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It's the place he draws the line because it is the place that organized labor has always drawn the line: wherever anyone challenges the organization. In this th
by fennecfoxen 5y ago
It's the place he draws the line because it is the place that organized labor has always drawn the line: wherever anyone challenges the organization. In this the grandparent poster continues an ancient organized-labor tradition, one which once dynamited homes, beat and blinded men, hung them in effigy, insulted and harassed their families, often without a shred of sympathy. For this simple reason you should harbor doubts that there is a real principle behind the thing.
David Dick, of Old Forge PA, letter to the Scranton Tribune, 1902:
"A short time ago, my son, James Dick, had his home attacked at night by an angry mob. The windows were smashed and the house so damaged that he had to move his family out and come to my place for shelter. Now, why these depredations? Because my son and I try to earn a living for our families..."
JR Gorman, employee of Exeter Shaft, West Pittston: "They hung me in effigy and hooted me in the street. I had to go armed."
Of a miner named John Colson: "Five years before he had been in a mine explosion... Colson had been taken from the mine for dead, but he finally lived, blue-scarred, wholly blind in one eye and almost blind in the other... [W]ith the strike came hard times, and [his] sons, though willing to help their parents, had many mouths of their own to feed ... so that old John Colson was compelled to go back into the mine. He told me he was doing [an African-American's] job, turning a fan in a deep working, and he earned only 75 cents a day, but he was glad to be employed again."
Of the mob that attacked John Colson: "The police had warned him of his danger, and he had, indeed, already been stoned, and yet, naturally fearless, he was going back alone. Having a revolver, he thought he could defend himself. A trainload of soft coal was passing; a mob of men appeared, shouting at him threateningly. He reached to draw his revolver, and a man on one of the cars dropped a huge block of coal on his head. Colson fell in his tracks, and after further beating him, the mob robbed him of his revolver and a new pair of boots, and left him for dead. For three days he lay unconscious in the hospital..."
John Colson's mother: "He might better be dead, for he's brought disgrace on the name... He deserved all he got. He wasn't raised a scab."
— McClure's Magazine, XX, November 1902 http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Right%20to%20work.pdf http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Right%20to%20work....
120 years later, the enemy of the Union is still systematically Otherized, and deserves to have his life destroyed.
Don't worry! All the abuses of capital, the Pinkerton stories you've heard of? Those, and worse, are all quite real too!