I would expect the Smithsonian to have a better grasp of history. The Pullman Strike was far, far larger.
By this article on Blair Mountain, 10,000 miners marched, and 16 died.
According to [1], in the Pullman Strike, about 70 were killed nationwide, 250,000 workers in 27 states were involved, and the President called out the Army.
Personal disclosure: I grew up about 2 miles from Pullman, not that that gives me any special insight.
Were any of the individual Pullman marches larger than the Blair Mountain one?
Since you would expect the Smithsonian to have a good grasp of history, a charitable reading would imagine a reason that they would say "largest" even though they could certainly do the math to compare 10,000 to 250,000.
Good lord. I'm arguing for charitable reading because the quality of public discourse has gotten so bad/uncharitable that you're here accusing me of a serious bias, and for what? Pointing out a legitimate alternative reading!
Such deep cynicism is really an awful thing to see.
> I would expect the Smithsonian to have a better grasp of history.
It might be good to adjust that expectation.
The Smithsonian's interest in these flights was political. The reputation of the Smithsonian had suffered greatly in 1903 when Langley's Aerodrome failed to fly. This made it more difficult to obtain funding, which limited its growth and effectiveness as a scientific organization. The current Secretary, Charles Walcott, felt that the best way to repair this reputation was the show the Aerodrome could have flown; the time and money spent on it had not been wasted.
In 1941 in the River Rouge strike, [1] says "Sixty thousand workers and their families crowded into Cadillac Square in Detroit" So much for "largest march."
However, you're right that Blair Mountain does appear to have had more armed conflict, although River Rouge had more people involved, as did the Pullman Strike. There were just more people in the industrialized North than in Appalachia.
Why bother arguing about this? I'm really tired of things being called "the biggest [or worst] in history" when the real meaning is "biggest I can think of, off the top of my head."
Out of curiosity, what would you imagine that fight to look like? I can see it going two completely opposite ways: one, a return to our pre-lockdown lives when people could earn enough money to pay their rent, or two, a push for wealth redistribution.
I think the next widespread labour action will be focused on benefits - it'll pull in both of the factors you mentioned (increased earnings and wealth redistribution) since I don't think any labour gains will ever happen without those factors (and the first factor necessitates the second factor). But I think the focus will be lowering employee stress by advocating for stronger requirements around healthcare and reducing the workweek.
I don't think those alternatives are as opposite as they first appear. One way to restore the pre-2000's relationship between income and housing expense would be to cancel the debts that were created by the stimulus created by the Fed and Congress since that time... which amounts to wealth redistribution.
Return to pre-lockdown conditions is basically saying the system is working.
It's not. I've watched the homeless encampments grow over the last 20 years(maybe longer, but I can only speak for my lived experience). The lockdown was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back to the point where it's hard to ignore, but the problem has been brewing for a while. I blame Ronald Reagan, the ghouls have had it real good since.
One difference between then and now is that more people then thought of themselves as workers, which gave a sense of connection and common struggle to build solidarity. They also worked closer together, lived closer together, etc. We're more atomized now.
Maybe a similar sense of connection will happen with the housing crisis, but I don't think labor is the same as it was. People don't think of themselves as workers in a class; we have been divided more and think of ourselves as subgroups like entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, scientists, etc., which I think changes how you feel about solidarity.
To build solid and sustained mass movements, you have to struggle together. [0]
YouTube, FB, TikTok, Twitter etc. do make it easier to share and unite around feelings or emotional reactions. However, these platforms don't facilitate the sort of careful, thought-out organization and planning that historically has been necessary to make lasting social change. It's the difference between liking a tweet and maybe going to a protest vs. showing up to weekly meetings, having a long-term legal or political strategy, and executing on that strategy step-by-step.
The push for less ownership of one's primary residence, and less rent control (rent control is a policy that is much less popular now than it less was) also serves to heighten this separation.
If one's residence is determined by market rents it's going to be very segregated by income level. Less stable neighborhoods and buildings where your neighbor who was there for two decades might be much lower income but "grandfathered" in by a lower sales price or lower rent back then.
