American Minute with Bill Federer
Labor Day, Railroad Strike & Socialist Eugene Debs
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LABOR DAY
To appreciate it, one needs to know the history preceding it.
At the time the United States was founded, most people were
farmers
or worked in trades, such as
blacksmiths, cobblers, bakers, upholsterers, etc.
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Then, the
Industrial Revolution
began when the Scottish inventor
James Watt
developed a steam engine to pump water out of coal mines.
Steam
and
water
were soon harnessed in the early 19th century to power pumps, railroads, ships, and factories, which mass produced products, such as textiles.
This led to the creation of
factories
which could
mass produce items inexpensively.
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Originally, there was
no Federal Income tax.
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The Federal Government was financed primarily from:
EXCISE TAXES
on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;
and
TARIFF TAXES
on imports.
Tariffs made products imported from European factories more expensive, causing consumers to buy the less expensive products made in American factories.
Most of America's factories were located in Northern states.
The problem was, the
tariff taxes
that helped the
Northern states
hurt the
Southern states,
as the South was predominately
agricultural
and had few factories to protect.
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At one point, nearly
90 percent
of the
Federal Budget
came from
Tariff Taxes
collected at
Southern Ports.
This fueled animosity between the states leading up to the
Civil War.
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After the
Civil War,
the
North
passed even
more tariff taxes
which successfully allowed
Northern factories to grow enormous.
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Manufacturing
produced items like
clothes, glass, dishes,
and
farm tools
for a fraction of the previous costs.
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Machines freed
women
up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.
Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.
New ways of making stronger iron and steel led to the building of
bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats,
and
mining machinery.
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Railroads
began taking people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation, opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity.
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Inventions
and
advances
in manufacturing made more goods available at cheaper prices resulting in Americans experiencing
the fastest increase in the standard of living of any people in world history.
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As to labor, factories had a continual source of workers from the millions of immigrants, who not only got a job, but learned the language and trade skills.
President Grover Cleveland
dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886.
Immigrants
were not a financial burden on the government, as there were no welfare programs.
Extended family members, individual charity,
and
churches
provided the welfare net.
Immigrants were anxious to assimilate and learn the English language.
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An example of the ideal factory was one created by
George Pullman,
who founded the
Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company
just outside of
Chicago, Illinois.
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George Pullman
saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them
houses
in a
safe little village
around the
factory.
To save them the hassle of making payments, rent was simply deducted from their paychecks.
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Workers
were paid
company "scrip,"
similar to food stamps, which were
redeemable
at the
company-owned grocery stores.
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It was thought to be a utopian workers' community and worked well for over a decade.
Then something happened.
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There was a
nationwide economic depression
in 1893 and orders for railroad sleeping cars suddenly
dropped off.
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To keep the company afloat,
George Pullman
had to make
cuts in wages
and
lay off hundreds of employees,
though, for the time being, rent and groceries stayed the same price.
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Some immigrants from Europe had brought with them
Karl Marx's idea
of a
class-struggle.
Employees were distraught, as they had grown completely dependent on the company.
Some employees
walked off their jobs,
demanding lower rents and higher pay, being unaware that the reason for the cuts was that company needed to stay in business during the national economic crash.
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The growing discontent was a seedbed for the
socialist-communist agenda
of redistribution of wealth.
A leader of the strikes was
Eugene V. Debs.
A high school drop out,
Debs
got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.
He was promoted to
locomotive fireman
and rose in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman. He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.
When the nation experienced the financial crisis,
Debs
agitated and organized a strike
of railroad workers in 1894.
Soon, railroad workers across the nation
boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars.
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There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars, destroying an estimated $80 million worth of property.
A
New York Times
editorial, July 9, 1894, called
Debs
"a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race."
"Debs' Rebellion"
became a national issue when it interrupted the trains delivering mail.
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President Grover Cleveland
declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike.
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More violence erupted, and two men were killed.
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Debs
was arrested for mail obstruction and put in jail for six months, where he "ravenously" read
Karl Marx's
Das Kapital.
Marx and Friedrich Engels
explained
(Marx and Engels Collected Works,
Vol. 10, p. 318):
"Conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat. Their business consists in ... spurring it in to artificial crises ...
For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution."
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Since 1894 was an election year,
President Grover Cleveland
thought it would improve his chances of getting re-elected if he appeased workers with a national "LABOR DAY."
He chose the FIRST MONDAY in SEPTEMBER.
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Though strike-organizer
Eugene Debs
went to prison, and
Grover Cleveland
lost the election, LABOR DAY remained a national holiday.
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President Cleveland
intentionally did not chose May 1st as LABOR DAY because he did not want it to be in coordination with the
Socialist-Communist "International Workers Day."
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He also did not chose
May 1st
as it was the anniversary of the
bloody Chicago's Haymarket Riot,
where anarchist rioters blew up a pipe bomb on May 1, 1886, killing 7 policemen and injured 60 others.
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Attorney Clarence Darrow
gained fame for defending
Debs
and the rioters.
Darrow
later defended evolution in the
Scope's Monkey Trial.
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The statue dedicated to the police officers who died in the
Haymarket Riot
was blown up on October 6, 1969, by
Bill Ayers'
militant leftist group
"Weatherman Underground"
during their
Days of Rage.
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The
Haymarket statue
was rebuilt, only to be blown up again by the
Weatherman Underground
on October 6, 1970.
Bill Ayers
later helped launch the political career of a young Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama.
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After six months in prison,
Eugene Debs
founded the
Social Democracy of America
(1897), the
Social Democratic Party of America
(1898) and the
Socialist Party of America
(1901).
Debs
ran five time for
U.S. President
on
Socialist Party of America
ticket. As he won no electoral votes, he opposed to the electoral process.
