During World War II my dad would take me along on Saturday's to the Union Hall somewhere in down town Seattle. A bunch of people, mostly men, but sometimes a couple of gnarly old women, would sit around and tell horror stories of "how it used to be" back in the bad old days.
The coffee was thick and black and the air was blue with cigarette smoke.
My dad's older brother was born in 1900. Dad said Bill would brag about how he went about finding work. He said he would walk up to a construction job and ask for the boss. When that fellow showed up Bill would point to one of the workers and ask, "What are you paying him?" When he found out, he would tell the boss that he could do twice the work for less than he was paying the fellow.
This is what we call, "Supply and Demand". Currently we have this large pool of unemployed people.
Once Unions have had their teeth pulled or been shut down, employers will offer jobs to the lowest bidder. Make no mistake about it. Except for the past 60 or 65 years, this was the working man's fate.
Go back and read some of the novelists from the 19th and 20th centuries. Start with Charles Dickens. He paint vivid pictures of life among the lower classes in England. Mark Twain gives us detailed scenes from the same time period on the American side. Read O'Henry or John Steinbeck or...the list is overloaded with novels depicting the hard, bleak life of the majority of Americans.
Enter Hollywood. With the advent of the moving pictures film makers quickly moved away from recounting the grim side of life, and began to weave wonderful fantasy worlds of life among the rich. For a period of time it seemed that all of America lived in fine mansions and drove fancy cars and had houses full of servants. Movies became our escape from the harshness of the Great depression and then from the brutal World War.
Escape from reality seems to have become our passion. Stop for a moment and count all of the ways Americans have at their disposal for avoiding their dreary, mundane lives.
Well my friends, good news for those who long to return to the "good old days". We're headed smack dab down that road.
Think of that wonderful world where we can once again put in an honest 6 day, twelve hour day. And our children will be allowed to work, too!
Wives can take in laundry and do mending to pull enough extra money for such luxuries as fruit and shoes.
We won't be bothered by too much TV or radio, because with the big crash we won't be buying much of the stuff currently being hawked over the airwaves. Internet will be too costly and too closely monitored to be of any use to us. Movies and sporting events will be priced out of our pocket books, and probably most of them will shut down. If we're lucky enough to live in towns where electric trolleys run, we can get to town. Otherwise we'll need to wait for the green grocers and the bread and meat wagons to pass through our neighborhoods. With gas going through the ceiling we will not be driving much and airlines will shut down for lack of business. Maybe we can plow up the airports for farms.
Anyway, enough of this rant.
Curious Carl
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