Being reminded that people in "lower class" jobs used to be able to afford what takes a high professional salary now would be a good reminder of the fragility of ANY labor, regardless of today's salary and comfort.
Or maybe hungry and desperate enough to find one of the abundantly available job opportunities, or start a business, etc. to pay for their future. Why wish for conflict?
Ah yes, we are famously anti-violence in this country, how did I ever forget. Pretty fucking rich opinion to hold on a thread about the labor movement in the united states.
I don't think that makes sense. While there is considerable overlap, the group of exploited workers is fundamentally a different group than the group of exploited tenants.
The issue of housing affordability is also, primarily, an issue of housing policy, rather than labor policy.
The evicted people aren't going to be able to tell a clear story about who they are, why they are fighting non-labor (which I guess is business and employers), and why a labor uprising is the answer to a housing policy and pandemic response failures.
I don't expect a clear answer, because recently, popular uprisings have been very unimpressive in terms of intellectual rigor. I moved to Portland expecting to join up with more radical groups, but I quickly learned that no one is really serious (hence why despite having overwhelming resources compared to the police force, they haven't succeeded in making change).
In my experience, an unserious labor movement is one of the more convincing arguments for a neoliberal approach. Add to that public sector unions tarnishing the brand of organized labor in general (see police unions, teacher's unions) and I just don't see it.
Rents and wages are inextricably bound. One cannot address one without addressing the other, least a gain in one side be appropriated from the other. The law of rent meets the iron law of wages.
An excellent recent comment: "All goes back to the land, and the land owner is able to absorb to himself a share of almost every public and every private benefit"
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this since what you wrote is honest. Although we can't condone violence, so maybe that should have read "to organize for their future".
I live in a red state with right to work (for less) laws and a strong anti-union sentiment. The work ethic here is: if you have to cut down every last tree, desertify every last grassland, poison every last waterway, then you do it to feed your family. Now we're living under the consequences of that freedom, with rampant wildfires and the loss of most timber/grazing/mining jobs. $15 per hour is mocked like some kind of impossible dream because everyone works at the call center or does food service now.
I'm concerned that many of the people reading this live in big cities with liberal politics so they haven't seen the consequences of unregulated wild west crony capitalism. I grew up with it, so I know how it leads to wealth inequality and inequality in general. It's basically the aristocratic/imperialist model like England had, where one rich guy hires everyone else and everybody is happy because the rich guy keeps them safe and the poor people have a meal ticket.
But I would argue that's suboptimal. A much better system is one where everyone prospers. Reaganomics put us on the libertarian path since about 1980, but as the boomers retire, Gen X and younger doesn't have to stay trapped under that system they didn't vote for. My feeling is that change will come swiftly over the next 2 years and that only the very stodgiest boomers will still believe they have the power.
There's talk of a general strike over the holidays this year where young people will not hire on to seasonal jobs, and abstaining from holiday buying will be encouraged. There's a chance that could break some of the smaller corporations that have borrowed against that holiday cashflow.
But in order for that to stick and let young people transition to something more like solarpunk, automating drudgerous labor and UBI, they're going to need alternatives. There's some hope with some of the back to basics trends like tiny homes and working jobs like Uber that let employees set their own hours. That stuff will be attacked on every front though until young people internalize that they actually have the power because they do the actual work.
Who removed all the prepositions from the title?
The title on the original article is more readable.
I suggest restoring the prepositions and adding a question mark. i.e. "What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History?".
The plight of miners is one of the obvious go-tos when we try to explain why government must act to regulate industry. One day a friend pointed out something interesting - that those jobs were taken on by the free choice of the individuals working them.
What should be done when an individual or group offers a job with poor conditions and wages? Presumably if the job is so bad that noone wants it, noone will take it. If someone does want it, and the two parties mutually agree to the conditions, it is not our business to intervene, other than to keep the peace.
