1 Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.
2 And bear in mind also that this monstrous disease affects not merely the idlers and their menials, its poison penetrates the whole social body.
3 There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning.
4 These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.
5 He would agree to serve a certain quality at a certain price, and when the time came you and your friends would be drinking some horrible poison that could not be described.
6 They had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood poisoning, or met with some other accident.
7 This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought to have stayed home and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own health as well as the baby's; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him for Teta Elzbieta to feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at the corner grocery.
8 They are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish.