system, but most others—even those who were the sufferers—thought that this was really a “law of nature”, that it couldn’t be otherwise. Nevertheless, chattel slavery has gone. But while it lasted this was its essence: Certain human beings were compelled to labor and the wealth which their labor produced went, not to them, but to certain other human beings who did not labor at all but lolled in luxury on the labor of their slaves.

To-day, fellow-sufferers, they tell us that we are free. But are we? If you will think for a moment you will see that we are not free at all. We have simply changed one form of slavery for another. Then it was chattel-slavery, now it is wage-slavery. For that which was the essence of chattel-slavery is the essence of wage slavery. It is only a difference in form. The chattel-slave was compelled to work by physical force; the wage-slave is compelled to work by starvation. The product of the chattel-slave’s labor was taken by his master; the product of the wage-slave’s labor is taken by the employer.

The United States Government has made a study of the wealth producing power of the wage-slaves, and has shown that the average worker produces $2,451 a year. The government has also made a study of wages in the U.S. which shows that the average worker gets $437 a year. This means that [49] the average employer takes away from the average wage-slave $2,014 a year. In the good old days the master took away the wealth produced by the slave in the simplest form; today he takes it away in the form of profits. But in one respect the wage-slave is worse off than the chattel slave. Under chattel slavery the master owned the man and the land; he had to feed and clothe the man. Under wage-slavery the man feeds and clothes himself. Under chattel slavery it was to the interest of the owner to give the slave work and to keep him from starving to death. Under wage-slavery, if the man goes out of work the employer doesn’t care; that is no loss to him; and if the man dies there are millions of others eager to take his place, because, as I said before, they must either work for him or starve. There is one very striking parallel between the two cases. To-day there are many people who say that this system is divinely appointed—is a law of nature—just as they said the same thing of chattel slavery. Well, there are millions of workers who say that it is wrong.

[49]

Under chattel-slavery black workers were robbed; under wage-slavery all the workers are robbed. The Socialist Party says that this robbing shall cease; that no worker black or white shall be 

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