Compulsory Labor Quotes

We shall give the idlers and the men not effectively employed the choice between military service and effective employment. Every man in the draft age at least must work or fight.

The traditional policy is absolutely opposed to compulsory labor for private employment... It is a point of fundamental importance that there is no question of force or compulsion, but only of encouragement and advice through the native chiefs and headmen…

All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.

Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you just as the highwayman’s gun. You must live … You can’t work for yourself … The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must workfor him. You can’t help yourself. You are compelled.

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.