Tag: Slave Labor

“Make America Great Again”–Part One

My regular visitors know that I am a history nut….I enjoy all aspects of history and subject that some in our society turn their back on….I have found that many of my regulars also like history especially when I post something that they may not be aware of……

I have found a good historian…….. a man that was a professor at West Point, Major Danny Sjursen…..he has written a series foe Truthdig.org….I will be posting each article…I would post all at once but I know bloggers and he would be ignored after about 2 or 3 parts….Maj. Sjursen takes a look at our history and the roots of “Make America Great Again” (which is not unique to the Trump era)…….

Part One in our American History series……..

American Slavery, American Freedom (Colonial Virginia 1607-1676)

Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth, a comforting tale of trials, tribulations and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America—a self-proclaimed “indispensable nation”—is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: Our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a “new world”—a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.

The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story, that of a chosen, comforting narrative (the legend of the Pilgrims), and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-truthdiggers-original-sin/

I hope my readers enjoy this series….I found it interesting and informative….I hope you do so as well.

Never Too Young

America has had a proud tradition of fighting against child labor…….especially in the early years of the 20th century……but in case my reader needs a reminder…….

1904 National Child Labor Committee forms……… Aggressive national campaign for federal child labor law reform begins

1916 New federal law sanctions state violators……. First federal child labor law prohibits movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated (law in effect only until 1918, when it’s declared unconstitutional, then revised, passed, and declared unconstitutional again)

1924 First attempt to gain federal regulation fails……….. Congress passes a constitutional amendment giving the federal government authority to regulate child labor, but too few states ratify it and it never takes effect

1936 Federal purchasing law passes Walsh-Healey Act ………..states U.S. government will not purchase goods made by underage children

1937 Second attempt to gain federal regulation fails…………. Second attempt to ratify constitutional amendment giving federal government authority to regulate child labor falls just short of getting necessary votes

1937 New federal law sanctions growers Sugar Act makes sugar beet growers ineligible for benefit payments if they violate state minimum age and hours of work standards

1938 Federal regulation of child labor achieved in Fair Labor Standards Act……… For the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law.

I know….thanks for the history lesson but why bring all this up?  I read some news the other day that made me think about the history I just wrote about………

Children are toiling in unsafe conditions, suffering everything from breathing problems to vomiting, and putting in 12-hour days and 72-hour weeks. Think we’re talking a third-world sweatshop? It’s what’s happening right now on US tobacco farms, Human Rights Watch alleges in a report today. The group spoke to 141 tobacco farm workers aged 7 to 17, and found that many came in bare-skin contact with tobacco plants. That can cause acute nicotine poisoning—and indeed, 66% of those polled reported symptoms consistent with that, including dizziness, nausea, and headaches.

“On the first day when I was working [chemicals] got on my face a lot and I didn’t know until I got home later that my face was burning,” one 13-year-old worker tells the BBC. US labor laws protecting child laborers have exceptions for agricultural jobs, the group explains, allowing children of any age to work the fields, and those 12 and older to work unlimited hours. An attempt to change that for tobacco farms died in 2012. HRW shared its findings with tobacco producers, and most expressed concern. Philip Morris, which has the toughest child labor policy, tells Reuters that it believes there’s an opportunity to impose an industry-wide standard. The complete report is here.

Child labor is something we here in the US condemn 3rd world countries for allowing to exist…..it is not something that needs to be watched in our country, right?

There was a time and a place when child labor could have made some sense…..but today a child needs to be educated….not working his ass off in some field.

Plight Of American Labor–Part 1

The Enslavement Of Labor

In the later part of 2008 Wall Street began its tumble, when actually the tumble started back in 2007, but became more visible in 2008.  It cost the American taxpayer almost a trillion dollars to help these firms out.  Then by the last of 2008 the auto companies asked for help or they would bust.  But unlike Wall Street, the auto makers took heat from Congress and the American people.  Labor took the most heat.  The auto workers and their union were blamed for all the ills of the companies.  Even the people in the middle class, mostly the workers, jumped on that bandwagon, blaming everything wrong with the car companies on the policies and practices of the union and its members.  NOTHING was further from the truth!

