Benjamin Harrison Quotes

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.

“A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing; yet in what corner of this planet was that ever realized?

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

An industry that can not pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.

I've been very outspoken that the minimum wage needs to rise.

Disproportionate corporate power over governments is giving license to the greed that denies workers even minimum living wages. It is also seemingly a license to allow the sheer brutality of treatment of working people at the base of the supply chains.

To be effective in tackling poverty wages, a living wage has to be mandatory and basic trade union rights should be restored so workers can protect themselves from exploitative employers.

Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.

I think it depends on what agenda that female president brings. It's not good if that female president brings an agenda which is actually hostile to the cause of living wages. Women need equal wages to men, but not equal wages at poverty.

I would not take one cup of coffee from a grower...There's not a good one. I hate them. A few presents, a little talk, then the noose. That's how capitalism works.

Out of our first century of national life we evolved the ethical principle that it was not right or just that an honest and industrious man should live and die in misery. He was entitled to some degree of sympathy and security. Our conscience declared against the honest workman's becoming a pauper, but our eyes told us that he very often did.

In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

It is time that all Americans realized that the place of labor is side by side with the businessman and with the farmer, and not one-degree lower.

To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government.

The Capitalist system with its exploitation of those who are economically weak, with its robbery of the workers labour power, with its unethical way of appraising human beings by the number of things and the amount of money he possesses, instead of by their internal value and their achievements, must be replaced by a new and just economic system, in a word by German Socialism.

There are people who would like to get rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn't some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam.

We're giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren't exploiting cheap labor.

The laboring classes constitute the main part of our population. They should be protected in their efforts peaceably to assert their rights when endangered by aggregated capital and all statutes on this subject should recognize the care of the State for honest toil and be framed with a view of improving the condition of the workingman

...the workers aren't going to stop struggling. They're going to struggle to have a union and they have the right to have it. The police repression and the grower indifference to the workers' demands for recognition cannot go unheard so we're going to keep on struggling until we get that recognition.

We have to make it clear to the multi-nationals that slavery is too high a price to pay for cheap goods

I think the stress on income inequality is something that every American should take seriously, we have got to figure out how we're going to provide more economic opportunity - good jobs with rising incomes - and I'm excited to work with Senator Sanders in doing that.

Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.

The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

I think as a moral question, restaurant workers should get paid more.