And we knew that work in the rolling mills, bad as it was, was better than forced labor without pay.

To-day when I hear orators rolling out the word "slavery" in connection with American wages and working conditions, I have to laugh.

For any man who has ever had a taste of peonage, to say nothing of slavery, knows that the wage system is not real slavery; it's not the genuine, lash-driven, bloodhound-hunted, swamp-sick African slavery.

None is genuine without Simon Legree and the Louisiana bloodhounds.

The silk-socked wage slave, toiling eight hours for six dollars, is not the genuine old New Orleans molasses slave.