It is not the role of government to dictate working conditions or any other terms of employment that are mutually agreed upon by those involved. If there is a disagreement, the interested parties should seek an agreement, and if none can be reached, part ways. Physical violence may not be used to pressure either side to capitulate to the desires of the other. Employers, as with anyone, are to be held accountable for injuries or death resulting from their negligence or misconduct.
Government must give neither labor nor employers special rules or treatment. Employers, as individuals, must be free to hire or release anyone they choose. Individual workers must be free act collectively - or not - and to offer their labor under any terms they choose. Neither side may use physical violence to achieve their ends.
It is indeed true that mining jobs were and are often disrespectful to the human dignity and wellbeing of the workers. Yet, workers seek out these jobs and offer their labor voluntarily. Consentual agreements are not exploitation. If a person is dissatisfied with their job, it is their responsibility to remove themselves from it.
It is also true that poor people are under more economic pressure to take on bad jobs. What should be done? Can we mandate that only safe and well-paying jobs will be offered? We could try, and that choice would inevitably exascerbate the poverty of those people by reducing the availability of employment to them. Further, they would be exposed to even more dangerous and low-paying illegal work.
In the end, the principle of human freedom offers reliable guidance.
Some volontary transactions are nonetheless illegal, because to allow them would negatively affect society as a whole. The usual example is that it is not legal (as it once was) to sell yourself into slavery. Also, overly onerous contracts can (in many jurisdictions) not be enforced.
Simply put, “It's a voluntary transaction” can never be a sufficient argument for why something ought to be legal.
Mind that this "principle of human freedom" incentivizes the system to bring and keep as many potential workers as possible in those poor economic conditions in order to optimize on labor cost at the cost of human health, happiness and freedom.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
It may be said that of this hard lot no one has any reason to complain, because it befalls those only who are outstripped by others, from inferiority of energy or of prudence. This, even were it true, would be a very small alleviation of the evil. If some Nero or Domitian were to require a hundred persons to run a race for their lives, on condition that the fifty or twenty who came in hindmost should be put to death, it would not be any diminution of the injustice that the strongest or nimblest would, except through some untoward accident, be certain to escape. The misery and the crime would be that any were put to death at all. So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements.
Somehow Smithsonian portrays federal troops as relatively neutral.
Though many scholars attribute aerial terror’s beginnings to the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), the US Army Air Service sent bombers to threaten the United Mine Workers and their supporters. After the UMW forces disregarded his threat, President Warren Harding sent in one of the Air Service’s most capable weapons: The Martin MB-1 bomber. The Martin MB-1 was an American bomber/reconnaissance biplane designed towards the end of World War One and carried a crew of three. Unfortunately for the Air Service, a reconnaissance mission failed when one Martin MB-1 crashed, leaving the crew dead and the bomber destroyed. New developments in battlefield archaeology, however, allowed us to study the crash site. Studying the site provided an opportunity to better understand how the bombers were used within the Battle of Blair Mountain as both a military tool and a symbol of federal power.
By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect as evidence for the defense during treason and murder trials. On orders from General Billy Mitchell, Army bombers from Maryland were also used for aerial surveillance. One Martin bomber crashed on its return flight, killing the three crew members.
The Smithsonian’s federal funding for fiscal year 2021 (Oct. 1, 2020–Sept. 30, 2021) is $1 billion. The Institution is 62% federally funded (a combination of the congressional appropriation and federal grants and contracts).
48 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 90.7 ms ] threadBy this article on Blair Mountain, 10,000 miners marched, and 16 died.
According to [1], in the Pullman Strike, about 70 were killed nationwide, 250,000 workers in 27 states were involved, and the President called out the Army.
Personal disclosure: I grew up about 2 miles from Pullman, not that that gives me any special insight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
Since you would expect the Smithsonian to have a good grasp of history, a charitable reading would imagine a reason that they would say "largest" even though they could certainly do the math to compare 10,000 to 250,000.
Could, but didn't.
The headline isn't "Largest Labor March". It's "Largest Labor Uprising".
Why are you trying to defend an obvious mistake? Is that where you work or something?
Such deep cynicism is really an awful thing to see.
It might be good to adjust that expectation.
