With the lash of hunger cutting him and the wolf of want at the throats of his wife and children, the “free-contracting” hired laborer, the wage-earner, promptly and voluntarily seeks an employer—“master,” and “voluntarily” “contracts” to produce a dollar’s worth of value for twenty or forty cents in wages and thus “voluntarily” degrades himself and thus “voluntarily” submits to have his wife and little children robbed of the abundant livings he wishes to provide for them. This is the freedom, the free contract, of the wage-system, the present (the third) form of class-labor system. This glorious freedom of the modern wage-slave is easily seen in the picture opposite the title-page of this book.
The “freedom” of the wage-earner in thus making a contract, with starvation behind him, vagrancy laws reaching for him, police, militia, soldiers, jails and bull-pens ready for him, this freedom is about as complete as that of a citizen facing an armed and threatening highwayman who commands, “Hands up!” The wage earner and the held-up citizen are free to comply, free to surrender and free to be robbed, and also free to decline and take the consequences—all “voluntarily” of course.
No one is free indeed till he is free in the most fundamental activity of life, the activity of getting a living.
In the evolution of mankind the worker has, in some parts of the world, secured:
Freedom to investigate,
Freedom of thought,
Freedom of assemblage,
Freedom of speech,
Freedom of the press,
Freedom of suffrage—for male workers,