I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity...
This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone . . .
When the mariner, sailing over tropic seas, looks for relief from his weary watch, he turns his eyes toward the southern cross, burning luridly above the tempest-vexed ocean. As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.
— Eugene Debs, labor leader, onetime Socialist Party candidate for president, once dubbed "the most dangerous man in America," imprisoned for it, one the best people that ever happened to be born within the lines drawn in the dirt that approximate the shape of the United States of America. He spoke these just before being sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking words powerful men did not like, in the midst of a wrong, stupid war that never should have been fought, much less by Americans.
Debs proudly bore the label "socialist" before the Lairds of American Propaganda made the term intrinsically evil and synonymous with Stalin, much in the same way "liberal" has been flushed through a reactionary mesh screen these days, only back then blacklisting and imprisonment were the price of ideas — well, maybe it's not so different. There was never any visceral, nor violent, "threat to democracy" from the labor movement, and, for all the marginally earned prejudices against the unions that yet linger — the corruption, the mismanagement, the cronyism — its successes both in terms of effecting economic buoyancy and a more civil society belied the bosses' heavily marketed fears that its legitimacy would portend bolshevism.
No, those of opulent wealth who fought against the unions, who hired goons and greased politicians to send out soldiers to gun men, women and children down for trying to organize, almost never found themselves in such financial straits that they couldn't afford to pay workers what they were worth, they committed their murders on principle. Henry Ford later categorically proved that proportionate wages for skilled labor exponentially bolstered the market for your products; that is, people making disposable income might, um, buy stuff they need. But the principle remained sacrosanct, as it has become again today among the nation's financial and political elite: one man/one engine of commerce. Collective action is heresy, they say, for it queers the pure, primal relationship between individual and individual, that your merits must be weighed strictly as if you existed alone in the world, sweating in a spotlight, judged by baronial men who fancy themselves St. Peter at the Gate — nevermind that the lone worker would have to come to the table against a board of the most vile, darkhearted men and lawyers humanity has to offer. Logic need not apply in such circumstances, for labor did not find itself up against commonsensical men, but against representatives of the Pure and Righteous Order of God. And when you find yourself up against someone less commonensical than a prick Nazi like Henry Ford, you're dealing with some psychotic fucking people.
Men like Debs stared such ominous demons down and never blinked, even unto his numerous trips to jail, denial of his basic rights as a citizen, mitigated by unconstitutional laws passed just to weed people like him out of the public discourse. And even that didn't stop them. Every Memorial Day or July 4th, some guy on some sports broadcast or on a dais always says, "Well, we should take time from our picnics and potato salad and beers to remember what this is all about . . ." I don't think this day should be any different. People took vicious beatings for no other reason than they wanted an eight-hour work day. People were ridden down for meeting with each other and discussing what they might do together. People were shot for daring to stand together before Baldwin-Felts thugs and National Guardsman and protest their worth as human beings, not as slaves with asterisks on them.
Our doctrinaire leaders, and their dutiful Randian cultists, dream giddily of such bygone caprice, martial sanction against words and ideas and, apparently, a return to those gay Dickensian times. Because of those this day celebrates, even for all we've lost in the last 30 years, even for how much the Lords may have bent that cross back, the labor movement and the rare leaders who finally embraced common sense (FDR) eroded their once-unchecked power, ultimately yielding the simple blessings of overtime, weekends, pensions, safe working environments, healthcare and basic redress against wrongs now taken for granted. In a day when the biggest job growth in the country is at Applebee's, Kinko's and Manpower Inc., it's worth remembering what the power of just-working-folks was once capable of in making this republic live up to its promise, of people with the freedom to take a hand in their own fate. And to realize that we're not on our own, alone in the world, and we never have been.
I have similarly registered my protests and recognize the feebleness of my effort. But on this Labor Day, I offer you two tokens of my celebration: if you click here, the top two songs on the console are available for download for nothing. If you like them, click and they are yours to enjoy. The first one, called "One Big Union," goes like this:
When the paycheck just ain't stretching like it might've once before
'Cause the good jobs are all gone and left you in some big-box store
Between food and rent and medicine, seems the suits rate a whole lot more
When the bosses cut that last corner, when you walk out of those doors
When the truckers hauling sweatshop stuff won't stop there anymore
When folks won't cross your pickets because their boat's the same as yours
That is one big union
When the nickeled and the dimed have had enough of being screwed
When they walk out of the sweatshops, when the cops refuse to shoot
When the puppet regimes fall, when the World Bank gets the boot
That is one big union
They call it a labor surplus
Market-value poverty
But what if that which ye do to the least of my brethren
So you do unto me?
We built the tanks and ships that
Saved a world in darkest throes
Back when our young men fought for the rights of mankind
Not just some CEOs
When a simple decent living is a right that we all share
When the suits see us as people not just assets to be pared
When they can't just ship your job off, 'cause it's happening everywhere
That is one big union
When volume of this chorus grows till they can't help but hear,
When our leaders serve the people, not just banks and profiteers,
When the food and labor of the Earth feed everyone here,
That is one big union
That will be one big union
Come join our one big union