The Smithsonian's interest in these flights was political. The reputation of the Smithsonian had suffered greatly in 1903 when Langley's Aerodrome failed to fly. This made it more difficult to obtain funding, which limited its growth and effectiveness as a scientific organization. The current Secretary, Charles Walcott, felt that the best way to repair this reputation was the show the Aerodrome could have flown; the time and money spent on it had not been wasted.
https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_...
The original title, and the title still on the article, is "What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
It was the deadliest by this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
However, you're right that Blair Mountain does appear to have had more armed conflict, although River Rouge had more people involved, as did the Pullman Strike. There were just more people in the industrialized North than in Appalachia.
Why bother arguing about this? I'm really tired of things being called "the biggest [or worst] in history" when the real meaning is "biggest I can think of, off the top of my head."
[1] https://speakoutsocialists.org/the-strike-at-river-rouge-det...
Fingers crossed the mass evictions heading our way leaves enough people hungry and desperate enough to fight for their future.
It's not. I've watched the homeless encampments grow over the last 20 years(maybe longer, but I can only speak for my lived experience). The lockdown was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back to the point where it's hard to ignore, but the problem has been brewing for a while. I blame Ronald Reagan, the ghouls have had it real good since.
Maybe a similar sense of connection will happen with the housing crisis, but I don't think labor is the same as it was. People don't think of themselves as workers in a class; we have been divided more and think of ourselves as subgroups like entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, scientists, etc., which I think changes how you feel about solidarity.
To build solid and sustained mass movements, you have to struggle together. [0]
[0]: Theory of class struggle
If one's residence is determined by market rents it's going to be very segregated by income level. Less stable neighborhoods and buildings where your neighbor who was there for two decades might be much lower income but "grandfathered" in by a lower sales price or lower rent back then.
Being reminded that people in "lower class" jobs used to be able to afford what takes a high professional salary now would be a good reminder of the fragility of ANY labor, regardless of today's salary and comfort.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232341
The issue of housing affordability is also, primarily, an issue of housing policy, rather than labor policy.
The evicted people aren't going to be able to tell a clear story about who they are, why they are fighting non-labor (which I guess is business and employers), and why a labor uprising is the answer to a housing policy and pandemic response failures.
I don't expect a clear answer, because recently, popular uprisings have been very unimpressive in terms of intellectual rigor. I moved to Portland expecting to join up with more radical groups, but I quickly learned that no one is really serious (hence why despite having overwhelming resources compared to the police force, they haven't succeeded in making change).
In my experience, an unserious labor movement is one of the more convincing arguments for a neoliberal approach. Add to that public sector unions tarnishing the brand of organized labor in general (see police unions, teacher's unions) and I just don't see it.
An excellent recent comment: "All goes back to the land, and the land owner is able to absorb to himself a share of almost every public and every private benefit"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28267591
http://www.andywightman.com/docs/churchill.pdf
I live in a red state with right to work (for less) laws and a strong anti-union sentiment. The work ethic here is: if you have to cut down every last tree, desertify every last grassland, poison every last waterway, then you do it to feed your family. Now we're living under the consequences of that freedom, with rampant wildfires and the loss of most timber/grazing/mining jobs. $15 per hour is mocked like some kind of impossible dream because everyone works at the call center or does food service now.
I'm concerned that many of the people reading this live in big cities with liberal politics so they haven't seen the consequences of unregulated wild west crony capitalism. I grew up with it, so I know how it leads to wealth inequality and inequality in general. It's basically the aristocratic/imperialist model like England had, where one rich guy hires everyone else and everybody is happy because the rich guy keeps them safe and the poor people have a meal ticket.
But I would argue that's suboptimal. A much better system is one where everyone prospers. Reaganomics put us on the libertarian path since about 1980, but as the boomers retire, Gen X and younger doesn't have to stay trapped under that system they didn't vote for. My feeling is that change will come swiftly over the next 2 years and that only the very stodgiest boomers will still believe they have the power.
