SUGGESTIVE.
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tion ; and, until this is recognized, the nation and individuals must suffer present and future loss, — loss of bodily vigor, without which a nation must die; loss of knowledge, which is power to upbuild, to keep, to develop; loss in the higher values that belong to the nobler parts of our being, and that cannot expand in a soul or body dwarfed and exhausted by the gross demands of purely animal existence.
But it is objected, it can be clearly shown in this Commonwealth, that while it is true, that the money in savings banks, to a considerable extent, belongs to laboring people, little of it would be there if it were not for the labor of women and children, the wives and offspring of laboring men ; indeed, that, without their assisting labor, it is proved that the average laborer could not make the ends of the year meet. Granted; and yet my proposition is nevertheless of full force, and for two reasons : —
First , Because it is plain that there is an error in that price and form of labor that will 32