Volume > Issue > Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism

Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism

GUEST COLUMN

By Juli Loesch | June 1988
Juli Loesch is a writer, lecturer, and agitator in Washington, D.C. She lives in a mixed lay/religious community with the Religious of Jesus and Mary.

You are worth about $5.50,” gloats the sta­tistic-monger. “If you were cremated, the chemi­cals in your body wouldn’t be worth as much as a ticket to a first-class concert.”

“Four dollars an hour,” says my boss, equally pleased.

I do just enough unskilled factory work (for Manpower) to cover my room and board. The money itself doesn’t affront me, as if I had gotten a low bid at the auction block. But what does af­front me is the suggestion that the money could in any way compensate me for my body, my life, my time, myself.

Raw materials went into the factory and came out ennobled and man went in and came out de­graded (Pope Pius XI).

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