Blood is on thier hands then and now

[democraticrevolution]

Today you'll often here talk about the values of rugged individualism, pro business policy at the expense of the workers, corporate welfare, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Calvin Coolidge said that America was a business country. He felt it needed a business type of government. President Herbert Hoover once being the secretary of commerce believed in business and capitalist laissez-faire markets as well. To these men and many others like them, nothing should stand in the way of the corporations. The government should not interfere at all. "Let the businesses run themselves" was their motto. Federal regulation was seen as bad for business. But how would this affect the economy? As the companies sought to stand in the way of the workers who tried to organize through unions, and kept their wages down, certain doom was inevitable.


A calamity was bound to happen with the increase in products, but with the decrease in purchasing power. This also happened in farming with crop surpluses bringing down costs. Government policies helpful to monopolies did not help either. The danger signs were there in 1929, consumer spending was way down from its peak through 1927-28, and unemployment began to rise. Then Black Thursday happened and everything went down hill from there. These events would attribute to Herbert Hoover being often viewed by many in modern times to be one of America's worst presidents. Currently I think he has some competition for that title, but he was a shill for big business just like the current occupant no doubt. It seems that we can learn a lot from the past as it applies to the future. When you help those who have money to acquire more, instead of focusing on wealth distribution to those who would spend, the economy will not be healthy, and you will have a severe concentration of wealth and capital. You will have surpluses of goods sitting on the shelves with nowhere to go. It's your basic the rich get richer while the poor get poorer scheme. It's just plain greed that overcomes these businessmen turning them into robber barons. Similar to what Enron became for the business community in the present, there were companies of Enron caliber back then as well. You saw operating utilities with holding companies built on top of them. Then holding companies built on top of other holding companies. The result was holding companies bidding up securities and inflating their value. Like Enron these companies grew in complexity and arrogance, and irresponsibility leading to the disenfranchisement of stockholders.


The term I like to use for the rich and selfish that reared it's ugly head then and now is "elitism". People bought into this extreme individualism promoted by Hoover and Co. so much that they cared less and less about their fellow man in all parts of the world. After all it wasn't called the roaring twenties for nothing. Most saw doing good to be in "bad taste". What had happened to the T.R. progressivism? What happened to the social workers and other liberals fighting for reform? It seems that World War I was the beginning of the end for the progressive movement as the capitalists gained momentum in a rapidly evolving reactionary environment. During this period of the New Era, the business community would have nothing to do with the intellectuals. Which resulted in an anti-civic participation society not seeking knowledge. It was an era of calm that lead to idleness.


What truly disgusted me about the elitists was their constant talk of not allowing the workingman to become dependent on government help. While people suffered from their lax and greedy business practices, they felt that rugged individualism would serve them better, federal aid was a mistake. During the depression there was often propaganda spewed by the nation's top businessmen stating that the government should keep out of things, and let the situation run it's course. They said things were improving. You often heard Hoover issue statements that everything was fine and the employment rate was up. One of the worst treasury secretaries in my opinion, secretary Mellon echoed pretty much the same line. He was even mean spirited when talking of the New York banks in crisis saying that "they deserved it". It was easy for them to say since their fiscal status was sustained for the most part.


People were suffering because of the actions of these men. People were loosing their homes and ended up living in "Hoovervilles" which were communities of the homeless living in shanties. Children were starving so badly that their stomachs shrank. Yet all you heard from Hoover and Co. was that things were improving. People would come to Hoover proposing public works programs and national employment services, but he would have none of it. Hoover even organized a farm assistance program, which distributed wheat to the animals, but many rightfully criticized him for feeding the animals but not the unemployed. For me it's really hard to comprehend statements made by Hoover like " If America meant anything it meant the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help". Tell that to the unemployed standing on a breadline in Chicago waiting for some bread and a cup of coffee.


Things got to the point where revolt was in the air. Farmers began to organize and march on stores for flour and lard. When you find it cheaper to burn your corn crops instead of selling them to buy coal, revolt will happen. Men testified to the senate that farmers were seeing the communist red because of the depression. Yet you had out of touch businessmen who saw these situations and joblessness as not their fault but rather the fault of laziness. Through this time in history it is clear that this New Era thinking was clearly a disaster. Just like the conservatism, neo-liberalism, and neo conservatism of our current time does injustice to the workingman and woman. Conservatism often argues for small government and lower taxes. To them the government should interfere as little as possible. But with situations as the depression prove it's not a matter of bigger or smaller. People want a government that takes action in their interest. People want a government that can help them. I often view the neo-conservatism and the neo-liberalism before it, as a cancer on society. Grover Norquist often talks of not wanting to do away with government. Instead he'd rather shrink it to a size so that he may take it into the bathtub and drown it. I often think that is what needs to be done to the new conservative plague.


Are we headed for a new depression?


