If, in the
present chaotic and shameful struggle for existence, when organized society
offers a premium on greed, cruelty, and deceit, men can be found who stand
aloof and almost alone in their determination to work for good rather than
gold, who suffer want and persecution rather than desert principle, who can
bravely walk to the scaffold for the good they can do humanity, what may we
expect from men when freed from the grinding necessity of selling the better
part of themselves for bread? The terrible conditions under which labor is
performed, the awful alternative if one does not prostitute talent and morals
in the service of mammon; and the power acquired with the wealth obtained by
ever so unjust means, combined to make the conception of free and voluntary
labor almost an impossible one.
And yet, there are examples
of this principle even now
