Daily Archives: February 6, 2017

If you had to find a single statement that Americans from across the political spectrum can agree on, you might settle on we need good jobs to give people a crucial sense of self-worth. Fight-for-$15 activists assert the right to a higher wage, partly so they can stop taking government handouts like food stamps. Policy commentators, worried that automation could bring a loss of jobs, prescribe everything from subsidized corporate hiring to federal make-work programs. The congressional leaderships pitch for its policies hinges almost entirely on encouraging workand reducing public benefits.

But heres the thing: In historical terms, the pride we take in working for a paycheck is really new. Just 150 years ago, when people talked about the shame of dependency, they were referring to the reality of being forced to hold a job.

* * *

Speaking at the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee in 1859, Abraham Lincoln described wage labor as an unfortunate necessity only for the penniless beginner in the world:

If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.

In contrast, Lincoln laid out a vision of respectability that required avoiding a job:

In these free States, a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their familieswives, sons, and daughterswork for themselves, on their farms, in their houses and their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other.

Farmers and craftsmen valued this independence in part because their time was their own, as it had been for skilled workers for generations. Describing nineteenth-century artisans in Birmingham, England, the historian Douglas A. Reid wrote, high piece-rates could provide good wages for skilled men, but they more often elected to take a moderate wage and extensive leisure.

Leisure meant time in the alehouse, time eating, drinking, playing marbles, or watching cockfights. Reid writes that even less-skilled workers and apprentices observed the informal weekly holiday known as Saint Monday if they could afford it, much to the dismay of elites and government officials. One observer in 1864 complained that an enormous amount of time is lost, not only by want of punctuality in coming to work in the morning and beginning again after meals, but still more by the general observance of Saint Monday.

That was the kind of life craftsmen in Lincolns day might have expected for themselves. But, as the sociologists Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit explain, rising industrialization in the late nineteenth century forced many skilled artisans to work for a factory owner rather than for themselves. The Knights of Labor, an early labor union, saw this dependence on an employerregardless of how much or how little was paidas wage slavery, a condition literally comparable to chattel slavery, which the country had only recently abolished. These unionists argued that working for wages was repugnant because capitalists siphoned off part of the wealth produced by the workers and told them when and how to do their jobs.

The only solution, as Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens put it in 1881, was the complete emancipation of wealth producers from the thralldom and loss of wage slavery. Workers and their unions interpreted that goal in many different ways over the next several decades, sometimes trying to return production to independent craftsmen, other times creating cooperative worker-owned enterprises, or advocating a socialist revolution.

* * *

Some workers saw more logic than others in harkening back to a pre-industrial independence. For example, to young, working-class white women, heading to a mill town to work for a wage might have sounded better than staying home on the farm. These women organized strikes to get better pay, but, to many of them, wage work itself was more liberating than not.

They knew as farm wives they would have little control over the farms profits and little disposable income, American literature scholar Julie Husband writes, describing mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1840s. These women explicitly rejected the label of white slaves that some political reformers and male unionists applied to them. Millworker Harriet Farley mocked the notion that to put ourselves under the influence and restraints of corporate bodies is contrary to the spirit of our institutions and to the love of independence we ought to cherish.

There is a spirt of independence which is adverse to social life itself, she added. And I would advise all those [who] wish to cherish it to go beyond the Rocky Mountains and hold communion with none but the untamed Indian and the wild beast of the forest.

Even for skilled white male workers, rhetoric identifying wage labor as wage slavery mostly dried up in the final decades of the century, as large-scale industry came to dominate manufacturing. By 1900, Hallgrimsdottir and Benoit write, both the Knights of Labor and the ascendant American Federation of Labor (AFL) generally used the phrase wage slavery to refer only to particularly awful jobs, especially those held by immigrant and black workers.

* * *

While some unionists still held out hope for the abolition of the capitalist system, many turned their practical attention to improving wage work. That required a dramatic shift in focus, as historian Lawrence Glickman explains in his book, A Living Wage. Mid-nineteenth-century skilled white male workers had believed that wage work not only degraded their economic status but undermined the independence that lay at the root of republican manhood and republican citizenship, he writes.

Wages have stagnated, benefits have evaporated, andreturns to capital have swelled.

As wage workers, they needed to regain pride and status. For some white, male unionistsparticularly those in the relatively conservative AFLthere were two intertwined ways to do that. One was winning higher wages and using the money to construct a respectable lifea carpeted parlor, ornaments on the mantle, a wife who could stay home to care for the family. The other lay in contrasting themselves with female, black, and immigrant workers, who, in their view, lacked both the power and the desire to push for better pay. Glickman quotes one labor leader, W.W. Stone, who drew the division like this: The Caucasian must add to his own individual needs the cost of maintaining a wife and family. There is rent to pay, clothing to be provided, books to buy, and, added to all this, the many little wants that arise out of the condition of a Christian civilization. In contrast, he continued, Chinese workers were content with a fractional interest in the body of a female slave.

