“If you will really think what you mean by ‘slavery,’ Susan, you will change your mind. The word is like so many others—’despotism,’ ‘force,’ ‘filibustering,’ ‘perpetual tutelage,’ which the heavy guns of our opponents fire daily,—it looks impressive in the air, but when it strikes it is found to be filled with sawdust. The word is formidable only when it is not examined. If you mean by it ‘discipline,’ then all types of organised action are slavery. A coolie who contracts to come here and work on a railway or mine, undertakes to do his work under such conditions as his employers prescribe. So long as these conditions are not such as to offend public morals, the men who organise it have an ample right to say what the particular work demands. The State says, further, that it does not wish t
