James Buchanan Quotes

There can be no distress, there can be no hard times, when labor is well paid. The man who raises his hand against the progress of the workingman raises his hand against prosperity.

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

General well-being is incompatible with lowness of wages.

The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st — When they are neglected in infancy. 2nd — When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd — When they are paid low wages for their labor

The minimum wage is important for many nations

There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

We never accept low wages as the driving force for employment or growth.

To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.

People believe that if they work, they should be paid a living wage…. Work has to pay.

I am always astonished that conservatives want to save money by paying workers less—driving down the wages of working people.

living wage

There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.

“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?

Now all of you know that right now the federal minimum wage is a starvation wage.

In China, the Communist Party’s suppression of free trade unions keeps cotton workers’ wages down, just as British law in the early 1800s saw to it that men and women who abandoned their ill-paid jobs and ran away could be jailed for breach of contract.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

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

It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.

If we care about the average working American, then Wal-Mart matters. A lot.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages.

Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages - below the poverty line for a family of two. That's unacceptable.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up