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When World War I started,
Eugene Debs
urged resistance to the draft.
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One of those who followed his call to be a draft-dodger was
Roger Baldwin,
who later founded the A.C.L.U. to help defend those who were accused of being communist agitators.
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In 1918,
Debs
was charged with
ten counts of sedition
and sentenced to
ten years in prison.
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In protest of his sentence, unionists, anarchists, socialists, and communists marched in support of
Debs
in a
May Day parade
in Cleveland, Ohio.
Predictably, the parade broke out into Antifa-style violence -- the
May Day Riots of 1919.
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When
Debs'
attorney asked for a Presidential pardon,
Woodrow Wilson
wrote "denied" across the paperwork, and stated:
"While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man,
Debs,
stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them ... This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration."
The next President,
Warren G. Harding,
also did not pardon
Debs,
and the White House released the statement:
"There is no question of his guilt ... He is ... a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent."
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In 1979, Bernie Sanders produced a documentary praising
Eugene Debs.
He hung a portrait of Debs in the City Hall of Burlington, Vermont, and dedicated a plaque to him in his Congressional office.
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After
Vladimir Lenin
organized the
Bolshevik Revolution
overthrowing Russia's government, he formed the
Communist International
in 1919. This persuaded some members of the
Socialist Party of America
to form the
Communist Party USA.
The
Communist Party USA
ran candidates for U.S. President every year from 1920 till they decided to support
Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt
, who had allied himself with
Josef Stalin
during World War II.
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The contributions that
unions
help bring about included:
- the 8-hour work day,
- a 40-hour work week,
- minimum wages,
- safer working conditions, and
- more benefits for workers.
Henry Ford's Motor Company
was one of the first to implement these benefits.
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A story circulated that
Henry Ford
met a Yemeni sailor at port and told him about auto factory jobs that paid five dollars a day.
The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other parts of the Middle East.
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Whether
Ford
actually did this, perhaps to counter growing union strength, is unverified, but it is a fact that large numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims began immigrating to Dearborn, Michigan, and worked in the auto industry.
Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper labor undercut their wages.
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As
unions
grew in size, another situation developed, where
top leadership
tended to hold values different than
rank-and-file union workers.
Many
members
supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet many in
leadership
funneled
union dues
to support
candidates
who
advocated opposing views.
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One of the unanticipated consequences of
workers' benefits improving
was the increase
cost of doing business.
Companies,
in order to stay competitive in the global marketplace, had to find ways to lower costs, which meant replacing jobs with
"automation"
and
"out-sourcing."
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After
World War II,
America helped
rebuild
Germany and Japan with
new factories.
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These overseas factories, with their cheaper labor costs and newer machinery, produced items for less and took a larger part of the global market.
They hired lobbyists to push for
lowering tariffs
so they could bring less expensive products in, gaining a competitive advantage over American factories.
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Issues that increased the cost of doing business in America included:
- Environmental restrictions;
and
- Crony capitalism, where politicians provided subsidies, contracts, and relaxed regulations for companies supporting their political agendas and reelections; and companies not supportive were put at a disadvantage, some being faced with the choice of either going out of business or out of the country.
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As
American-made products
became more expensive in comparison to
foreign-made products,
consumers bought fewer of them, resulting in
American factories needing fewer workers.
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"Squeeze the sponge and the water goes out" - as
manufacturing costs in America rose,
manufacturers moved with their
jobs to other countries.
To personalize this, if you needed gas for your car, and the gas station on your side of the street sold it at $4.50 a gallon, but the station on the other side of the street sold it for just $2.50 a gallon, would you cross the street?
Just as water seeks its own level, individuals and businesses are motivated to save money.
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Bringing jobs back to America is as simple as making it
more profitable for factories
to be located
here than there.
But coalescing the political will in Congress is an uphill battle.
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Another by-product of companies leaving the country was their
loss of patriotism,
creating what became termed
"globalists."
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Globalists
are patriotic only to the bottom-line on their financial statements.
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Additionally, socialist political strategies include
intentionally raising unemployment rates
so more unemployed workers will sign up for welfare benefits.
Once unemployed workers become dependent on government benefits and entitlements, they are inclined to
vote for the candidates who promise to continue them.
Tragically, for some political strategists,
more unemployment
means an
increased voter base.
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If entitlements are threatened, some are even inclined to be organized into revolutionaries.
Socialist thinker Friedrich Engels
wrote (London: W.O. Henderson,
The Life of Friedrich Engels,
1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):
"Every fresh slump must
ruin more small capitalists
and increase the workers who live only by their labor.
This will
increase the number of the unemployed
and this is the main problem that worries economists.
In the end commercial crises
will lead to a social revolution
far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom."
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Soviet leader Nikita Khrushschev
reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture, in 1959:
"We won't have to fight you; We'll so
weaken your economy,
until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands."
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Among American workers,
union membership since 1950
has
declined
from 50 percent to currently less than 12 percent.
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Instead of addressing the need to attract manufacturers, with their jobs, back to America, many
unions
have focused their efforts to
increase membership
by
recruiting from other occupations,
such as government, education, medical professionals, sports, service industry, and retail.
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Warning American workers of the hidden danger of "social justice" movements,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
who had spent 11 years in Union of Soviet
Socialist
Republics labor camps, stated, June 30, 1975:
"I ... call upon America to
be more careful with its trust ...
Prevent those ... who are attempting to establish even finer ... legal shades of equality -- because of their distorted outlook ... short-sightedness and ... self-interest -
from
falsely using
the
struggle
for peace and
for social justice
to lead you down
a false road ...
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...
They are trying to weaken you;
they are trying to
disarm your strong and magnificent country
in the face of this fearful threat ...
I call upon you:
ordinary working men of America
... do not let yourselves become
weak."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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