to the laborers

I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it.

―John Steinbeck

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

―Upton Sinclair

On this Labor Day I post in honor, and in memory, of the world's laborers—children, the poor, the underpaid, the overworked, the disadvantaged, the struggling, the enslaved, the minority, the immigrant, the intellectually disabled—who assemble the products, who serve the public, who harvest the crops, who pack the meat, who forge the metals, who sew the clothes, who mine the ores and on whose backs investors in the products these laborers bring to fruition make millions, some perhaps consciously oblivious to the magnitude of their toil and the inadequacy of their take.