Dear Jean P.S. Part Ten of 10
April 6, 2021
Walter Reuther comes to mind.
I keep thinking about factory life in those first textile mills
at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The concept was so odd, so
un-mapped, so original, including lots of bad judgments, nasty policy, and
completely unreasonable expectations for the people working in those
“manufactories.” It had never been done in human history. Now we can see the
harm, but it took a long time for any measure of justice to prevail. This
remains a struggle globally to this day.
Please, if you are just coming to the “Dear Jean P.S.” series
here, you might benefit from checking out the series from the top, lots of
non-fiction truth of one aspect of the Industrial Revolution that happened to
bump into my life. And for some easier reading, my “Dear Jean” letters, fiction
based on fact, are also about those early years of the Industrial Revolution.
Methinks perhaps the first mill owners based their work demands
this way: people - adults and kids - working on farms definitely work seven
days a week, sunrise to sunset, so that’s how this mill work will roll, too.
And of course, of course, in the 1700s, once you turned 5 yrs. old, you were
considered a little adult, get to work. That certainly happened in farm life,
why wouldn’t it be just fine in the textile mills? Almost amusing, it wasn’t
until the 20th century that there was any idea of “teenager.”
Really.
How did it roll in those mills? The long hours, work seven days
a week 6:a – 7:p, in many mills, the
shabby worker housing (mill owners housed most mill workers and charged rent,
can’t have workers living 10 miles away), the minimal plain food (feed the crew
a crappy “breakfast” for their ½ hr. morning break and a crappy “dinner” for
their ½ hr. late afternoon break) – this for workers who did leave the premises
after work. The orphan child workers who lived at the mill also got a crappy
bit of food after work. The non-existent health care, many hundreds of child
workers, zero provisions for retirement, and workers were supposed to be
grateful? Grateful for making their bosses extremely wealthy?
With the “Dear Jean” letters, we see that real fellow David Dale,
one of the early “Captains of Industry” at the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution and owner of New Lanark Mills near Glasgow, was a better owner,
lived some principled values and gave his workers slightly better conditions.
The image I create in those letters is one of gratitude, my “life” as a single
parent could have been much worse without our mill wages. I could keep me and
my kids together through some very harsh challenges. In truth, Dale had heart, and was quite
focused on running a profit-making cotton yarn mill. And yes, I do take a look
at the cotton work in the colonies and early USA. Dr. David J. McLaren, researcher and author of
David Dale, A Life, explains that as Dale’s estate was finally
wrapped up, clearly Dale gave away more money for causes and social concerns
than he left to his family, and they were left quite comfortable.
I try to imagine how it went for mill workers at the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution. As much of a mess it was, forcing orphan kids to work,
all that, even when that ended (see my blog post about a BBC series, “The Mill,”
set in the 1830s England, no small kids in mills finally), textile mill owners
were still much more interested in profit than worker considerations. Here’s a clip
from friends, singer/songwriter, Charlie King, and his partner, Karen Brandow,
as they honor the legacy of a famous mill worker revolt – the 1912 Great
Textile Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l7HSsmvrTg. Those Polish women mill workers finally said no.
I also keep thinking about factory conditions in the 1930s
forward in the USA. Factory owners like Henry Ford hated the unions, did
everything in his immense power to break the unions, and yet union organizer
Walter Reuther and his colleagues stood tall through the violence and achieved
much better circumstances for factory workers. One of my favorite books, Putting
the World Together, My Father Walter Reuther: The Liberal Warrior by
Elisabeth Reuther Dickmeyer, says in the Prologue:
“Rush Limbaugh calls liberals ‘linguine-spined,’ a spine like a thin,
cooked pasta noodle, without a backbone. My father’s life and legacy prove him
wrong.
“Walter Reuther was one of the greatest liberals of the 20th
century. He fought to increase the quality of life for workers and their
families. He negotiated benefits for working people that helped build the great
American middle class: health care coverage, pensions for ‘when you’re too old
to work and too young to die,’ paid vacations, cost-of-living clauses, and a
host of other benefits.
“Despite being severely beaten, nearly killed by a shotgun
assassination attempt in 1948, continually slandered and undermined by J. Edgar
Hoover and the far right, father never gave up the fight for a more just
society. Hardly linguine-spined, Rush.
“The radical right sarcastically criticizes liberals as
‘bleeding hearts,’ characterizing compassion as weakness. Liberals believe in
the brotherhood of man and consider it their duty to fight for ‘the least of
these,’ those people without a voice.”
As Bob Marley sang, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your
rights.”
