have become the slaves of their own creations.
So we are all slaves, the greatest and the least of us, with exceptions so few that they are hardly worth mentioning. And how do these exceptions use their leisure? It were better not too closely to inquire. Too much leisure is as detrimental to happiness and progress as too much work. The enormous increase of lunacy in late years is a straw that shows how the stream runs. Because of too much work or too much leisure the race is marching with fatal speed toward general prostration of nerve, of body, and of mind.