We once again have a business president in the White House. This administration is in complete harmony with the ideals and beliefs of corporate America. You have a vice president sitting down with the corporate polluters to hammer out environmental bills. You have bankruptcy bills being passed through the senate, which do nothing but favor the credit card companies. You have ANWAR being opened up for drilling. These are all actions of an administration out to please the corporations and not the people. We've already begun to see rollbacks to regulation on companies regarding workers health benefits, rights, and wages. And of course concern for the environment and global warming is not even on the map. We even have a push for tort reform to limit damages to the corporations. It's the New Era of the twenties meets the Neo-Liberalism New Right of the 21st century.


We went through a wave of prosperity in the nineties and Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT. Those two efforts helped set up the unfavorable situation we are now in today. Also like WWI we have had to undergo 9/11 and a sham of a "Bush war on terror", which like WWI made us reactionary. What remains to be seen is if we will have a roaring twenties economy in current times. With the war in Iraq placing more strain on the deficit I'm not sure if that's possible. Maybe we won't have that economic spurt and just head straight for troubled times. Maybe it won't be like the Great Depression but rather like the post Reagan years were Clinton had to end up dealing with the aftermath of the Reagan deficits. I find it foolish for vice-president Cheney to have said that Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.


We are slowly recovering from September 11th 2004 but is the growth on par? Job creation is nowhere near the expected number of jobs the country is supposed to be creating monthly. People with high levels of education find themselves settling for lower paying jobs in different sectors. There is also globalization moving jobs out of the country to make the world ever so flatter, and the WTO does not help either. What it comes down to is fair-trade and not free -trade and until we see that happening say goodbye to more jobs. Sure the production of goods and services are increased. But what of purchasing power? What are those people working in the sweat shops going to buy with the ten cents an hour you pay them? At least in India they are consuming American goods. And most of their computers and networking hardware come from us as well. But all is not rosy in the flat world of Thomas Friedman. We must re evaluate our existence solely for the means of consumption and production. Present in the era of Wilson's New Freedom was often a belief geared towards a higher calling. We must re evaluate the "profit motive". Do we dare continue to put profit above all else at the sake of humanity?


I've always heard of the sexiness of the unregulated free market. But no market is completely free, even "free markets" have regulations of some sort. You cannot leave everything up to the market forces to sort out. This is not some survival of the fittest were only the strong may have access. If this is the case then the president should paint his tribal colors across his face now.


Why labor must prevail once again


Conservatives have done a good job of destroying labor unions. They have labeled it and smeared it like the ideology of liberalism itself. I for one am not afraid to say that I'm a liberal or a progressive for that matter. Since T.R. was part of the progressive movement I'm proud to carry on in that tradition and wage war against elitism and big business. But the unions must rise once again they have no other choice.


I could go back as far as I must to show the abuse of workers by their employers. From the big money men locking in immigrant female workers during the triangle shirtwaist fire of 1911, to the abuses of Wal-Mart today, it seems the worker has always had to rally against low wages, no health coverage, long work hours, and horrible working conditions. Such monsters were the selfish capitalists that they would have young children working alongside their parents in textile mills. If the progressive movement did not stand up for child labor laws where would we be?


If the businessmen would break unions, smash strikes, and smear union members, so too must we go after them for being heartless selfish men and women without souls. In Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr's book, The Crisis of The Old Order, we are told of tales where worker abuse ran rampant. In the book there are two stories I would like to share with the reader of my essay. One is the story of a coal miner who was destroyed from working in the mines. His skin was seared black after he survived an explosion, this man would speak of his hardship to then senator George Norris of Nebraska. He also showed the senator the tombstone of a miner with an epitaph that read the following.


For forty years beneath the sod
With pick and spade I did my task
The coal king's slave, but now, thank God,
I'm free at last.


The second story from the book I would like to share is the story of mill worker Ella May Wiggins. She became a very outspoken voice for the labor movement after her children came down with whooping cough and the refusal of a foreman to move her to the day shift to take care of them. She was forced to quit her job to take care of them and with no money for medicine, she watched four of them die. Ella May was struck with grief but she fought on in the movement and sang a ballad that goes as follows.


We leave our homes in the morning,
We kiss our children good-bye,
While we slave for the bosses,
Our children scream and cry.


It is for our little children
That seem to us so dear,
But for them nor us, dear workers
The bosses do not care.
But listen to me workers
A union they do fear;
Let's stand together, workers,
And have a union here.


Ella May Wiggins was killed one day, by a shooter from an armed mob who forced her caravan off the road. It is because of the struggle of these two individuals and the many more who suffered like them that we cannot falter in our attack on the moneyed interests. They will say what they will, and demonize us as much as they want. But because of the deaths of people in the struggle for workers rights, civil rights, and equal rights, I show no fear in shouting down the money changers in the temple and all those who seek to oppress. If death is always certain, and time on this earth short, then we all must become madmen and women to unleash the pent up fury on to the wicked and selfish that was held down for decades.


No longer can we allow those who are only out for personal gain to control and influence the people locally and nationally. For they don't care if the poor go hungry, they don't care if a job is lost, they don't care if one cannot afford health coverage, and they don't care if there are no jobs. So then why must we remain silent and appease them? They seek to keep education unreachable for many of the poor and working class. I for one am not afraid to make this a war of class.