Speaking of liberals, did you know that liberals started one of
the most capitalist magazines, The Economist, in world history one hundred-and-seventy-seven
years ago? Really. Liberals like money, want to make more, like to control the
heat, and now in the 21st century, “liberal” becomes a thing to
avoid, yet I so respect Walter Reuther for his liberal dedication to have much
better circumstances for workers. Yeah, you. Yeah, me.
Can you imagine if first factory workers would have had a
voice?! Oh, I like thinking about that. McLaren points out that mill workers in
Manchester, England, did riot in the 1780s and on. The most prominent mill
owner, Richard Arkwright, was unable to manage his work crew and they did have
things to say. Arkwright was an engineering genius, but he was not so smart
with human resources. By 1811, the determined collective power of the Luddites
began a long and harsh battle for the soul of the textile worker.
As the Luddites were finding their voice, another voice emerged.
Robert Owen, RO, with six others, bought Dale’s New Lanark Mill. A few months
later Owen married one of Dale’s daughters. The new owners of the mill gave
Owen the job of running the mill, and he got a salary for this work. I’ve
covered this in earlier “Dear Jean P.S.” work, so odd that I have a link to the
Owen/Dale legacy. Odd. Two degrees of separation.
More strange, Owen was not like his father-in-law, no no no. RO
was done with the power of any church. Owen was an early part of what we now
call secularists. RO was also quite interested in promoting his way of
thinking, some good, some lame. He wrote a book that he made sure would be
gifted to many notables of the times, he also gave public talks often, in the
British Isles and in early USA. He became a notable, bought a town in early
USA, really! I lived there! Much more about this in my blog posts elsewhere.
Now for a personal consideration. Could I be a product of RO’s New
View of Society? Very possibly. I’m not from a church family. Few of my
relatives had any such interest. Christmas is about Santa and that lovely
spirit of giving, Easter is about that bunny bringing fun candy, hard boiled
eggs getting bling, extended family dinners with a short grace before the meal
to show our appreciation for such abundance. As a child and well into
adulthood, I studied several Christian religions, tried to imagine myself
within each group, couldn’t. Then I examined Judaism, took the classes and gave
that idea a great deal of time and energy, ah, no. I even lived at a Christian
house of worship, the Religious Society of Friends, Quakers, tried very much
for years to find my comfort zone within that experience. I mowed an acre of
grass with the next crappy old piece of junk lawnmower was given — lawnmower
wars became a thing. Here’s a fact: when next lawnmower given by a member broke
down, I got a lot of shit, “hey, that lawnmower worked fine when I gave it to you
last month, you broke it” and when I had to take it to repair guy, he was quite
informative, telling me, “this lawnmower, and the others you’ve brought in, are
all old, and were designed for urban backyard work anyway, not the acre you’re
expected to mow, these types of mowers are engineered for about an hour of
work, not the four hours to mow the areas you are expected to keep mowed.” My
eyes opened, these so sweet religious folks were blaming me for their “generous”
gift. Grrrr. Of course when I suggested that the group purchase a lawnmower
designed for such work, I was made to look a fool. Hmm. I shoveled lots
of snow, cleaned toilets, cleaned the building, answered their phone 24/7, had
sixty bosses, had weird nutjob people roaming my porch in the middle of the
night, paid rent to live there, and three years later I was done. They didn’t
like me, and I didn’t like them. Call it a draw and move on.
My next move was to a commune, talk about a shadow of Owen
communal society. Five years later I was done with that dream. It was a
tenant/landlord deal, cleverly hyped as commune. Help the owner pay the
mortgage, and his heirs will get a fat reward? Was my son’s name on that
document? Hell to the no. Pay rent and clean the chicken shit? Bye.
I’ve always felt certain that God exists, especially when my son
was born, I knew I did not make that beautiful new human. Over time, I just cut
out the middle man, that being religion. God and I move along together. The
grace of this earth, the beauty of each sunrise, the glimpses of unconditional
love, the power of life and death, all help me along my path. I’ve been
horrible to a few, a few have been horrible to me, and I try again, today, to
step lightly and love each day. I do agree with Pliny the Elder, he was rather
bothered by the early Christians who were preaching life after death, painting
the heaven/hell that according to them, awaits. Pliny was not buying it. He
said its hard enough to grieve a loved one’s death, now these people are trying
to add this fear that my deceased loved one might go to Christian hell? Oh no,
oh no. We go to where we came from, sweet oblivion.
