Part I
“LABOR IS PRIOR TO CAPITAL” Abraham
Lincoln at the Wisconsin
State Fair - 1859
Several of us from the Immigrant Workers’ Center
– Voces de la Frontera - attended the Monday, December 16th hearing
of the County Board of Supervisors Finance Committee on a ‘living wage’
ordinance. I was very disappointed. At
least two of the Supervisors and a representative of the County Executive
attempted to block the legislation. Final
vote of the committee was delayed frustrating over 100 living wage advocates
who were in attendance. A wage of 10%
over the poverty level is being asked for which is not really a living wage but
perhaps a beginning towards a living wage.
Several advocates mentioned Catholic Social
Teaching which has supported a ‘living’ wage since Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Despite impassioned pleas from workers, testimony
from a professor of economics and a prominent faith leader, Supervisors who
opposed the legislation didn’t listen, and spoke without compassion or principle. They could only speculate a future of doom
and gloom if the legislation were passed.
But this is not the time for personal or
partisan politics; the situation is serious.
Former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz says the income
gap threatens democracy. (Joseph
Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality, W.W. Norton & Company, New York
& London, 2012, p. xii)
PRINCIPLE AND COMPASSION IN U.S.
HISTORY
For guidance let us consider the words of
Abraham Lincoln in his speech at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1859. The nation was struggling with the issue of
slavery. Lincoln advocated free labor. He said, “Labor is prior to Capital.” Just wages should determine political and
economic structures.
Do we need to go back to Lincoln to find
compassion and principle in U.S. economic thought? Economist Robert Reich notes that the 1929
income gap that preceded the Great Depression was similar to the present gap. The
response was F.D.R.’s New Deal. Social
justice legislation in the 30’s would be an example of legislation based on compassion
and principle, but let us go back to the beginning of government legislating against
free market capitalism and the criminal greed that disrupts the common good. Doris Kerns Goodwin in her book, Bully
Pulpit, (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013 ) provides a guide to the
progressive era, the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard
Taft. Both were Republicans, but were separated
by personality and political thought. The problems of the ‘gilded age’ were
similar to the present. It was the epoch of the ‘Robber Barons’ and the income
gap threatened to be a chronic disease of the economic system.
COMPASSION
Theodore Roosevelt’s eyes were opened to the
poverty in New York City by an investigative journalist, Jacob Riis. While T. Roosevelt was Police Commissioner
and New York State Assemblyman, “Jacob Riis had introduced him [Roosevelt] to
the realities of immigrant life in the slums, though Roosevelt found it hard to
relinquish his conception of the poor as people who had ‘failed’ in life.” (Bully
Pulpit, p. 213) Riis’ famous
book, How the Other Half Lives stuck with Roosevelt. Doris Kerns Goodwin described T. Roosevelt’s
final campaign speech at Madison Square Garden in his 1912 presidential
campaign.
If the problems
created by the industrial age were left unattended, Roosevelt cautioned,
America would eventually be 'sundered by those dreadful lines of division’ that set the ‘haves’ and the
‘have not’s’ against one
another. (Bully Pulpit, p.
735)
PRINCIPLE
Abraham Lincoln was T. Roosevelt’s role
model. (Bully Pulpit, pp. 79, 83, 566, & more) Lincoln at Gettysburg emphasized inalienable
rights; Roosevelt did the same in a 1912 campaign speech at Columbus, Ohio.
We progressives
believe that human rights are supreme over all other rights; that wealth should
be the servant, not
the master of the people. (Bully Pulpit, p. 678)
A GILDED BUT TARNISHED LEGACY –
EXTREME NATIONALISM
W.H. Taft,
T. Roosevelt’s successor, and more so T. Roosevelt himself are
considered progressives in the ‘gilded age.’
They challenged liberalism (laissez fair capitalism) with neo-liberal
legislation and judicial decisions. Kerns Goodwin listed the accomplishments:
A series of anti-trust suits had been won and legislation
passed to regulate railroads, strengthen labor rights, curb
political corruption, end corporate campaign contributions, impose limits on
the working day, protect consumers
from unsafe food and drugs, and conserve vast swaths of natural resources for
the American people. (Bully
Pulpit, p.xi)
But T.
Roosevelt promoted the Spanish American War.
His reaction to the 1886 Haymarket riot was couched in language
distinguishing ‘Americans’ as law abiding as opposed to the immigrant German workers
demonstrating against police brutality. Kerns Goodwin quotes Roosevelt from his
western ranch in Medora,
Men here are hard working laboring men for no greater wages
than many of the strikers; but they are Americans
through and through, I believe nothing would give them greater pleasure than a
chance with their
rifles at one of the mobs. (Bully
Pulpit, p.159)
Kerns
Goodwin fails to note that the 1886 demonstrations in Chicago were part of the Knights
of Labor national campaign for the eight-hour day, and that parades around the
world on May 1st remember the Haymarket Martyrs.
The next posting, Part II of COMPASSION AND PRINCIPLE, will continue
with the guide of Doris Kerns Goodwin’s book Bully Pulpit, but will
focus on the role of McClure’s magazine as an agent for T. Roosevelt’s – ‘Bully
Pulpit.’ How did Taft and Roosevelt differ? We will also consider Eugene Debs criticism of
T. Roosevelt’s labor policy.
“LABOR IS PRIOR TO CAPITAL” Pope John
Paul II (not Pope Francis) Laborem Exercens, 1982
The sketch
of President Theodore Roosevelt is by Liam Gima Lange. Liam is a student at Aptos Middle School, San
Francisco, CA
For comments: wjlange@sbcglobal.net
