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In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere el
by _wldu 6y ago
In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families.
https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-dark-past/ https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d...
Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and abused workers. A lot of unions and labor rights groups came out of the abuses that occurred in Appalachia.
- djsumdog 6y agoThis is where the Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes from, "Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store." There was an episode of South Park last season where they played this song as a backdrop to Amazon workers in a warehouse.
- javajosh 6y agoThat is de facto slavery!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zmix 6y agoI would call it Capitalism without opposition from the Left.
- samdamsamma 6y agoThis is objectively the case. It’s exactly what happens every time the left is broadly defeated. And I literally mean every single time.
- drran 6y agoIt's Soviet Union in miniature.
- zmix 6y agoWhether someone owns the land by property right or "owns" "common grounds" by administrative right, the result seems to be the same: Oppression of those, who don't. And this is why a strong opposition is important. It makes oppression much more difficult.
- nickff 6y agoWell, it's actually de facto indentured servitude.
- ImaCake 6y agoThis reminds me of a similar, and quite popular, 90's rock song in Australia called "Blue Sky Mine" [0]. It refers to the horrible exploitive activities of CSL on an asbestos mine in the Pilbara region of Australia where they controlled their workers in a similar manner to what you describe here. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Sky_Mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Sky_Mine
- hinkley 6y agoAnd nothing’s as precious as a hole in the ground.
- Exmoor 6y agoI would be remiss not to mention that Sixteen Tons was a Merle Travis song, recorded for the bona fide classic album[0] Folk Songs of the Hills. Both songs are classics, but the Travis version deserves to be heard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I15_KUsOzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I15_KUsOzs 0: The album was released in 1947 prior to the introduction of the 12" LP, so it was originally released as a literal album of multiple 78rpm singles. It is one of the first concept albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_Songs_of_the_Hills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_Songs_of_the_Hills
- bsder 6y agoHowever, to be fair, Merle Travis had no problem with Tennessee Ernie Ford's version and was quite grateful for the royalty checks it provided ...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dalbasal 6y agoI respect a history lesson, but honestly, I think old comrade tales are not helpful. I don't mean that it's irrelevant, strictly, but we hear more of these than 2020 tales, 2020 strategies and concerns. This is 100 year later, and despite of how many union die hards see it... most workers aren't likely to buy int a centuries long struggle. They're interested in their own lives & jobs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _wldu 6y agoRight, I think the point is that while things have improved since then, workers are still exploited. The only way to change that is for people to band together. Large, diverse, unified groups can bring about change. The coal miners were mostly Irish and German immigrants and African Americans. They all joined together and brought about changes that workers still benefit from today. People in 2020 can do the same.
- thomascgalvin 6y agoI think the main points are: 1. Their own struggles aren't new: companies have been trying to fuck workers over since time immemorial, and 2. There is a well-known solution to these problems: unions. Are you working 16 hours a day, barely able to afford rent + food + utilities, and slipping further into debt every day? It doesn't have to be that way, and we have a really good idea, based on historical facts, about how to fix it.
- syshum 6y agoyou do know that Appalachia is still the poorest area in the US, and the unions did not fix the economic problems. yes it provided the employees that were still employed with greater protections, but it is not the utopia you seem to believe it is
- andybak 6y agoNobody claimed a utopia. Extracting natural resources is always going to be a tough job that is ripe for exploitation. Did unions improve the lives of members? They certainly did where I come from. American labour history is more complex (union corruption and take over by organised crime seemed to run deeper)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- EarthIsHome 6y agoThat "special money" had a name called "the scrip" [0]. Here's a really short video of what used to be a "company town" in Appalachia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCxG_SCnQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCxG_SCnQE One of the host's grand dad was paid in scrip until the 1970s. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- ardy42 6y ago> Here's a really short video of what used to be a "company town" in Appalachia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCxG_SCnQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCxG_SCnQE That's a great video.
- throwaway201103 6y agoIf getting your health insurance through your employer creates dependency and gives your employer more control over you (and it does) then why is it a good idea to give this power to the government?
- cpeterso 6y agoYour employer can mistreat you under the threat of losing your employer-provided health insurance. If everyone had government-provided health insurance, then employers would have less leverage. Government-provided health insurance can also ease the burden and risk for people starting new companies. It also maximizes the number of people paying into the insurance pool.
- edoceo 6y agoSo you can switch employer and keep the care.
- ardy42 6y ago> If getting your health insurance through your employer creates dependency and gives your employer more control over you (and it does) then why is it a good idea to give this power to the government? Does your government have due process? If it does, how would that government use an obligation to provide you health insurance against you to influence your decisions? People quit jobs far more often than they quit countries, and employer provided insurance does tie you to more strongly to your employer (e.g. I knew someone who needed a heart transplant who would literally die if he went without insurance, because he depended on a heart pump). Also, you have to get insurance/healthcare from somewhere, and in a democracy the government is far more accountable to its citizens than an employer typically is to its employees [1]. [1] This is very clear in the typical case, but less clear for people with rare in-demand skills (like software engineers).
