http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/view_news.php?articleid=9601

Keep listening; it is a great series!

I had a visceral reaction to Gingrich’s words and ideas. I wondered if Gingrich had ever worked as a janitor and if he had sent his children out of the home to work in a job like that. Moreover, I wondered what would happen if the Kennedy School of Government had invited someone as articulate who would argue for protective labor laws. I wondered what Darrow would have told the audience.

Darrow being Darrow would have denounced Gingrich’s position, probably labeling something or someone else as stupid in the process. And, he would have recounted two episodes: the 1898 Oshkosh Strike and the 1902 United Mine Workers strike in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. A central issue in both labor conflicts was the use of child labor in the factories and in the mines. Wages were so low for adults that parents sent their children to work in order to support the family. When other captains of industry discovered this, they built more factories—many of them clothing mills—which employed more children. Here’s what Darrow said about it:

About Oshkosh: “Our modern civilization, with its wondrous contrivances, has reached into the cradle and taken these little children in the morning of their youth and set them to work to grind out dollars for George M. Paine [a famous Oshkosh factory owner]. … Gentlemen, if all that Oshkosh can show for the civilization of this day—if all that Oshkosh can show is these stunted, starved children, that have made it great, then I say it would be better if not one brick was left standing upon another in your town, and that you give back the soil to the original savage who once roamed the shores of your lovely lake. You are not going forward. You are going backward when you take these little children from their homes and work them up into gold for Paine.”

More simply about the anthracite mines: “I have no doubt the railroad president loves children. Neither have I any doubt that the wolf loves mutton. These men make a living out of these children and if they can do nothing else in this region, this infamy should end.”

In Pennsylvania, Darrow also recounted a story told by reformer British Robert Day Lord who went into the coal fields to talk with boy miners. Lord asked one if he knew anything about God. The boy replied: “I don’t think he works in this chamber. He must work in the next.”

Despite all our poverty, all our austerity, and all our income inequity, do we really want to vote to sacrifice our children? I wonder if in a Gingrich White House will all the staff and janitors be children. Gingrich probably thinks that he is providing a pathway to improve civilization. Darrow argued otherwise.

*** See Arthur Weinberg, ed., Attorney for the Damned (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 292-293, 348-349.

*** See “Gingrich: Put Poor Kids to Work Cleaning Schools,” http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/11/21/gingrich-put-poor-kids-to-work-cleaning-schools/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-kenney-baden/tim-tebow_b_1120871.html

And yes, Clarence Darrow, too! Darrow would have relished the chance to speak before the masses. He would have cheered them on, praising their willingness to stand up against these modern Robber Barons whose rapaciousness rivals that of the Gilded Age’s fat cats. And, he would have urged them to project their movement into the political process because voting still matters as do the policies and actions of our politicians. He might have even urged them to think about a third party. As he once said at a gathering of Populists in 1894, “Today the privileged institutions of America, fattened by unjust laws and conditions, boastfully proclaim that monopoly is king, but I think I hear a voice rising loud, and louder from the common people, a voice which says in thunder tones, not monopoly but the People are king, and that these people, emancipated and aroused, will one day claim their own.” Perhaps that day is near.

Recently, The Real News.com published a story of an alleged (and if true horrible) episode of corporate greed and misdoings in which a businessman was taken to the cleaners by the company he invested in and by the lawyers hired to help him. The author ends the piece by wondering if the world needs a new Clarence Darrow. But then he decides no, referencing my biography as well as John Farrell’s. “If recent revelations about him are correct,” the author concludes, “Darrow was just as much the money-monger and corrupt jury-briber as were his opponents.”

On these charges that Darrow did things for the love of money and that he was unethical, I want to say two things. First, it is true that Darrow took cases for money and that he charged rich clients more than poor clients. This is the way lawyers make money. I would add that about a third of Darrow’s 2000 cases were pro bono. Second, Darrow was a scrappy lawyer who would do just about anything for his clients. Did he bribe jurors and witnesses? There were lots of accusations and three prosecutions but no one ever proved he did. Does that mean he didn’t do it? No. It means that no one proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did. That said, for Darrow, the courtroom was always a means to a political end, not an end onto itself. He gave as good as he got.

In my view, whatever Darrow’s personal and professional deficiencies, he was a champion of liberty and freedom. His fifty year political career — much of it done inside courtrooms — transformed American life for the better. He was hero of the downtrodden, the damned, and the desperate. So, do we need radical political activists like Clarence Darrow today? You bet! I would take him warts and all.

For more information about the event as well as the Great Michigan Read program (which is focusing on Kevin Boyle’s wonderful book Arc of Justice) see:

http://michiganhumanities.org/programs/tgmr/?page_id=11

If this is what is going on, the results have been ruinous. Unemployment is extraordinarily high as is the rate of underemployment. Between 1999 and 2010, median household income in my home state fell 14.5%. That number hides great disparities between the social classes. Poorer Wisconsinites have been hit much harder than more affluent ones. In the city of Milwaukee, household income fell by 22%. Whatever trickle-down spending the Bush tax cuts (which have been extended under President Obama) caused had a limited effect. Some millionaires just pocketed the money. Back in June, Arthur Delaney of the Huffington Post reported that while some “patriotic millionaires” had used their tax windfall for their own personal stimulus programs (like new dance floors for their homes or new yachts) others banked the cash. As Paul Egerman, founder of a medical transcription company, said, “I’ve kept it. I have not done anything with that money.”

