As quoted in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction https://books.google.com/books?id=Tpb7HAIhWHgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=9780199843282&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz1ILxqfLcAhVDnuAKHda9Ai0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=9780199843282&f=false (2012), by Allen C. Guelzo, Chapter One
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
“Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.”
Illiberales autem et sordidi quaestus mercennariorum omnium, quorum operae, non quorum artes emuntur; est enim in illis ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis.
Book I, section 150; translation by Walter Miller
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)
“You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”
Actually a statement by William J. H. Boetcker known as "The Ten Cannots" (1916), this has often been misattributed to Lincoln since 1942 when a leaflet containing quotes by both men was published.
Misattributed
Context: You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm (March 1913)
1910s
Context: Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of “pernicious sect”. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital.
As quoted in "Is World Peace on the Horizon?", in The Watchtower (15 April 1991)
§ 1.4, "The Withering Away of the State and Violent Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)
The Guillotine At Work : Twenty Years of Terror In Russia (1940) by Grigoriĭ Petrovich Maksimov, p. 38.
Attributions
“The wages of courage is death, lad, but it’s the wages of everything else, too.”
Source: The Drawing of the Dark (1979), Chapter 10 (p. 140)
Speech at Progressive Party Convention, Chicago http://www.ssa.gov/history/trspeech.html (17 June 1912)
1910s
Context: We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.
