For the laborers as such, there is in these new captains of industry neither love nor hate, neither sympathy nor romance; it is a cold question of dollars and dividends.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “For the laborers as such, there is in these new captains of industry neither love nor hate, neither sympathy nor…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" critiques the impersonal, profit-driven nature of the new industrial leaders' relationship with their workforce.
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Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
Years have passed away since then,—ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast.
The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.