William Manning Quotes
The whole contention lies between those that labor for a living and those that do not.
William Manning, 1747-1814, Farmer, Soldier, Tavern Owner and Political Philosopher, The Key to Libberty, 1798
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In his economic view, managers, accountants, attorneys, owners, shareholders, landlords, were all supported by the workers who have to support themselves and all the others.
The factory workers in Lynn, Massachusetts started their own newspaper: This was published four years before Marx and Engles published the Communist Manifesto
Peel himself was a large land owner. Many Conservatives thought Peel was a traitor to his party and socio economic class just as many Republicans thought Theodore Roosevelt such a “traitor to his class” for not maintaining the privileges of the rich. By 2012, Conservatives who did not support the rich were vilified as “not conservatives” and “socialists.”
This quotation and other material were so radical and inflammatory that Calhoun wrote and published this anonymously.
The working and middle class wages and other income had been static for over 20 years while the wealthy had theirs increase several fold. The “rising tide” only lifted the largest boats.
In 1902 there was a major coal strike in which Roosevelt pressured the coal operators to make concessions to labor. The abuses of some of the large monopolistic enterprises were turning large segments of America against capitalism. TR always believe that he saved capitalism from its own self destruction. The same has been felt about Franklin Delano Roosevelt who many believe saved American capitalism in the Great Depression.
In 1902 there was a major coal and railroad labor crisis. The owners and operators refused to negotiate or bargain with labor: This quotation is very famous because it is an iconic picture of the views and attitudes of the large industiralists at the turn of the 20th Century. More than opposing labor unions, they actually believed that God had selected them to run the economic and business affairs of the country if not the world. It was their Christian values and paternalism that the workers should look to in order to determine the rights and priviliges of the working man or woman. This upper class attitude was one of the major reasons that class warfare broke into the open. Ironically, there was not much difference between the attidudes of the industiral leaders and the notions of fudalism.
William Manning (1747–1814) was a New England farmer, foot soldier and author. After fighting in the American Revolutionary War, he began to believe that his service and labor meant little to those in charge. He soon became a member of the Jeffersonian Republican Party (otherwise known as the Democratic-Republican Party) in response to the day’s ruling Federalist Party. As the years passed and his distrust in government grew, he wrote multiple papers on what he deemed was the corruptness of the "Few" and what the "Many" endured because of it. In 1798, Manning wrote his most famous work, The Key of Libberty (later corrected to The Key of Liberty), in which he wrote that the goal of the Few was to distress and force the Many into financially depending on them, creating a continued cycle of dependence. He continued that the Many’s only hope was to vote for leaders that would fight for those with lesser power and urge for smaller government. His work, however, would not be published for more than a century, mostly due to its controversial content.
