American Minute with Bill Federer
Labor Day: Are you aware of its interesting origin?
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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
occurred in the early 19th century with the
harnessing of water and steam power.
This led to the creation of
factories
which could
mass produce items inexpensively.
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In America, most
factories
were in the
Northern States.
As there was originally
no Federal Income tax,
the Federal Government was financed primarily from:
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EXCISE TAXES
on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;
and
TARIFF TAXES
on imports, making them more expensive so people would buy goods made in American factories.
The problem was the
Tariff Taxes
that
helped the North hurt the South,
as the
South
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 prior to the
Civil War.
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After the
Civil War,
the
North
passed
more Tariff Taxes
which successfully allowed
factories to grow enormous.
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Textile manufacturing
produced items like
clothes, glass, dishes,
and
farm tools
for a fraction of the previous costs.
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New ways of making stronger steel led to the building of
bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats,
and
mining machinery.
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Railroads
now could take 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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President Grover Cleveland
dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886.
Immigrants arrived
and could get jobs working in factories where they learned the language and skills.
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One such factory was that of
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, deducting the rent from their paychecks.
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Workers
were paid in company "scrip" which was accepted 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
and orders for railroad sleeping cars declined.
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In 1893,
George Pullman
had to make
cuts in wages
and
lay off hundreds of employees,
though rent and groceries stayed the same price.
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Employees
walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay.
The growing discontent was a
seedbed
for
Karl Marx's theory of class struggle
and the
socialist-communist redistribution of wealth.
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A young worker named
Eugene V. Debs
agitated and
organized a strike
of workers in 1894.
Railroad workers across the nation
boycotted
trains carrying
Pullman cars.
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There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars.
It became a national issue when
mail trains
were interrupted.
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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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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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President Cleveland
intentionally did not chose
May 1st
as he did not want LABOR DAY 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 subversive 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 defending 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.
Bill Ayers
later helped launch the political career of Barack Obama.
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The
Haymarket statue
was rebuilt, only to be blown up again by the
Weatherman Underground
on October 6, 1970.
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Karl 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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The 1894 railroad strike-organizer
Eugene Debs went to prison
and
Grover Cleveland lost the election,
but
LABOR DAY
remained a national holiday.
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Unions
successfully advocated for an
8-hour work day, a 40-hour work week, minimum wages, safer working conditions,
and
more benefits for workers.
With these unprecedented
improvements in working conditions,
which
increased the costs of doing businesses,
came an unintended consequence, namely job loss through
"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
produced items for less, whereas in America, the costs were increasing due to:
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-Higher wages;
-Increased taxes;
-Expensive lawsuits;
-Burdensome regulations;
-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
comparatively more expensive
than
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 is the
loss of their patriotism,
creating what became termed
"globalists."
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Globalists
are patriotic only to the bottom-line on their financial statements.
They funneled large amounts of money into
lobbying politicians for favorable treatment,
especially to keep
tariffs low
so they can import products back into the country at prices lower than what American factories can produce them for.
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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.
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 and 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, service industry, and retail.
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Addressing the American worker,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
who had spent 11 years in labor camps in the Union of Soviet
Socialist
Republics, warned on June 30, 1975:
"I would like to call upon
America
to be more careful with its trust ...
and prevent those ... because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest, from
falsely using the struggle
for peace and
for social justice
to lead you down
a false road.
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... Because
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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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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