- rtkwe 6y ago(Probably) The first aerial bombardment on US soil was when private planes dropped homemade bombs on striking coal workers at Blair Mountain in 1921. The US has a looong and brutal history of breaking up labor movements.
- dfxm12 6y agoIt looks like the Tulsa Race Massacre [0] has Blair Mountain beat by a few months (May vs August). 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre#Attack_by_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre#Attack_by_...
- ConradKilroy 6y agoGood catch, dfxm12!
- vermontdevil 6y agoHow do you think May Day was celebrated? The Haymarket Affair [1] which occurred in 1886 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
- terr-dav 6y agoAnd let’s not forget why we have a separate Labor Day in the US: >Labor Day has conservative roots. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following the Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons. >Cleveland was wary of the response to his actions. He signed Labor Day into law a mere six days after busting the strike. Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/labor-day-may-first-american-labor-movement-haymarket/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/labor-day-may-first-ameri...
- rtkwe 6y agoThat was thrown right not air dropped? I was mostly using it as a punctuation point about the violence and power imbalance applied to stop any labor movement in the US. But yeah there's a deep deep history of the government coming in to violently break up labor strikes for capital long before and long after 1921.
- mrtksn 6y agoIs there anything stopping workers from crowdsource their own protection anonymously? Does it have to be some kind of formal union? If you think about it, work is just a business deal and wouldn't be possible for employees create some kind of company that deals with the companies they are employed? Pretty much like an agency, I guess.
- _alex_ 6y agoI think you just described a union
- mrtksn 6y agoSee, it's not a union. Unions are apparently uncool in the USA. Think of it as Musk inventing the Tube by removing the engineeringly silly parts of the Hyperloop and adding a sharing economy feature to the result :) Why would you share your "not-union" membership with your employer? Instead, use it as a coordinator between your peers to prevent being underpaid and overworked do to information disparity you normally have in your relationship with you employer and if you get screwed it turns out you have access to lawyers. Something of that sort.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe issue is that being in a "not-union" isn't a protected class, so you could probably get fired for it after your employer sent the "not-Pinkertons" to do some intel. To prevent this, you'd have to get your "not-Union" to either have huge solidarity, or lobby the government to make that a protected class. Maybe if you went for the first you could make a song about it, how about "Solidarity not-for-finite-periods-of-time"?
- mrtksn 6y agoWhy would they fire or investigate you? It’s not like you’re organizing strikes or anything like that. You are simply benefiting of the same knowledge that companies have to have a fairer deal.
- mcguire 6y agoPinkerton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)) was one of those security companies.
- strathmeyer 6y agoDo people think Bezos is setting up company stores? What is the point of these posts except to excuse bad behavior?
- cutemonster 6y agoIt's not about excusing bad behavior. Here's for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25291778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25291778 (another reply here that explains)
- timoth3y 6y agoThis culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain were mine owners employed private security and the US military to put down 10,000+ striking miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain It's an incredible story of capitalism gone mad. Areal bombardment and poison gas were used against the miners and it did not end well for them.
- hinkley 6y agoWhat the fuck was going on in 1921? That’s three months after they firebombed Tulsa.
- ixacto 6y agoWe also had the ludlow massacre where the local militia and mine company guards attacked the miners with machine guns (pre nfa...) and dynamite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre.
- m000 6y agoFor anyone interested, there's a 2014 documentary [1] about the Massacre and Louis Tikas [2], the main labor union organizer of the coal miners. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22U0Hwb-7ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22U0Hwb-7ao [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Tikas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Tikas
- CryptoPunk 6y agoIt's important to remember that the strikers started the violence: >>When leasing the sites, the union had selected locations near the mouths of canyons that led to the coal camps in order to block any strikebreakers' traffic. Blocking strikebreaker traffic amounts to using violence to obstruct others' freedom of movement. Strikebreakers were often assaulted and sometimes murdered. The fundamentally coercive nature of historical striking activity is heavily glossed over, and modern day anti-free-market ideologues go to extreme lengths to try to justify it.
- DavidAdams 6y agoFor some reason, the history page on the Pinkerton website has a big hole in it between 1907 and 1962. What could they have been up to in the early 20th Century, I wonder? https://pinkerton.com/our-story/history https://pinkerton.com/our-story/history
- CryptoPunk 6y agoThis is largely a myth. Labor mobility was high, and exploitation via "the company store" didn't actually occur: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...