None of these interests can flourish among a people who are burdened by material wants; neither are they usually unitedly prosperous among that part of a people who are greatly advanced in material possessions.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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Labor and Capital is a question relating in the first instance to the material prosperity of a people; but secondarily it reacts upon all other interests—intellectual, moral, physical and religious.
This is the philosophy of Integration and of Disintegration in all departments of the universe.
The new also reaches higher than the old; hence its frame-work may be reared, while yet the old stand comparatively intact.
This new rests upon foundations deeper down than existing things, and these can, therefore, be used previously to the destruction of the foundations of the old.
The old systems cumber the ground whereon the new must be reared, and they must be pulled down to give it room; nevertheless, the constructive part of the operation must first begin; before the old will yield, the new must at least be…
Organization should be effected for two principal ends: First, for construction; second, for destruction.
It has no organization, and herein lies its weakness.
While the one-fifth enjoy the luxuries thus produced, as though they had acquired them by divine right, which none may call in question nor dispute, the great power of the laboring many has never been felt.
Four-fifths of the people of the world toil on, year after year, and all the time see the other fifth revelling in the luxuries the sweat of their brows has produced.
This question forms one of the corner-stones of future society, but of all the questions in which society seems interested it is the worst understood.
The best friends are those who show us our faults and sustain us in the right.