Years ago, I had a friend come visit for a few days, while I
lived in New Harmony. She is very religious, very. Apparently while I was at
work, she looked over all my books, hundreds and hundreds, and could not find a
bible. This deeply upset her, as she lives her life based on that book. How
could I not have THAT book? Well, love, here’s the thing. I’m sure that book
has some fine stories, some lovely ethics, some treasures to respect. But I don’t
base my life on those stories, never did get the Adam and Eve thing, and so
very sad, more wars and death have resulted because of that book than any other
book in human history. Somehow that book gives some people authority to kill
other people. No thanks. I live my life, with many errors, and again try today
to show love, give love, share love.
Speaking of early Christians, here’s a fact of the period of
world history referred to as the Dark Ages, about 400 years of their start in
Europe. As they saw what power could mean, they became zealots for their cause.
If you were someone of honor in your village, and you weren’t signing on to the
Christian plan, as the Gnostics found out, you might have people breaking into
your house in the middle of the night, taking you from your bed and never seen
or heard from again. Yep, that was the Dark Ages. Humans are horrible to
humans.
I should read RO’s New View of Society but won’t. The
language of the time was so stilted that I can’t bear more than a sentence or
two and then I’m done struggling to put those words into my words. I didn’t get
the special de-coder ring in the box of cereal, eh? Owen’s passion for social
engineering also leaves me cold, as I lean into free will. Yet credit due to RO
for starting discussion of secular cooperative enterprises, attempting to
consider life from workers reality and thus developing early concepts of socialist
principles. He never returned to New Harmony and lived in London most of his
remaining life. He turned to something like religion in his old age, a movement
called Spiritualism mattered but it cost him, Owen lost respect of most former
allies. He died penniless, except for a small trust his children arranged for
him, in Wales, his birth land. I wonder how he weighed facts, as surely the
deeply religious and strict Harmonists (who built the town, Harmonie, on the
banks of the Wabash River and ten years later sold the town to Owen and he
renamed it) were much more successful at communal living. Owen’s communal
experiment failed in two years. Do you think he secretly envied their leader?
Those recent word wars about USA socialism? I continue to remain
deeply grateful for an American socialist policy that helped my mother find
socialist shelter for us after WWII.
Ah, a final thought about a LOL about beer from Dale’s life in
Glasgow: malt for brewing. An earlier blog post chats this up: David Dale had
to sign a serious legal document, Oath for a Burgess Ticket, to become a part
of top merchants in Glasgow, that included his promise to only buy malt for
brewing that was grinded at Town’s Mill. So much to say about beer, and oh,
that malt. It’s usually from barley, a grain. Here’s how it becomes malt:
slightly wet the grain, rake it around for a few days in a closed room like a
barn loft, and at just the right time, just as it starts to sprout, dry it
fast, and grind it. Then it becomes malt, one of the key ingredients for beer,
as is hops. Ah, in fact, hops is THE key ingredient of beer. I recommend an
interesting book that includes history of malt, Malt, A Practical Guide from
Field to Brewhouse by John Mallett. He has great photos of this process
when cameras were a new thing.
Hops? My son has a PhD in hops, really! Pharmacognosy!
Are you thirsty? Start with this, human understanding of health
was lit by a dim bulb for a very long time. Gratitude to Antonia Fraser for her
book, Mary Queen of Scots, 1542-1587. Fraser explains that beer was the
drink. Water was considered dangerous, beer was considered safe. People
commonly drank beer like we commonly drink water. Really. With Mary’s extremely
harsh circumstances of “house arrest” for over ½ her short life, her cousin
Queen Elizabeth I did not want Mary held in The Tower, that might look tacky.
So various Dukes and Lords would offer to house the prisoner. That also meant
housing the prisoner’s servants. Really! A Queen must have her
Ladies-in-waiting, and a butler, and a horseman, and all those people had to be
housed, fed, and supplied with beer every day. One Duke was turned down for his
offer to house the Queen and entourage because he didn’t have a brewery on
site. Guess what? The cousin with power ordered her guys to cut off her
cousin’s head. Really.
I’ve mentioned a First Nations man, Leonard Peltier. He’s alive,
living in a US Federal Penitentiary and I’ve cared about his wrongful
conviction for many years, here’s a link: https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/. A Robert Redford 1992 documentary looking at the events from
Peltier’s point of view, Incident at Oglala, is a worthy piece of
20th century American history. Incident gives backstory of
Leonard Peltier and other First Nations people completely fed up with white
crimes common near Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, those being murders
by whites of First Nations folks, and not uncommon for the white to get one
night in jail for the murder they would brag about. The American Indian
Movement, AIM, came to be, to confront this injustice. The Director of the FBI,
J. Edgar Hoover, a known and proud extreme right-wing advocate, was determined
to shut down AIM.
