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We Will Do Anything For Our Children, That’s Why They Are Used Against Us
“And not one of them was a free agent,” he said. “They were all tied to the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and the tragedy is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their children — always the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My father! He lied, he stole, he did all sorts of dishonorable things to put bread into my mouth and into the mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial machine, and it stamped his life out, worked him to death.” (from The Iron Heel by Jack London, 1909)
In the Iron Heel, Jack London describes an injustice done and allows the characters who participated in the injustice to tell why they lied, why they stayed quiet, or why they did not try as hard as they should have to get the truth of the injustice out. One and all they explained how they wanted a better life for their children and to give them that their only option was to do as they were told by those who held their livelihoods in their hands. Mess with the system, and you will be cast down into the lowest rungs of society, there to suffer the same misfortunes of those whose suffering they did not have the courage to bear witness to.