Wages

by D.H. Lawrence

 

The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cash is vicious competition.
The wages of vicious competition is – the world we live in.
 
The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle
that ever turned men into fiends.
 
Earning a wage is a prison occupation
and a wage-earner is a sort of gaol-bird.
 
Earning a salary is a prison overseer’s job
a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.
 
Living on our income is strolling grandly outside the prison   
in terror lest you have to go in. And since the work-prison covers
almost every scrap of the living earth, you stroll up and down
on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking exercise.
 
This is called universal freedom.
 
D.H.Lawrence | Classic poems
 

The Mosquito ] Bare Almond Trees ] Humming Bird ] Kangaroo ] Snake ] Figs ] Eagle in New Mexico ] [ Wages ]

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 


 

 

 
 
 
 

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