Labor Oppression Quotes
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.
Ruffin is more widely known as the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War.
At the time, it did seem impossible that labor and capital would ever have harmonious relations. But the notion that slavery would solve the problem is as preposterous as anything ever entered into the American political dialogue. But there were many in the South, and some in the North, who actually believed it. Even 150 years later, while labor and capital relations were much better than pre Civil War, they still could not be described as “harmonious” or “friendly”.
Jefferson was one of the first political and economic thinkers to express concern over the “wage slave” concept of the industrial revolution. This was one of the major reasons that he was not in consonance with Alexander Hamilton in his economic vision for America. While we followed the Hamilton direction, there are still issues of maintaining freedom and independence for an employee in modern nations and economies.
In 1937 there were major automobile and steel strikes. President Roosevelt castigated both sides of the dispute:
By the middle of the 20th century, the banks were no longer allowed to control the railroads and seemed less powerful, but by the beginning of the 21st century, the few largest banks, without the railroads or any other industrial holdings, were so big that the controlled credit, fraudulently manipulated rates and mortgage foreclosures and after losing huge amounts speculating in 2008, the government had to bail them out with taxpayer money while the bank executives who caused the failures tool million dollar bonuses. Never were banks so powerful in any country that they could have the government pay billions of dollars for their losses and mistakes.
This quotation is extremely subtle. Vidal tells us that he has always hated organized labor. He also tells us that the media has always given us one monolithic view of organized labor. He is silent as to whether that view was accurate and justified or in his mind or whether he was just going along with the image created by the media. There is no answer, but it is a quotation that is food for thought. Numerous studies found that at the beginning of the 21st century, the public view of labor union crooked and/or communist leaders was much worse than reality.
