ez, when you said you have never known hard times, that told me all I need to know. You've had CB tell you better than any documentary or book exactly why unions were important, especially early on. You've apparently never known grinding poverty or wondered where, despite all of your family's hard work, your next meal was coming from. Because I believe in karma, I hope that you never have to learn the hard way just how different things can seem when your life, and that of your loved ones, hangs on whether you can find enough pennies in the couch cushions to help put fifty cents in your mom's gas tank and all hope and pray she can make it to work one more day. And there's still a week to payday.
My son has been raised in relative comfort. But you better be d@mn sure
he knows that he walks on the shoulders of giants--his grandparents, great-grandparents and others further back in time, scrapping and clawing, each successive generation eking out just a little better life for the next generation, than what
they had. To the best of my ability, we've tried to raise him to honor the sacrifices of
everyone who helped pave his way, many of whom were other people's ancestors. Heck, maybe even CB's. (Just not yours, I guess. Sorry, I'll make sure they're scratched from the list of people who ever thought they had a thing in common with their fellow working stiffs).
And, oh yeah, Henry Ford was ahead of his time (well,other than his virulent racist and anti-Semitic views
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... a5cfb2dd16),
but his workplace policies were at least in part self-interested (he knew that productivity would increase if his workers weren't dead on their feet), and were driven by the LABOR UNREST at the time. Yes, factory workers were starting to push back and argue that they should get a fair shake.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist ... -hour-week. Ol' Henry realized that he could avoid a lot of headaches; gain productivity; score a PR coup; and SELL MORE CARS with a decent wage and a 5 day week. (Do I really need to tell you that those changes
didn't immediately get adopted by every company in every industry? Yes. Yes, I probably do).
I'd be really curious (well, not really, but I'll feign it) to hear your tortured (tortuous? maybe both...) view on exactly what the 146 people (mostly women and children) who died at the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire did to deserve it. As you are such a student of history, I'm sure you'll recall that the factory's exits (it occupied floors 8-10 of the Asch Building in NYC) were locked by management (as was common at the time, to prevent workers taking breaks). Here's a fun little excerpt of the event from a bystander:
"One Saturday afternoon in March of that year—March 25, to be precise—I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library....I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building...I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire.
A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.
Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.
The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines."
But I guess the workers "had it coming," since they had "accepted" the terms of their employment! ("Why didn't they just
move?" I can hear you cry. Most were recent immigrants in their teens and early 20s. They HAD moved. To THERE! For what they hoped was a better life).
(Final footnote: Henry Ford's generous-for-the-time policies were enacted in 1926, well
after the labor unrest that was caused by events like the above fire (which led to the Intl Ladies Garment Workers Union, which worked for safer working conditions). Labor pressures played a big role in Ford's "generosity").
..... :roll: ) so you should grow a pair and learn to look out for yourself.... wow ain't that that a shocker quite a novel idea looking out for yourself