There's talk of a general strike over the holidays this year where young people will not hire on to seasonal jobs, and abstaining from holiday buying will be encouraged. There's a chance that could break some of the smaller corporations that have borrowed against that holiday cashflow.
But in order for that to stick and let young people transition to something more like solarpunk, automating drudgerous labor and UBI, they're going to need alternatives. There's some hope with some of the back to basics trends like tiny homes and working jobs like Uber that let employees set their own hours. That stuff will be attacked on every front though until young people internalize that they actually have the power because they do the actual work.
I suggest restoring the prepositions and adding a question mark. i.e. "What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History?".
Could do "Why was battle of Blair Mountain the largest labor uprising in American History?" 80 characters.
(Submitted title was "What Made Battle of Blair Mountain Largest Labor Uprising in American History")
What should be done when an individual or group offers a job with poor conditions and wages? Presumably if the job is so bad that noone wants it, noone will take it. If someone does want it, and the two parties mutually agree to the conditions, it is not our business to intervene, other than to keep the peace.
It is not the role of government to dictate working conditions or any other terms of employment that are mutually agreed upon by those involved. If there is a disagreement, the interested parties should seek an agreement, and if none can be reached, part ways. Physical violence may not be used to pressure either side to capitulate to the desires of the other. Employers, as with anyone, are to be held accountable for injuries or death resulting from their negligence or misconduct.
Government must give neither labor nor employers special rules or treatment. Employers, as individuals, must be free to hire or release anyone they choose. Individual workers must be free act collectively - or not - and to offer their labor under any terms they choose. Neither side may use physical violence to achieve their ends.
It is indeed true that mining jobs were and are often disrespectful to the human dignity and wellbeing of the workers. Yet, workers seek out these jobs and offer their labor voluntarily. Consentual agreements are not exploitation. If a person is dissatisfied with their job, it is their responsibility to remove themselves from it.
It is also true that poor people are under more economic pressure to take on bad jobs. What should be done? Can we mandate that only safe and well-paying jobs will be offered? We could try, and that choice would inevitably exascerbate the poverty of those people by reducing the availability of employment to them. Further, they would be exposed to even more dangerous and low-paying illegal work.
In the end, the principle of human freedom offers reliable guidance.
Some volontary transactions are nonetheless illegal, because to allow them would negatively affect society as a whole. The usual example is that it is not legal (as it once was) to sell yourself into slavery. Also, overly onerous contracts can (in many jurisdictions) not be enforced.
Simply put, “It's a voluntary transaction” can never be a sufficient argument for why something ought to be legal.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131725
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
It may be said that of this hard lot no one has any reason to complain, because it befalls those only who are outstripped by others, from inferiority of energy or of prudence. This, even were it true, would be a very small alleviation of the evil. If some Nero or Domitian were to require a hundred persons to run a race for their lives, on condition that the fifty or twenty who came in hindmost should be put to death, it would not be any diminution of the injustice that the strongest or nimblest would, except through some untoward accident, be certain to escape. The misery and the crime would be that any were put to death at all. So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements.
-- John Stuart Mill, Chapters on Socialism
Though many scholars attribute aerial terror’s beginnings to the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), the US Army Air Service sent bombers to threaten the United Mine Workers and their supporters. After the UMW forces disregarded his threat, President Warren Harding sent in one of the Air Service’s most capable weapons: The Martin MB-1 bomber. The Martin MB-1 was an American bomber/reconnaissance biplane designed towards the end of World War One and carried a crew of three. Unfortunately for the Air Service, a reconnaissance mission failed when one Martin MB-1 crashed, leaving the crew dead and the bomber destroyed. New developments in battlefield archaeology, however, allowed us to study the crash site. Studying the site provided an opportunity to better understand how the bombers were used within the Battle of Blair Mountain as both a military tool and a symbol of federal power.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/postersatthecapitol/2...
By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect as evidence for the defense during treason and murder trials. On orders from General Billy Mitchell, Army bombers from Maryland were also used for aerial surveillance. One Martin bomber crashed on its return flight, killing the three crew members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/smithsonian-instituti...