My turn for my lame mistaken aspect of that documentary, as I’ve
thought all these years how shameful for the two undercover FBI agents to be
posing as locals investigating a theft of boots, is that how my government
works? That bothered me for years. Well, duhh.
A new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders
and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann set me straight. That’s what
FBI folks do; they go undercover to research whatever it is they are interested
in. In that account, we see how a young librarian, J. Edgar Hoover, becomes the
Director of a sketchy government entity, the Justice Department, and J. Edgar
learns to rule by amassing facts. Presidents feared J. Edgar, he had facts.
Here’s a link to a talk by David Grann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvs3V-spwLA.
Upon
reading Grann’s book, I will be eternally grateful to Molly Burkhardt, a
wealthy Osage woman with immense courage in the face of deep sorrow.
Additionally I am grateful for one of the first ethical FBI agents, Tom White,
for his determined effort to uncover some of the crimes of that reign of Osage
murders. J. Edgar closed the case before the entire scope of the murders became
known. Grann digs into some of the unsolved crimes, it’s a read.
I love my country and deeply want fair play
from folks in power. Let Leonard Peltier go home. I still hold President Bill
Clinton in shame for refusing to sign papers on his desk his last day in
office, the Executive Clemency for Leonard. Clinton signed clemency papers for
his wealthy buddies. One problem – had he signed the papers for Peltier, it
also stipulated that by accepting the clemency, said prisoner was accepting
guilt of alleged crime. Leonard was very very concerned about that, as he did
not kill the undercover FBI agents. So there’s that. And oh my, the group of
FBI agents who did a public street protest in front of the White House opposing
Peltier’s release to make sure President Clinton understood their position.
Leonard Peltier is innocent of the crime, the real killer outsmarted the FBI,
methinks. In the film, Incident, one high ranking govt. official admits
they don’t know who killed the agents. We’re America, where’s our best
practices?
Now
I’m seeing the power of the law, and watching the Ava DuVernay docu/drama, When
They See Us, hurts me to my core. We can do better, we’re America. The
five young teens who were caught in that tragedy served many years behind bars
until the real perpetrator admitted to the terrible crime. After they were
exonerated, it still took 12 years of legal work for the State and City of New
York to give them compensation. And not one apology from any of the people who
set these boys up. And not a whisper of apology from any prison staff who
allowed torture to be repeatedly inflicted on the innocent fellows. Criminal
Injustice system. We can do better. We’re America.
My apologies to proper historians, my informal approach surely
fails in their eyes. I don’t know the correct way to do footnotes, yet I’ve
tried very much to give proper credit to sources. If I’ve insulted or hurt
anyone, I humbly apologize. I’m not a journalist, I’m a massage therapist.
I do wonder how the historical record can accurately adjust to
McLaren’s fresh thorough research on David Dale. Every book I have about Robert
Owen, New Harmony, and other notable people connected to him, always takes
Owen’s “truth” as truth. RO convinced many that his mill operation was much
superior to his deceased father-in-law’s mill operation. Now that we can see,
read, analyze records from McLaren’s 2015 David Dale, A Life, how does this
become 21st century truth? Really quite sad that none of the Owen
children could speak properly about their Dale grandfather, but they were very
young or not born yet when Dale died. Their loyalty was with their persuasive
father, and so here we are. I am sincerely grateful to David McLaren for his
dedicated 30+ years of research to give us truth.
The End!
Bibliography:
Dickmeyer,
Elisabeth Reuther, Putting the World Together, My Father Walter
Reuther: The Liberal Warrior, Living Force Publishing, 2004
DuVernay, Ava, When
They See Us, documentary/drama, Netflix, 2019
Fraser,
Antonia, Mary Queen of Scots, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969
Grann, David, Killers
of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, Doubleday, 2017
Grann,
David, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvs3V-spwLA.
King,
Charlie, & Brandow, Karen, The 1912 Great Textile Strike in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, video and song, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l7HSsmvrTg.
Mallett,
John, Malt, A Practical Guide from Field to Brewhouse, Brewers Publications,
2014
McLaren,
David J., David Dale, A Life, Stenlake Publishing Ltd., 2015
Owen, Robert, A New View of Society, London, 1813
Peltier,
Leonard, https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/.
Redford,
Robert, Incident at Oglala, Leonard Peltier documentary, 1992
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