Steel mill taking in scrap steel, 1942.
Labor Day is one of those holidays on which I've sometimes posted a reflection here. I'm doing so now influenced by the fact that, for me, this isn't going to be a day off. I'm just marking time until I go into work, which caused me to contemplate the nature of modern work and what most people are doing now days, and where things seem to be headed.
This day just doesn't mean what it once did to most Americans. When the holiday started to come in, during the late 19th Century, the United States was in the violent throws of going from being an agricultural nation to an industrial one. It had a long ways to go and that process hadn't just started by any means, and it wasn't near the end either. But Labor was really coming into its own.
There was a lot of fear, legitimate fear, about radicalized labor. And indeed in many countries this process resulted in fully radical labor. It never did in the United States, but from at least the 1890s well into the 1950s there was a section of American labor that was fairly radical. There was also a large section that wasn't and which was heavily patriotic as well. The American experiment with handling the transition allowed for this to occur, and we must acknowledge that American labor unions, while not without their radical elements, were a major part of that.
Much of this has fallen away. Titanic struggles between labor and capital resulted in legislative compromises that were so effective that labor not only succeeded in getting what it wanted, by and large, but it over accomplished that resulting in a claw back of some things starting in the late 1970s. Unions still exist of course, but by and large they achieve very little, their achievements having been accomplished long ago.
More than that, however, an American economy that was born, to some extent, in the early 20th Century and which came into full fruition following World War Two transitioned into something else starting in the 1970s and carrying through the remainder of the 20th Century, which very much played into this process. Coming into industrialization late, the United States did not really become a global manufacturing titan until the early 20th Century. By the post war period it was gigantic in that status, in spite of the Great Depression. World War Two demonstrated that dominance and the United States came out of the war as the only intact industrial power. From 1945 until the 1970s the US absolutely dominated manufacturing globally.
But by then things were changing. The countries whose industrial bases were wiped out by the Second World War were recovering throughout the 1950s and 1960s and came back into their own during the 1970s. Some nations that had never been industrial nations in any significant global fashion, such as Japan, achieved that status. This all cut into the US's dominance. All that, of course, is very well known.
Less well understood, as a topic, is that the US, either by design or default or a little of both operated to eliminate the bottom end of its manufacturing. People who follow this sort of thing closely argue whether this is merely an example of Adam Smith at work or, rather, a calculated decision to make Adam Smith work (or work in something else) but it did occur.
During that period of time in which the United States was a true industrial giant, nearly everything was made here, from the very high quality to the very low. Starting in the post war period, some overseas manufacturing became associated, in comparison, with junk. "Made In Japan", for example, was sort of a joke in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 70s it wasn't.
But what also wasn't by the 1970s were the really bottom basement manufacturing jobs that such industries began to support. As the US had a lot of better paying jobs, they were not missed. Soon, however, by the 1970s the better paying manufacturing jobs were disappearing as well. By now, a lot of them have wholly disappeared.
It's seems hard to believe now, looking back, that the US once had, for example, a major textile manufacturing industry and that it remained such a big deal that in 1979 a movie about a heroin organizing textile workers into a union would be a popular movie. But Norma Rae, with Sally Field in that role, was. Likewise, those who watched The Deer Hunter in 1978, with its depiction of Pennsylvania steel towns, didn't find that setting odd, while now it very much does. Lots of U.S. heavy industry has simply disappeared.
As it disappeared the tech jobs rose up with it, and for some economists this is argued to be more than a beneficial offset. Technology, it is argued, allows employees who would have spent their days in steel mills, textile mills and doing other dangerous work are now able to do much more lucrative and productive work in high tech.
I've heard that argument made many times in many shades, to include not only folks who have an interest in economics or who are economists, but also by such notables as Barack Obama, who basically argued that not only were the old heavy industry jobs never coming back, but we didn't want them back as well (those left out in this transition made their voices heard in the 2016 election, and we're still seeing how all that will play out).
There's always been something about that argument which is distasteful as it assumes a lot about what people should want. But then, a lot of this entire topic assumes that. People should want, the argument goes, these "better jobs".
That assumes that everyone is capable of doing them. It assumes also that every wants them, and that they actually are better.
Indeed, that assumption has been made so well that, ironically enough, a lot of blue collar jobs the nation has now go wanting, including some fairly high paying ones. People have been so schooled in the notion that those jobs aren't worth having, that people who are at the job entry level don't even consider them anymore, so they go unfilled.
Ironically, if you look at a lot of the "better jobs" we've gone to over time the evidence is that they may very well not be. And that takes me back to my working today.
I've worked manual labor jobs and so have a lot of lawyers my age and older, so I've seen both sides of work, indeed as this has more than one side, I've seen a lot of sides of work. But a lot of the younger ones never have. And as I look out on the ones who have really followed the dream, by which I mean following the brass ring to the huge firms in the huge cities, I'm seeing a bunch of people who look to be living in misery and know no other way of life. And that doesn't apply just to people in this field, but in everything, or at least everything that requires advanced education. People leave smaller towns and smaller cities to work 24 hours a day in high stress situations. Why is that?
Well, in no small part its because we are all told as a society that this is what we want, even if we don't want it. People want to live in the big cities, people want to work in the glass and steel towers, people want to wear the expensive clothes and drive the expensive cars and be tied to a job whose income has to be large as their expenditures are also large.
Right?
Well, I don't think they do. The entire economic culture of the country has has sold its soul to this idea and lots are lost. We have confusion of every type as a result, and a large number of people seeking to identify themselves with something they know is lost but which they cannot any longer find. The byproducts of that are frightening.
I suppose what we never asked ourselves is the question that Wendell Berry put to us so long ago, "What are people for?". We've built an economy which doesn't seem to be for people at all, and we continue to rush head long into it. We did that when we created an economy that industrialized and then we amplified that with a consumer economy that was all about materialism. We've forgotten that there is any other purpose to an economy and now believe that so strongly we don't know any other way, even if that economy is making people unhappy. And the needs of that economy became so paramount that it took over everything else, and ultimately wiped out a lot of the achievements that labor had won so long ago, including a five day work week with two days of rests, and holidays that were actually days off.
Which I suppose takes me back to my comment about working today. I'm doing that by necessity and I do normally take off Labor Day and I'm glad to do so. I'm not complaining about that, or if I am I'm not complaining much and that's not due to anything that I've noted here. I don't live in the big city. But I do note that as I occupy one of those many good jobs that at one time did in fact have many good side benefits. As the urban upper middle class miserable have spread their misery by insisting that all must partake in it, it begins to seep into everything everywhere. I've noted here before that practicing law isn't what it once was due these developments, and indeed those from the wealthier classes no longer enter the profession much as they know that. And that's all part of the same process that enforces every greater urban consolidation through such horribly misdirected policies as the Uniform Bar Exam, an exam boosted by law schools and the profession to make licenses "transportable" but which in actuality simply sink things down towards the center of gravity and make things worse for every member of the profession that refugees from the practice of law, such as law professors, claim they wish to help.
So the point?
Well, I don't know that there is one, really, other than this.
On this day of celebrating Labor, we don't have as much of it as we' used to. And maybe we're worse off for that. And as we continue to contemplate wonderful economies of the future, perhaps some contemplation into how people fit into that is merited. . . even if that means looking back rather than forward.
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