The Urge to Purge

Stop me if I've told this story before. 

Cathy and I went with my folks to a museum in Spokane.  One of the buildings was the original home built in the 1890's.  A graceful mansion.  The carriage house still stood beside the house, along with a more modern museum building. 

As we wandered through the mansion, the huge living room with the balcony where the orchestra played for the gala parties, to the vast dining room and the hotel sized kitchen, down to the game room, and up to the numerous bedrooms, each one bigger than my living room, I turned to my dad and said, "I would love to have lived in the 1890's". 

As we climbed the wooden stairs to the top floor, divided into small bare servant's quarters tucked under the rafters, my dad said to me, "Here is where our people lived". 

Shouldn't each of us ask the question, "How many workers does it take to support one millionaire?" 

 

Carl Jarvis

 

----- Original Message -----

From: ted chittenden

To: Blind Democracy Discussion List

Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 9:16 PM

Subject: Re: The Urge to Purge

Joe:
A lot of the people who both write and read the newsletters I (sometimes) forward from David C. are people who fervently believe that the 1870s was the best time in U.S. economic history. They disagree with Mark Twain's assessment of the time as being a "gilded age", and you cannot get them to believe anything else. The same can be said for the causes of the Great Depression and its aftermath. I have, in fact, forwarded to this list at least a couple of commentaries saying that the Keynsian policies that the U.S. followed during the Great Depression actually prolonged it and not helped it to end. As I have mentioned many times before, people believe what they want to believe no matter what the factual information may indicate.
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Ted Chittenden