Success Quote by Leland Stanford

A railroad baron praising an exit ramp from wage labor is the kind of sentence that arrives with its own footnotes. Stanford frames the idea as a moral obligation for “every thoughtful and kind-hearted person,” then quietly narrows the beneficiaries to “the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined” among non-capitalists. That sorting mechanism matters: it turns a structural critique of “labor for hire” into a character test. If you remain a wage worker, the implication runs, it’s because you didn’t qualify.

The intent reads like enlightened self-defense. In the late 19th century, the wage system was under open indictment from labor movements, strikes, and the rising language of class conflict. Stanford’s phrasing borrows the reformer’s cadence while keeping the owner’s assumptions intact. He doesn’t question capitalism; he imagines a pressure valve inside it. Let some ambitious workers graduate into ownership or independence, and the rest of the system can claim legitimacy: mobility as proof that the ladder exists.

Subtext: this is anti-wage-labor sentiment without solidarity. “Those who are not capitalists” are described as a mass, but only a select slice should “cease to labor for hire.” That’s not emancipation; it’s triage. Even the word “device” tips his hand toward managerial solutions - mechanisms, schemes, plans - rather than bargaining power or redistribution.

Coming from Stanford, the statement doubles as branding. It casts the capitalist as a benevolent engineer of opportunity, not an adversary in a labor struggle. The brilliance is how it makes escape from exploitation sound like a reward for merit, not a demand for justice.