Trump isn't remotely anti-war. The man launched more drone strikes than Obama, increased military spending to record levels, launched cruise missiles into Syria, escalated American military activity in Yemen and Afghanistan and threatened war with North Korea over Twitter.
While I certainly agree that there are a lot of D.C. politicians covering up their own crimes, Trump has gone pretty far beyond what most D.C. politicians do in the sheer brazen-ness with which he has disregarded the law.
Per Wikipedia Eugene Debs was convicted of federal charges for defying a court injunction against the strike and served six months in prison. The world we live in means that someone is going to draw an equivalence from similar words for political gain. For e.g. prison is prison doesn't matter if it's for defying anti strike injunction or financial fraud. Likewise anti-war is anti-war be it a WW2 or Vietnam.
Bear in mind that you might see such parallels as unthinkable in the same way that someone of the time might have simply seen Debs as a 'anti-government insurrectionist who would later turn to outright sedition.' Debs led strikes that turned into violent riots that resulted in dozens of people being killed and millions of dollars in damage, only finally being shut down by the Army. [1] And he was indeed also arrested for sedition after speaking out loudly against US participation in WW1, which at the time was being framed as the most noble of all wars imaginable - it was literally called "The War to End All Wars." Propaganda, like always.
A quote from Stalin was that, "I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the winds of history will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." And I think that's probably true of many people. How we see things in one era often looks very different in the future -- you're left with just the big picture, less muddied by the liminalities and biases of the day.
"A quote from Stalin was that, "I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the winds of history will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." And I think that's probably true of many people. How we see things in one era often looks very different in the future"
If anything, Stalin has an even worse reputation today as in the years after his death. And I actually hope this won't change, as it would mean viewing mass murder and totalitarism in a good light again.
Public opinion of Stalin actually improved and are overall positive in many ex-communist states, and outside of the Western world opinion on Stalin is not terribly bad, or even positive, again depending on the country.
Sure, propaganda has led people to believe all sorts of things, but importantly there were real events that really happened independent of people's opinions of them. I think we have a fundamental responsibility to fight against propaganda and fight for truth.
Drawing a parallel between Donald Trump and Eugene Debs running for president from prison is an absurd comparison. Sure, it's true that Trump may end up running for president from prison just as Eugene Debs did, but that's possibly the only similarity between these two figures. Making this comparison, as if Donald Trump is some sort of fighter for workers, sounds awfully politically motivated.
I'm not sure you'd really agree with what you're saying! The Pullman strike [1] wasn't a bunch of people walking off and then running around with signs. The initial strike was largely ineffectual, so the strikers started rioting and actively preventing other trains and workers from being able to operate, including with violence. In one instance within the riots a bridge was dynamited when soldiers in a train were crossing! These actions are exponentially more vile than anything Trump is being charged with, and Eugene Debs was overtly and actively at the head of these strikes/riots. He ended up serving 6 months in prison for it. Given the state of our justice system now a days, they would have tried to put him in prison for life.
I would agree with what I'm saying, because what you are saying is simply not true.
While not everyone in the strike remained peaceful, Debs himself was very firmly a believer in peaceful protest. From the link you posted, Debs said:
> Strong men and broad minds only can resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly. Do not be frightened at troops, injunctions, or a subsidized press. Quit and remain firm. Commit no violence. American Railway Union will protect all, whether member or not when strike is off.
Emphasis mine. Also notable, none of the things Debs was charged with were violent crimes.
Don't link things that don't support your point as if they do. At best that means you didn't read it, and at worst you're being intentionally dishonest.
Try to find a single incorrect or false statement I made - you will not. You are doing precisely what you claimed to want to critique others for - you are rejecting the facts to try to turn Debs into whatever you want him to be.
Debs lead strikes which turned into riots, resulting in massive property damage and numerous deaths, multiple times. This is a fact. You trying to spin him into being some sort of dedicated believer in peaceful protest is your opinion, and a poorly supported one at that. That's not to say you can't hold that opinion - you can believe whatever you want. But what you can't (or at least shouldn't) do is reject the facts around the past, which is what you are also doing.
> You are doing precisely what you claimed to want to critique others for - you are rejecting the facts to try to turn Debs into whatever you want him to be.
On the contrary, I embraced the facts which you linked--it's just that the facts which you linked don't say what you claim they do. I would encourage anyone reading this conversation to click the link somenameforme posted and see that in fact, the link says what I'm saying it does.