* * *

Through the early twentieth century, unionistsincluding not just skilled white men, but also workers of other backgrounds, who organized in spite of the barriers erected by some white male union leaderspushed for better jobs. Glickman notes that this required not only strikes and demonstrations but also a new economic vision. In an age of big factories, workers recognized that it was no longer possible to reimburse any one individual for the value they added to a product. At the same time, they rejected the emerging economic consensus that supply and demand in the labor market would produce a correct wage. Instead, they created a new concept: the living wage, amounting to their rightful share in the products of common toil, as AFL President Samuel Gompers called it.

The labor movement achieved a great deal in this era. Working hours lessened, working conditions improved, and wages rose. By the end of the 1940s, historian David L. Stebenne writes, unions and management had essentially reached a truce. Workers repudiated socialism and stopped trying to win a say in how companies were managed. Companies provided pensions and health insurance to many employees and worked to keep employment rates high. For a few decades, things generally went quite well for workers, particularly white, male union members in urban industrial areas.

In recent years, of course, things have changed. A concerted political attack has hobbled unions, while globalization and automation have reshaped the economy. Wages for all but the best-paid workers have stagnated, and employee benefits have evaporated, while returns to capital have swelled.

Economists and policy analysts have a lot of different ideas about how we might respond to the conditions of laborers. Some suggest reinstating the postwar social contract. Others argue that the government should expand programs that subsidize the incomes of low-paid workers into a European-style welfare state, or even provide a universal basic income to everyone.

With that in mind, here are a few lessons we might draw from the history of workers opposition toand then acceptance ofthe wage system:

The biggest lesson, though, might be this one: things change. Whether we like it or not, technological advances and geopolitical shifts will alter the ways we work, probably in radical ways. Our values, and the places we find pride and shame, will change with them. Theres no guarantee about what any of this will look like, partly because it will depend on the choices we make about what were willing to fight for.

The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1927), pp. 243-258

Wisconsin Historical Society

By: Douglas A. Reid

Past & Present, No. 71 (May, 1976), pp. 76-101

Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society

By: Helga Kristin Hallgrimsdottir and Cecilia Benoit

Social Forces, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1393-1411

Oxford University Press

By: Julie Husband

Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 1, Discourses of Women and Class (1999), pp. 11-21

University of Nebraska Press

By: David L. Stebenne

International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 50, Labor under Communist Regimes (Fall, 1996), pp. 140-147

Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc.

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Why Do We Take Pride in Working for a Paycheck? - JSTOR Daily

Meg and Patrick live an off-grid life most of us couldnt imagine.

HIPSTERS, drop your turmeric latte and turn down The Smiths, theres a new subculture of nonconformists on the block and youll need more than a bushy beard and a fedora to join in.

Enter the neo peasant.

Theyre fit, theyre frugal, theyre foragers, theyre facing our culture of extreme excess head on and they have very strong stomachs.

Think re-usable toilet paper, road kill for dinner, push bike-powered travel, homeschooling and humanure.

Neo peasants from Daylesford in regional Victoria, Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones, are defining the art of voluntary simplicity and reclaiming the skills, resilience and adaptability everyone is going to need in the future.

You wont find them in a supermarket, owning or driving a car, watching television, using a credit card or working the 9-5.

Their days are filled with foraging, hunting, preserving, brewing, bartering and fermenting to keep food on the table.

A neo-peasant is someone whos involved primarily in the household and community economies and resists wage-slavery, debt, and the heavily-militarised global economy, Mr Jones said.

They do not have to go to work to pay down debt, and therefore have time to organise and be accountable for their own food and energy resources.

Sounds better than your office job, right?

But dont be mistaken, a neo peasant hasnt got time to laze about.

Not many of us had to split wood to stoke our stove or hot wash the family cloth today the old flannel bed sheet Meg and Patrick have cut into squares and stitched to replace toilet paper.

By not buying toilet paper we save over $300 a year, Ms Ulman said.

Weve always been frugal, but its been about a decade since weve really concentrated our efforts to become dedicated non-polluters.

Neo-peasants Meg and Patrick with their children Zephr (left) and Blackwood.Source:Supplied

Its hot, heavy, hard work, but they are nauseated by the prospect of running down to the supermarket and buying a hot chicken for dinner dont worry, Ive asked.

We wouldnt touch a chicken from a supermarket because that hen has more than likely come from a prison-like existence and been tortured in death, Mr Jones said.