The problem was not that of labor, but rather the economic policies that have run this country for too long.

In the 19th century, American economist Henry George made some profound observations on his way to the formulation of the Land Value Tax (LVT)

When people are compelled to live on — and from — land treated as the exclusive property of others, the ultimate result is the enslavement of workers.  As population increases and productivity improves, we move toward the same absolute mastery of landlords and the same abject helplessness of labor. Rent will advance; wages will fall. Landowners continually increase their share of the total production, while labor’s share constantly declines.

To the extent that moving to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, workers will be reduced to a bare living — no matter what they produce. Where land is monopolized, they will live as virtual slaves. Despite enormous increase in productive power, wages in the lower and wider layers of industry tend — everywhere — to the wages of slavery (i.e., just enough to maintain them in working condition).

There is nothing strange in this fact. Owning the land on which — and from which — people must live is virtually the same as owning the people themselves. In accepting the right of some individuals to the exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn others to slavery. We do this as fully and as completely as though we had formally made them chattel slaves.

Ownership of land is the basis of aristocracy. It was not nobility that gave land, but the possession of land that gave nobility. All the enormous privileges of the nobility of medieval Europe flowed from their position as the owners of the soil. This simple principle of ownership produced the lord on one side, and the vassal on the other. One having all the rights, the other none.

The essence of slavery is that everything workers produce is taken from them, except enough to support a bare existence. Under existing conditions, the lowest wages of free labor invariably tend toward this same state. No matter how much productivity increases, rent steadily swallows up the whole gain (or even more). Thus, the condition of the masses in every civilized country is tending toward virtual slavery — under the forms of freedom.

Of all kinds of slavery, this is probably the most cruel and relentless. Laborers are robbed of their production and forced to toil for mere subsistence. But their taskmasters assume the form of inescapable demands. It does not seem to be one human being who drives another, but “the inevitable laws of supply and demand.” And for this, no one in particular is responsible. Even the selfish interest that prompted the master to look after the well-being of his slaves is lost.

Labor has become a commodity, and the worker a machine. There are no masters and slaves, no owners and owned — only buyers and sellers.

The working class is being driven into this helpless, hopeless poverty by a force like a resistless and unpitying machine. It drives people to acts barbarians would refuse. The Boston collar manufacturer who pays his workers two cents an hour may sympathize with their condition. But, like them, he is governed by the law of competition. His business cannot survive if he pays more. And so it goes, through all the intermediate gradations. It seems to be the inexorable laws of supply and demand that forces the lower classes into the slavery of poverty. And an individual can no more dispute this power than the winds and tides.

The previous was from Henry George’s book “Progress and Poverty”.

There is a way out of this problem, but it will take the ‘nads to change it.  If not, then just sit back and this will continue to happen time after time.  The solution has a simple title–Land Value Taxation.

Kucinich Stands With Slave Laborers

At the rally, US Congressmember Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called the treatment the workers faced at the hands of Indian recruiters and their employer, Signal International, (DC Jobs with Justice Corner: Indian Workers to Stage Hunger Strike in DC 5/8/08 UC) “wrong, inhumane, and immoral.” Kucinich and 17 other US Congress-members sent a letter to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey last week demanding he “take the steps necessary to ensure the workers’ continued presence so that DOJ can continue this important investigation of modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and forced labor and bring these traffickers to justice.”


Kucinich has also promised to hold a Congressional hearing on abuses of guest workers by Signal and other companies. “I think we as Americans and working people around the world owe you an enormous debt for standing up,” said Nickeled and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich. “You helped bring to light a scandal of slavery in the US.”

Dennis Kucinich is the ONLY active Congressman that has consistently stood with labor on most issues.  He deserves more respect than he gets in the media.  For without his voice in Congress, labor would not have many friends that we could rely on to speak for us.