> Debs lead strikes which turned into riots, resulting in massive property damage and numerous deaths, multiple times.
Did Debs incite that violence? You can juxtapose him next to violence all you want, but that's not evidence that did anything to cause it.
> This is a fact. You trying to spin him into being some sort of dedicated believer in peaceful protest is your opinion, and a poorly supported one at that.
Well, we can agree to disagree about whether the quote you linked supports my opinion well or poorly. But I don't feel that I need to support my opinion better than I have, given your total absence of any support for your opinion. If you choose to post any evidence which actually supports your opinion I'll be happy to do more thorough research (and admit I'm wrong, if I am wrong).
The fact is, Eugene Debs did write to the strikers, "Commit no violence." If you want to ignore that fact so you can pretend he's some sort of terrist, it might have been easier if you hadn't linked a page with that very quote in it. :)
I have stated facts, not opinions. Facts can be falsified, opinions cannot. If you list a single statement I've stated that is an opinion, or a false fact please do point it out. In any case, we're in a old thread buried deep, this chat is between just you, I, and bots. And once again I don't think you believe what you are saying. A simple example would be looping back to the original discussion - Trump. These were Trump's final Tweets (which were oddly enough censored, though can now be viewed plainly since Musk restored his account):
---
- "I am asking everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the party of Law & Order - respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
- "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!"
- During his speech prior to the riots he also said, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today."
---
So is Trump now very firmly a believer in peaceful protest? Or is it now somehow different because it's somebody you have a negative view of saying such things, and not somebody you have a positive view of saying such things?
> I have stated facts, not opinions. Facts can be falsified, opinions cannot. If you list a single statement I've stated that is an opinion, or a false fact please do point it out.
You seem to be under the delusion that if you only state facts and never state your opinion, no one will notice that you're arguing for an opinion.
Yes, you're doing a good job of stating a very small percentage of the facts which supports the opinion that Eugene Debs was a proponent of violence.
You haven't explicitly stated that it is your opinion that Eugene Debs was a proponent of violence, but given you're only accepting facts that supports that opinion, I think it's pretty obvious what your opinion is. Whether you state your opinion or not, it's obvious that you have an opinion, and it's obvious what your opinion is.
And I'm not even saying it's a bad thing that you have an opinion: I have an opinion too. Everyone has opinions. Bias is unavoidable. My only objection is that it's absurd that you're trying to present yourself as having no bias.
> [Trump tweets encouraging peace]
> So is Trump now very firmly a believer in peaceful protest?
If those Tweets were the only things in evidence, I'd be happy to say that Trump is firmly a believer in peaceful protest. Those Tweets aren't the only things in evidence, though[1].
> Or is it now somehow different because it's somebody you have a negative view of saying such things, and not somebody you have a positive view of saying such things?
It's somehow different because there's more evidence than just those tweets[1]. If there's more evidence that Debs was a proponent of violence, I'd be happy to consider it, but so far all you've presented is that he was proximal to violence.
Believe it or not, I'm actually not 100% convinced that Trump was involved in the January 6 attacks--simply because I am aware there's a lot of evidence I haven't looked at. It hardly matters--there's plenty of other reasons to think he's a horrible human being--but I'd prefer not to form opinions when I know I haven't looked at most of the evidence.
And by the way, there's plenty more evidence that Debs was a pacifist besides that one quote you're objecting to:
"Summarizing Debs's thought in this period, the historian David A. Shannon wrote: "Debs's desideratum was one of peace and co-operation between labor and capital, but he expected management to treat labor with respect, honor and social equality"."[1]
"Debs said in part: 'Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means.'"[1]
"In 1924, Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist Karl H. Wiik on the grounds that "Debs started to work actively for peace during World War I..."[1]
"On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois."[2]
"Debs first welcomed the military, believing that they would help to keep the peace and allow the strike and boycott to continue peacefully."[2]
[edit: This was in response to your previous post, but self-forking conversation tends to lead to a mess, so I am replying here - I believe it largely applies to your response to yourself as well in any case]
I'm not starting with an opinion and then seeking facts to support it. That's the beauty of the past - I don't really care about Debs one way or the other. If anything I'd be quite aligned with him on many things, particularly his views on imperialism. But I tend to give near 0 weighting to words and opinions, because assuming the truth of words is itself little more than a proxy for a view on the person saying them. The reason I gave Trump as the example there is to emphasize that I think most people also intuitively think this way, and only resort to words when convenient. In either case, I give immense weighting to actions, and in this regard I see nothing to support the notion that Debs wasn't more than fine with violence.