The strike of millionaires, if that what this is, has been going on for some time and is a broader job action than just the lockout. Recently, Bloomberg News reported that the number of high-income earners (aka, job creators) paying no taxes has doubled. This of course does not count larger corporations who are not paying taxes, who are stashing cash in remote island banking havens, and whose profits are up. Why are profits up? As Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post explains, “profits are up because wages are down.” According to the chief investment officer of JP Morgan Case, Michael Cembalest, US labor compensation is at a 50 year low. Further Cembalest has stated that 75% of the increase in corporate profits have come from the reduction in wages. Workers’ share of the national economy has plummeted and now stands far below fifty year averages. The strike, if that is what it is, has crippled our economy. It has created, in Paul Krugman’s phrase, not another Great Depression, but a “Lesser Depression.”

As a historian, I wonder whether this has happened before. Krugman’s got a point in suggesting that the historical analog may be the Great Depression of the 1930s. Certainly there are plenty of parallels. Then the depression was preceded by a crash in the over-exhuberant, largely unregulated stock market. Our depression was preceded by a crash in the over-exhuberant, largely unregulated financial markets. Both economic crises also coincided with a dramatic and dangerous drop in consumer spending and consumer spending power. In terms of politics, however, the 2010s does not seem like the 1930s, however — at least not yet. In fact, we Americans seem reluctant to characterize our current political state. Harold Meyerson says that our nation is unlike other capitalist nations like Egypt or Greece where “capitalism is rigged to benefit only a connected few.” He adds, “In America, we don’t do things that way,” though the results might be similar. Yet, he does not know what to call our political economy.

Many who lived during America’s first Gilded Age, however, called it like they saw it. Clarence Darrow’s close friend, Henry D. Lloyd, frequently railed against what he called the “communism of the syndicate.” He was referring to that small group of elites who “under the manipulation of cliques…have become positive agencies of mighty influence, and are the scenes of operations that menace the lives and happiness of nations.” Lloyd also published a perceptive book, A Strike of Millionaires Against Miners, about the 1890 Spring Valley, Illinois, labor conflict when mine owners locked out their workers and destroyed a community in the process. George Bernard Shaw was more jocular about it. His 1901 pamphlet Socialism for Millionaires discusses the “horrors” and “disadvantages” of the wealthy, “the most neglected class” in society. Sounding a little like Egerman, Shaw wondered what use it was to be so rich if it were possible “to pay for a peacock’s-brain sandwich when there is nothing to be had but ham or beef.” One might as well pocket the money. He fatuously encouraged the rich to organize themselves under their own ideology — socialism for millionaires — and stop supporting the poorer classes beneath them, stop paying taxes, and stop supporting schools and hospitals. Phrases like “socialism for millionaires” and “communism of the syndicate” were popular in the 1890s. Even President Grover Cleveland used them.

So, let’s be our most cynical. Maybe Boehner was speaking the exact truth. What is the goal of this strike of the millionaires? If they are on strike, what do these socialists from above want? One would imagine that they are holding out until we all agree to cut taxes, to privatize public education, to slash aid for health care and retirement, to end environmental protections, and quite possibly to offer up a peacock-brain sandwich.

For further reading, see:

Tula Connell, “U.S. Workers’ Share of National Economy Nosedives into the Lower Depths,” 14 June 2011,

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/06/14/u-s-workers-share-of-national-economy-nosedives-into-the-lower-depths/

Arthur Delaney, “‘Patriotic Millionaires’ Describe What They’ve Done With Their Bush Tax Cuts: ‘I Built A Dance Floor In My House’,” 6 June 2011,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/06/patriotic-millionaires-bush-tax-cuts_n_871840.html

Paul Krugman, “The Lesser Depression,” 21 July 2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/opinion/22krugman.html

Jed Lewison, “Boehner: ‘Job Creators in America are Essentially on Strike,” 14 September 2011,

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/15/1017220/-Boehner:-Job-creators-in-America-are-essentially-on-strike

Henry D. Lloyd, “Making Bread Dear,” North American Review 137 (August 1883): 118-136.

http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=Making%20Bread%20Dear;rgn=full%20text;view=image;cc=nora;seq=0126;idno=nora0137-2;node=nora0137-2%3A4

Harold Meyerson, “Corporate America’s Chokehold on Wages,” 19 July 2011,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/corporate-americas-chokehold-on-wages/2011/07/19/gIQAL2ieOI_story.html

Richard Rubin and Andrew Zujac, “High-Income Returns Reporting No Taxes Almost Doubled in 2008, IRS Says,” 15 June 2011,

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-14/high-income-no-tax-returns-almost-doubled-in-2008-irs-says.html

George Bernard Shaw, Socialism for Millionaires (New York: Little Leather Library, 1901).

“Tour of Duty: Vigus recalls adventures of 530th Army Engineers”

http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20110919/NEWS01/109190332/Vigus-recalls-adventures-530th-Army-Engineers?odyssey=nav%7Chead

From the website “Armed Guard.com” http://www.armed-guard.com/lsip10.html. This photo was taken after the war and the ship appeared to have been renamed.

1) Go to Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com and download their free e-reader software for your PC or MAC

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/free-nook-apps/379002321/

2) Run the software and use your existing Amazon or Barnes and Noble Account or create a new one.

3) From this free software you can purchase and read the book. Again, “Battle for Wisconsin” is only 99 cents.

I look forward to receiving comments from readers!