The packaged food of supermarkets is mostly laced with refined sugars, harmful additives and carcinogens, and the so-called fresh food is long-termed stored, sprayed with harmful methyl bromide, refrigerants or other nasties and has little nutrition.

Excuse me for a moment while I torch the entire contents of my pantry.

One look at the couples four-year-old, Blackwood, will also have you prizing that lollipop out of your toddlers mouth.

Woody has never touched processed sugar.

A treat for Woody is a mandarin picked off the tree, a handful of ripe berries or a sweet red capsicum, Ms Ulman says.

Patrick processing some road kill.Source:Supplied

We dont shop at supermarkets so there are no shiny packets or chocolate bars to entice him and we dont own a television so there are no ads to seduce him.

Ms Ulman said before they committed to a neo peasantry lifestyle they were riddled with anxiety and helplessness about the state of the world.

Mr Jones goes as far as to say its a move they made before they were forced to simplify with global economic contraction and even collapse.

We live in a culture of extreme excess, built on the myth of permanent growth and endless crude oil, he said.

This oil-induced affluence is fleeting; it cant keep growing because we live on a finite planet and the science fictions of mining other planets for resources is far-fetched and wishful thinking.

So lets look at the average Aussie.

We work all week for multinationals to buy appliances that cost us a lot in electricity to turn on.

Lets not get started on how much waste the average household turns out in comparison to Meg and Patrick theyve even found a way to re-use their own poo.

Humanure is composted and recycled, wastewater is filtered and fed into garden swales, food scraps from our own kitchen and local cafes are fed to our worms, chickens and ducks, Mr Jones says.

We shower once or twice a week.

The water is then piped into our garden.

The family also has two composting toilets, a rainwater washing machine powered by solar and strict rules about internet access for their 14-year-old son Zephyr who happens to live in a tiny house in the backyard that he co-built from recycled materials.

Zephyr helped build his own tiny house in the backyard.Source:Supplied

Four-year-old Woody is happily playing in the backyard after his first haircut.Source:Supplied

The neo peasants have a theory about tiny house living too, you see.

It is an expression of people using technology appropriately, and living within their means, Mr Jones said.

While the real estate market remains a giant Ponzi scheme the tiny house movement will continue to grow.

But if shovelling your own poo, washing your toilet paper or cooking up fresh road kill for dinner (as Meg and Patrick did on their 14-month foraging tour of Australia by bicycle) is too much to swallow; Kirsten Bradley from Milkwood Permaculture has some advice.

Start with changing one thing at a time, Ms Bradley said.

If you eat a lot of bread, learn how to make it.

Then stick with making your own bread until youre ready to add a new habit.

If you create these new habits every 6 months or so then within 5 years youll have made a fundamental change to your family life.

Meg making some Kefir milk.Source:Supplied

The boys standing next to the backyard veggie patch.Source:Supplied

Milkwood offer training courses in home gardening, bee keeping, natural building, permaculture and regenerative agriculture making mini neo peasants out of us all.

Murdoch University School of Arts Associate Professor Dr Carol Warren said there was something of a millenarian movement in the extremity of a neo peasants position on some issues but she conceded the idea we are morally-responsible to live within an ecologically-sustainable footprint was laudable.

The current prominence of food and energy security issues in global policy circles indicates that the neo-peasant focus on basic needs in a context of global environmental decline is a legitimate one, Dr Warren said.

You can follow Meg and Patricks journeys in neo peasantry at http://www.theartistasfamily.blogspot.com.

It's here! What we've all been waiting for, right? It's the definitive guide on how to spot a hipster. No need to stare at passersby any more wondering if they are in fact a hipster or not. Watch this video and you will know immediately. And remember: hipsters are grown, not born. Credit: YouTube/billygoatideas

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Living off the grid: Neo-peasants in Daylesford, Victoria take on ... - NEWS.com.au

Published 05/02/2017 | 06:00

An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver

FarmIreland.ie

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/rural-life/an-interesting-life-through-the-eyes-of-a-slave-driver-35409740.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/article35409739.ece/4e461/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-01-31_bus_28185490_I1.JPG

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver

FarmIreland.ie

Books on self-help and business management have always been popular and many of them make useful reading, but one I picked up recently comes from a very different angle.

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/rural-life/an-interesting-life-through-the-eyes-of-a-slave-driver-35409740.html

http://www.independent.ie/business/farming/article35409739.ece/4e461/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-01-31_bus_28185490_I1.JPG

Given its intriguing title, How To Manage Your Slaves, one feels that had it been published 2,000 years ago, it might well have topped the bestseller charts. I couldn't resist buying it and found the content both amusing and well researched, with lots of interesting historical facts concerning the ownership of slaves.

