Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/217

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CASTE IN AMERICAN SOCIETY.
211

cient intelligence to see that social union among themselves must first be effected. The stern self-restraint, the power of self-sacrifice, the delicacy of taste, refinement of feeling, appreciation of knowledge, and acts of touching kindness to one another, that are found among hundreds of them, do not negative the statement that the social line, based on kinds of labor, is closely drawn among them.

"Kindness based upon equality!" exclaimed one woman. "No, it is kindness based on caste. It is Arlington street and Fifth avenue that make the North End and the Battery. Employers don't care for employés. If a firm give their girls parlors, lunch or sleeping-rooms, it isn't because they care, but because they can get more out of us if we are comfortable. Your republican government doesn't do away with caste; it is the population to a square foot that makes poverty, and according to the laws of caste it is only for the poor to emigrate. Did you ever hear of a rich man

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