Labor

Did you celebrate Labor Day this past Monday? Do you have a job? Here are some things to think about the next time you go to work.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. —Abraham Lincoln (1800-1865)

Show me the country that has no strikes and I’ll show you the country in which there is no liberty. —Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned—this is the sum of good government. —Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. —Karl Marx (1818-1883)

All wealth is the product of labor. —John Locke (1632-1704)

Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor. —John Ruskin (1819-1900)

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread. —Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. —George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

When money is controlled by a few it gives that few an undue power and control over labor and the resources of the country. Labor will have its best return when the laborer can control its disposal. —Leland Stanford (1824-1893)

If capital and labor ever do get together it’s good night for the rest of us. —Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. —Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them. —William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)

Have a nice day.