It was the early 1900s, and there was a huge divide over the working hours being held by men and women.
"If all labor was directed into proper channels, all the wealth now produced could be created in three hours a day, giving work to all and an equitable division of the products.... "The trusts and combines are dividing up the millions of wealth they have taken from the producers under the system of capitalism..." "The millionaire today lives in a palace, surrounded by menials, and the people who feed, clothe, and supply his wants live in tenements and cellars. Read up, see the truth, and you will be free...."
http://www.haldeman-julius.org/...
It was then 1893. Halderman Julius, who later formed the publishing of "Little Blue Books" had looked at a way to try and change the world through information
In the years that followed that, Julius developed his own belief about the world, the way it worked, the way things ran.
After writing and reporting on the issues of then rail workers, he became friends with future socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs.
Debs, a firebrand, had often spoken about the need for more controls to help the workers. A known (and proud) socialist, Debs believed that the disparity created in safety for the worker was a danger to the soul of America.
“When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. we will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known.”
Debs standard of evaluating what should happen next was radical - opposed by the government on all fronts. Debs demanded major changes in the workplace. Safety assurances, hours of work, "rest with reason" and greater wages.
In celebrating the founding of a church in a small town in Kansas, Debs stood up and said:
Am I my brother's keeper? [That frequently asked question] has never been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.
It is when you have done your work honestly, when you have contributed your share to the common fund that you begin to live. Then, as Whitman said, you can take out your soul; you can commune with yourself; you can take a comrade by the hand and you can look into his soul and in that holy communion you live. And if you don't know what that is, or if you are not at least on the edge of it, it is denied you even to look into the Promised Land.
Deb's anti-war (WWI) efforts, and his appeals to shut down railroad lines resulted in his imprisonment.
This isn't a diary to commend or praise Debs. There are many issues with Debs I would disagree with.
But those who do not remember their past are doomed to repeat it.
Today is Labor Day. In the hundreds of years since the founding of our country, men have fought and at times died to stop the abuse of workers, the disparity of wealth, and the unification of resources in our country.
In a speech before Coal Miners in 1903, Debs famously uttered:
The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave, or ignorance and vice, of poverty and shame, of cruelty and crime -- the birth of freedom, the dawn of Brotherhood, the beginning of MAN. That is the demand.
I think about this a lot today, especially when I read things like this:
"Over the last year, there has been a remarkably rapid deterioration in the bargaining power of labor unions and of workers in general who work for public sector employers," Gary Burtless, a former Labor Department economist now with the Brookings Institution, told Voice of America.
Salaries have not kept up with gains in productivity, he says, and workers are getting less of a share of the value that is produced by companies, while owners and top managers are getting bigger rewards.
"The pendulum has swung a long way," Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told the AP. "In the next year, I think all unions can really hope for is to keep more bad things from happening and to get as much of a jobs program enacted as possible."
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
In 1893, Men fought for equal treatment, better wages - that ownership not make radically more then employees. A bold title of an issue of "An Appeal to Reason" reads:
"A Fair Days Pay"
It's labor day 2011. We have made so many great accomplishments since 1893. The world is different.
The phrase "You're Lucky to Have a Job" and overtime abuse have become the scams that put American workers farther under the foot of their employers.
In this environment, there is even more danger to exempt employees. If keeping a “lean” workforce is an absolute necessity to making a profit, companies will be more inclined to take advantage of the exempt employees’ unfortunate lack of protection when it comes to overtime. “You’re lucky to have a job” seems to be the common retort when overwork is mentioned.
http://www.overworkedandexempt.com/
Are you a Salaried IT Worker? A Salaried designer? Graphics worker? Are you working free overtime? It's cheaper then hiring another person, that's for sure.
Progress is a slowly minted coin, one that when spent is difficult to regain. In 1904, in a speech to steel workers, later reprinted in "The Metal Worker" Debs offered this:
Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.
I'm not a socialist. I am, however, someone who recognizes that no one has ownership of the truth. And I also realize that a day like today - Labor Day - cannot be told if we don't remember all of it's past.
To the men and women who labor in America today in all trades; and to those that lost their lives in the trades of the past - before we decided to protect you from unfair work; may we always remember those sacrifices and avoid at all cost a return to serfdom.