CHAPTER XII.
SELF-HELP FOR LABOR.
IF the laboring man doesn’t want to be in a state of slavery, he must refrain from putting himself into chains.
He is a good deal like the rest of us; he always blames somebody else for his condition. He won’t be able to get out of trouble until he lays most of the blame on himself.
If a man feels obliged to enter into business relations with a lion he does not begin by putting his head into the animal’s mouth. If a workingman begins life with the belief, which seems prevalent now, that all employers will enslave a man if they can, he should not allow himself to be in such condition that he cannot take care of himself. Why, even a dog or a cat going into a strange room spends its first moments in looking around to see how it can get out again in case of necessity.
Employers as a class have so many sins to answer for that there will be lively times for them on judgment day, I suppose, but that is no reason why the employee should be a fool. If a
man sticks a knife into you, and is sent to State’s prison for it, his sentence punishes him, but it does not pay your doctor’s bill, or make up to you what you have lost in time and money while you have been lying in bed under the surgeon’s care.