Now before you explode in anger at my purchasing and enjoying a book with such a politically incorrect title, bear in mind that it was written by Dr Jerry Toner, an Irish professor of classics at Cambridge University, using the voice of Marcus Sidonius Falx, a fictitious Roman of noble birth and a wealthy slave owner, as the narrator.

It is Falx who gives us detailed advice on purchasing slaves, how to encourage them to work harder, how to punish them and, in general, how to ensure we can get the best out of them while taking care they don't murder us in the meantime.

It even touches on the delicate matter of controlling sex among slaves, as well as with their owners, and when to set them free, which was apparently quite a common reward for being a good slave. The content gives us an insight into what life was like when people had a very different mindset to today and should be read in that context.

One wealthy Roman apparently kept a slave solely to note and remember the names of all the people they met and then remind his master of whom they were when required. Now that would have been useful. How many of us encounter embarrassing moments when we cannot recall the name of someone we know well? Politicians and auctioneers take note.

I would imagine also that anyone involved in difficult negotiations with intransigent trade union leaders might yearn for a time when you simply told your slaves what to do and if they refused or made a botch of the task, you could have them whipped or even put to death.

While the narrator is a fictional character, the book contains fascinating historical data as well as some horrific descriptions of the treatment meted out to any slave who attempted to defy his or her owner. But there were also many who gained their freedom and even went on to become wealthy Roman citizens and slave owners in their own right.

How To Manage Your Slaves deals with the period when the Roman Empire was at the height of its powers, but we must also remember that slavery was the norm in Ireland and Britain from long before that time, and continued for many centuries.

In the early fifth century, St Patrick was captured and taken as a slave by Irish raiders while St Brigid was the daughter of Brocca, a Christian Pict and a slave in Ireland. Early Irish law also makes numerous references to slaves and semi-free senclithe, and from the ninth to the 12th century, Dublin in particular was a major slave trading centre.

The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-1600s, thousands of Irish men and women were sold to Antigua and Montserrat and by then, 70pc of the total population of Montserrat consisted of Irish slaves.

In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2,000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Some will argue they were "indentured servants" but, in reality, there was no difference.

The British were not the sole perpetrators of course and on June 20, 1631, the village of Baltimore in Co Cork was attacked by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. They killed two villagers and captured almost the whole population of over 100 people, who were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.

It was only by the early 19th century that the ethics and morality of enslaving people was questioned and eventually banned, although it still continues to the present day in a more limited manner and under various guises.

Throughout the 'free' world, there are domestic servants still living in slavery and immigrants kept in awful living conditions. We are told that some are often paid virtually no wages, but are afraid to speak up for fear of being deported.

Send letters to: Farming Independent, Independent House, Talbot street, Dublin 1 or email: farming@independent.ie

Slavery comes in many forms and it is said that the only man who is truly free is the man who has nothing.

Some who own their homes become slaves to maintaining it and keeping up with mortgage payments.

Then there are wage slaves who spend their lives in the pursuit of money for status and to support and educate their families without spending time with their children, later realising it is now too late and life has passed them by.

Others, as they commute to work, might at times gaze in envy at a dropout from mainstream society living a simple life in the countryside. In the past, hermits and religious solitaries shunned wealth and chose poverty.

It is a form of freedom that Jesus, for one, recommended to his followers when he said: "Cast away your earthly goods and follow me."

So what is a slave? Many are slaves to alcohol and drugs, and most of us have become slaves to consumerism.

Just ponder on the aspirations of the average family in the 1950s and what they considered adequate for comfort and compare them to the same family today. It's a sobering thought.

Indo Farming

Originally posted here:

An interesting life through the eyes of a slave driver - Irish Independent

By Paul Aizley, Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 | 2 a.m.

In the article As business owner, labor pick chafed at worker protections (Las Vegas Sun, Jan. 18), Donald Trumps pick for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, asks, How do you pay somebody $15 an hour to scoop ice cream? How good could you be at scooping ice cream?

If Pat scoops ice cream for an hourly wage, Pudzer should take a broader view. Consider why Pat is working: to pay for school, buy a car, pay medical bills or put a few dollars away for retirement. Pats wages should allow Pat to have a life. Can Puzder scoop all the ice cream? What is Puzders time worth? Pat is helping Puzder, and Pat is not a slave. Pat does not have a life if all s/he can do is pay for lifes minimal essentials. That is modern slavery.

What should be obvious to Puzder is that there is more to Pats life than scooping ice scream. With an adequate wage, Pat will be able to pay for more than lifes basic essentials and will not have to rely on help from the government to get by.

We hope for a secretary for labor, not a secretary for the corporation.

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Pudzer isn't looking at the big picture - Las Vegas Sun