United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But no provision exists against extra work at other jobs, and very many people do extra work, because the official rates do not afford a living wage. This is not the fault of the Government, at any rate as regards the major part; it is due chiefly to war and blockade. When the day's work is over, a great deal of time has to be spent in fetching food and water and other necessaries of life.
In the other shops and factories and in the trades it is like McIver's factory, the men are not so well organized." Again the Interpreter interrupted. "The working people of Millsburgh, generally, receive the highest wage paid anywhere in the country, do they not?" "Ah, but surely that is not the question, comrade.
We now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day paid without reservation. The people are sufficiently used to high wages to make supervision unnecessary. The minimum wage is paid just as soon as a worker has qualified in his production which is a matter that depends upon his own desire to work.
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated and furnished by innumerable workers in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage. The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.
Of all the gentlemen of my acquaintance, I should fancy you were the very last who could afford to indulge in that amusement." "Miss Estelle, is this your first, second or third Punic war? You and St. Elmo, or rather, my cousin, 'The Quarrelsome, seem to wage it in genuine Carthaginian style." "I never signed a treaty, sir, and, consequently, keep no records."
Human needs would be satisfied with a fraction of it. But the real difficulty in the shortening of hours lies elsewhere. Here, as in the parallel case of the minimum wage, the danger is that the attempt to alter things too rapidly may dislocate the industrial machine. We ought to attempt such a shortening as will strain the machine to a breaking point, but never break it.
Will you free your own collection of underpaid, overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long ago? Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you. Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your kitchen and wherever your money is spent.
And certainly the ladies never found themselves burdened with the anxiety of losing a weekly wage, in Great Titchfield Street, and the prospect of difficulty in finding one to replace it. "I'm home, aunt," she announced, entering the shop. "So I see," remarked Mrs. Mills. Two customers were being served at the newspaper counter, and two were waiting on the tobacco side.
But now we are in a better position to describe the houses and ways of the Utopian townships about the Lake of Lucerne, and to glance a little more nearly at the people who pass. You figure us as curiously settled down in Utopia, as working for a low wage at wood-carving, until the authorities at the central registry in Paris can solve the perplexing problem we have set them.
"You'd reduce my screw, would ye?" roared Captain Hamilton Miggs, working himself into a fury. "Me that has worked for ye, and slaved for ye, and risked my life for ye. You try it on, guv'nor; just you try it on! Suppose I let out that little story o' the painting out o' the marks where would the firm of Girdlestone be then! I guess you'd rather double my wage than have that yarn goin' about."
Word Of The Day