2007
Topic B - The Working Class
July 20, 2007

The Working Class

“There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war and we're winning.” Warren Buffett

Another time, I will have more on the “American Dream,” but one piece of the dream is classlessness. Upward mobility means no class conflict. Everyone is middle class (ask them!) and has a sense of entitlement to a coming classless society, with beautiful homes, big or fast cars, productive and satisfying jobs, classy clothing, upwardly mobile children. Actually, most workers are frozen in place.

Reality: the gaps in class are widening. The lower class is about 4.5% of the population, and the upper class is 3%. Is the remaining 90+% middle class? Not. We have added the working class, which is losing ground in wages, is not finding security, and yet is generating the wealth. About 60% overall are working class, with workers who do not have much control over the pace or content of work (Michael Zweig).

Workers are lower and middle economically, but they usually do not change positions by hard work. Henry Ford provided an exception. Ford believed his workers should enjoy what they built and that they would be more productive with that hope. So, to the consternation of the capitalists of his day, Ford paid them enough that they could buy a new car and join the middle class. Old Henry made a lot of money by believing in his workers.

My point in this paper: we are ignoring a massive working class, giving perks to management, taking benefits away from workers, and giving entitlements to the poor. We are becoming an unhealthy society and will feel the pain of illness if we do not pay attention to the symptoms.

The subject is far too complex to be definitive in a brief paper. So I oversimplify, to get reaction and to cause you to think. I am not heading toward a conclusion. This is a sketchpad, inviting others to fill it in. I am convinced that if the public really thinks about what is going on, good decisions will be made.

We can start by paying attention to the enemies of the working class. We developed our negative attitudes from an old servant mentality. The Irish were servant/slaves in Omaha because they did not get here first. They escaped by making the Italians the new low class. Then the Polish. Then all ganged up on the Africans. Now it is the Mexicans who get the hard work and no respect.

We have fitfully started to move past that, I hope, but presently we are losing ground. One of you wrote: “I really believe that there is a planned program for eventually doing away with the middle class. The kings, dukes and counts want the rest of us to become serfs again. Adolph Hitler came to power by turning the populace against one another.” A lot of that going on right now! I do not expect such a painful future, but if we do not respect all workers in our society we are setting ourselves up for an unhealthy future.

Example: schools systems across the nation are debating funding for education of low income students. Sharecroppers do not need much education. If that, in any way, is the assumption of decision makers we can save “tax dollars.” Leaders, not workers, plan the future roles of workers.

Some quotes, coming during the life of Nebraska. “The Irish are nothing but imported beggars, animals, a mongrel mass of ignorance and crime and superstition, as utterly unfit for society's duties as they are for the common courtesies and decencies of civilized life.” Jersey City Standard, 1859

“(Members of) the African race…even when free, are everywhere a degraded class.” Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1857

“Immigration to this country is increasing and …is making its greatest relative increase from races most alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races.” Henry Cabot Lodge, Congress, 1891

“Business is not a philanthropy…I do not care two cents for your ethics. I don't know enough of them to apply them.” President of Sugar Trust, 1899

On the rights of the workers in the mines, the President of a mining operation said in 1902: “Suffer?!... They don't suffer. Why, they can't even speak English!!”

“The low wages at which women will work form the chief reason for employing them at all…A woman's cheapness is, so to speak, her greatest economic asset.” U.S. Bureau of Labor report, 1911.

“If an employer can secure men for $6 and pays more, he is stealing from the company.” Stockholder of American Woolen, 1911

Report on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911: “I could see smoke pouring from the eighth and ninth floors. (The girls were jumping out of the windows.) The girls had no other way out. The management had locked all the doors to keep them from going to the bathroom. The thuds of falling bodies (should have been heard all over the city).” N. Y. Times

Abraham Lincoln: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much higher consideration.”
“There has never been but one question in all of civilization - how to keep the few from saying to the many, 'You work and earn bread and we will eat it.'”
“The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
“If a man tells you he loves America, yet he hates labor, he is a liar.”

President Dwight Eisenhower: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

Milton Friedman in 1974: “Do corporate executives….have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money ….as possible? My answer to that is: no, they do not.”

Quoting Tom DeLay in a paraphrase, 2003: “We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship.”

We have a great amount of serious dialog ahead if we are to have a healthy society.

Lowen