She turned out hats so rapidly that the forewoman, urged on by
Mr. Himberg, the proprietor, began to nag at the other girls.
And presently a notice of general reduction to thirty-five
cents a dozen was posted. There had been a union; it had won
a strike two years before--and then had been broken up by
shrewd employing of detectives who had got themselves elected
officers. With the union out of the way, there was no check
upon the bosses in their natural and lawful effort to get that
profit which is the most high god of our civilization. A few
of the youngest and most spirited girls--those from families
containing several workers--indignantly quit. A few others
murmured, but stayed on. The mass dumbly accepted the extra
twist in the screw of the mighty press that was slowly
squeezing them to death. Neither to them nor to Susan herself
did it happen to occur that she was the cause of the general
increase of hardship and misery. However, to have blamed her
would have been as foolish and as unjust as to blame any other
individual. The system ordained it all. Oppression and
oppressed were both equally its helpless instruments. No
wonder all the vast beneficent discoveries of science that
ought to have made the whole human race healthy, long-lived and
prosperous, are barely able to save the race from swift decay
and destruction under the ravages of this modern system of
labor worse than slavery--for under slavery the slave, being
property whose loss could not be made good without expense, was
protected in life and in health.
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