Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE WAGE-EARNER It is not within either the scope or the purpose of this work to enter upon any discussion of the vexatious and seemingly unending conflict between Capital and Labor, except as it affects the social status of the laboring people. The working class is by a sort of common consent set apart as a class to themselves, but they occupy among themselves very different stations in life, and the problem here under discussion affects them quite differently. There is a wide difference between the highly-educated and well-paid skilled workman and the ignorant and unskilled laborer, who is in many instances a foreigner not even speaking our language. The former occupies a high and enviable position in business and in society, while the latter may be found in the slums and unsanitary buildings that make for disease and immorality and crime. These two classes of working people, while belonging to one designated class, have practically nothing in common. The high- class workman, well-to-do and independent, finds no place in this work; but the ignorant and poorly-paid laborer falls within the evils and temptations that all good people should be striving to mitigate, at least, if not destroy. Most of the lower class of laborers find their habitat in the densely populated portions of the large cities where want and immorality and crime have full sway. They may, although poorly paid, keep themselves from want; but they are often steeped in immorality and crime. To such as these environment and association mean much. They breathe the pestilential air of the slums and of the overcrowded shacks and tenement houses that abound in such places. They are not dependent on charity, because they work by day, or maybe by night, and are able to make their way, such as it is….
