22 Afi Appeal to the Youjig. 



worn-out shoes. Even then, when you saw chubby 

 children richly clad pass in the distance, looking at 

 you with an air of contempt, you knew right well 

 that these extravagantly dressed imps were not the 

 equals of yourself and your comrades, either in intel- 

 ligence, common-sense, or energy. But, later, when 

 you were forced to shut yourself up in a filthy fac- 

 tory from five or six o'clock in the morning, to remain 

 twelve hours standing close to a whirling machine, 

 and, a machine yourself, were forced to follow, day 

 after day for whole years in succession, its relent- 

 less, throbbing movements — during all this time the 

 others were going quietly to be taught at fine schools, 

 at academies, at the universities. And now these 

 same children, less intelligent, but better taught 

 than you, have become your masters, are enjoying 

 all the pleasures of life and all the advantages of 

 civilization. And you ? What sort of lot awaits you ? 



You return to little, dark, damp lodgings, where 

 five or six human being^s herd together within a few 

 square feet ; where your mother, sick of life, aged by 

 care rather than years, offers you dry bread and pota- 

 toes as your only food, washed down by a blackish 

 fluid called, in irony, tea; and to distract your 

 thoughts you have ever the same never-ending ques- 

 tion, " How shall I be able to pay the baker to- 

 morrow, and the landlord the day after?" 



What ! must you drag on the same weary exist- 

 ence that your father and mother did for thirty and 

 forty years? Must you toil your life long to procure 

 for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowl- 

 edge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal 

 anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread? 

 Will you forever give up all that makes life so beau- 

 tiful to devote yourself to providing every luxury for 

 a handful of idlers? Will you wear yourself out 

 with toil and have in return onlv trouble, if not mis- 

 ery, when hard times — the fearful hard times — come 

 upon you ? Is this what you long for in life ? 



