Stephen Ambrose Quotes
I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.
Ambrose, Stephen E. To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian. Simon & Schuster, 2002.
One important observation of this quotation is the pejorative language Mises used to describe “Union Bosses” as opposed to “Union Leaders.” There were indeed a few Union “Bosses” but most unions had popularly elected leaders. It is similar to the left wing critic who refers to Corporate Executives as “Greedy Monopolists.” A few are but most are not. Historically, in the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the conservatives tended to be much better at pejorative language and used it more frequently and uniformly than the liberals who tended to be better in the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
There is a very interesting parallel with the views and statements of FDR at the same time.
His last speech before his appointment to the court.
She was referring to the high percentage of Rockefeller workers who were killed in industrial accidents with little or no management concern for workplace safety. In addition, she accused Rockefeller (and other very rich employers) of paying such low wages that full time workers lived in abject poverty and suffering the short lifespan that went with poverty then (and even today, but less so.)
This futuristic work attempted to project American life in the year 2000—then 112 years in the future. It is remarkable how many elements he successfully predicted. In this quotation a character in 2000 looks “backward” and correctly describes what occurred well after Bellamy’s death. This prediction describes the early 20th century quite well.
Most defenders of the Capitalist system that produces large inequities argue that interfering in the free market wouldl be worse. However this thesis argues that the inequality is actually good for the people including those at the low end of the ladder.
Much if the American industrial revolution was assisted by government subsidies of one kind or another. Railroads, telegraph, armaments, foundries are just a few.
The Kimberly and Comstock lodes were natural deposits of copper and silver so close to the surface that it required very little work to remove the metal and sell the it.
Money was backed by gold then and therefore limited and the country was growing, and needed more money to finance development. But the only way to then have more money in circulation was for the government to borrow it from the people who had it—mostly wealthy people in the East and in England. These gold owners charged very high interest rates. However there was much more silver in the U. S. and more was being mined every day. So for many populists, the answer was to make silver a basis for money. But those who had gold backed money wanted to maintain the shortage of currency in the growing nation The populists naively thought that if there was sufficient money supply all other problems like labor strife would disappear. Some did when the money supply was finally expanded, but it was no panacea.
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
