six
o'clock
They were wage-earners and servants , at the mercy of exploiters whose one thought was to get as much out of them as possible ; and they were taking an interest in the process , were anxious lest it should not be done thoroughly enough ! Was it not honestly a trial to listen to an argument such as that ? And yet there were things even worse . You would begin talking to some poor devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirty years , and had never been able to save a penny ; who left home every morning at six o'clock , to go and tend a machine , and come back at night too tired to take his clothes off ; who had never had a week 's vacation in his life , had never traveled , never had an adventure , never learned anything , never hoped anything -- and when you started to tell him about Socialism he would sniff and say , `` I 'm not interested in that -- I 'm an individualist ! '' And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was `` paternalism , '' and that if it ever had its way the world would stop progressing . It was enough to make a mule laugh , to hear arguments like that ; and yet it was no laughing matter , as you found out -- for how many millions of such poor deluded wretches there were , whose lives had been so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew what freedom was ! And they really thought that it was `` individualism '' for tens of thousands of them to herd together and obey the orders of a steel magnate , and produce hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth for him , and then let him give them libraries ; while for them to take the industry , and run it to suit themselves , and build their own libraries -- that would have been `` Paternalism '' !