The Pullman Strikes were not a one-off thing. Debs was also involved in the Burlington railroad strike of 1888 [1], and it also turned violent. And in general taking a role in labor conflicts in the 19th to early 20th century was an implicit acceptance of violence. It was an era when workers were cheap and easily replaced. Nobody cares about a bunch of people running around with signs - companies would simply hire new workers, 'strike breakers.' So strikers would respond to this by carrying out sabotage, attacking or intimidating the strike breakers, and so on. The rare time strikes ended peacefully tended to be when the strikers were able to get some form of leverage, like convincing a town to boycott the business.
I also hold no judgement against this either. To me it's just another interesting part of history. And I can see many parallels between the past, and the present.
I see you've ignored the posts where I listed the inaccuracies in your earlier statements, and continued to troll anyway.
If this were like most social networks that allow Blocks for people like you, everyone would have Blocked you already. You can reply to this with hundreds of more words of blather, but I won't be responding any further.
> That's the beauty of the past - I don't really care about Debs one way or the other.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is true, but I do care about the past, and correctly understanding the past, because actions today are informed by our understanding of the past.
> But I tend to give near 0 weighting to words and opinions, because assuming the truth of words is itself little more than a proxy for a view on the person saying them. The reason I gave Trump as the example there is to emphasize that I think most people also intuitively think this way, and only resort to words when convenient.
I think self-descriptions certainly aren't as reliable as actions, but 0 weighting? I certainly don't think that extremely little of words, and I disagree that almost anyone does.
> In either case, I give immense weighting to actions, and in this regard I see nothing to support the notion that Debs wasn't more than fine with violence.
I don't see any action at all that indicates this is the case. You've only shown a proximity to violence.
> And in general taking a role in labor conflicts in the 19th to early 20th century was an implicit acceptance of violence.
That's an absurd statement. Is it your opinion that workers should have just sucked it up and lived with inhuman treatment because strikes were likely to turn violent?
> It was an era when workers were cheap and easily replaced. Nobody cares about a bunch of people running around with signs - companies would simply hire new workers, 'strike breakers.'
This was sometimes the case (and was in the case of the Burlington railroad strike) but was not the case for the Pullman strike.
I'm also going to point out something: you're talking about "violence" but let's be specific about what that violence was. It was property damage. Workers were killed by military and strike breakers in the Pullman strike, and (2) workers were killed by a foreman and by a scab during the Burlington strike. If you're really just talking about this as an interesting part of history, you have an interesting way of characterizing property damage as unconscionable violence while failing to even mention people being killed.
> I also hold no judgement against this either. To me it's just another interesting part of history.
Bro, you're the only one who believes this bizarre delusion of grandeur that you've somehow risen above human bias.
> And I can see many parallels between the past, and the present.
I mean sure, Debs and Trump said some similar things about violence and might both run for president from jail. They probably also eat food and drink water. Meaningless parallels abound.
To rise above bias one does not need to be superhuman - simply stop relying on opinions. It's not hard. This is, for instance, how the NYTimes developed such a stellar reputation that they have long since squandered. This [1] is an article from them on the Titanic. Outside of some pointless comments on the wireless operator, it's just a perfect article and source. It's only modern times that we've increasingly normalized putting emotion, opinion, and so ahead of reality. One need only look at the latest wars for rather extreme illustrations of such.
Literally everything I have cited has been a fact, while most things you have sourced have been not only opinions, but opinions that should be expected to be anything but impartial. Some of the few facts you have offered are also misleading. For instance you mention that "On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois." Calling it a peaceful meeting is not only an opinion, and also an intentionally misleading one. That meeting is quite relevant, because at its conclusion - the workers set out to riot - setting fire to local buildings and derailing a train. [2] That event is actually what triggered the government crackdown, as the locomotive they derailed was carrying US Mail. It's like wherever Debs went, violence followed!
Finally I would also say that it increasingly feels like you're engaging in active cognitive dissonance. You're half arguing that they didn't engage in violence, and then half arguing that - well they had to engage in violence!
> Literally everything I have cited has been a fact
You have "literally" continued ignoring the evidence that your facts are wrong, e.g. about what Debs' six-month sentence was for (contempt of court, not for inciting violence). He was never convicted for conspiracy or inciting violence, because Pullman refused to testify.
> locomotive they derailed was carrying US Mail
aside from the pedantic fact that locomotives don't carry mail; mail cars do:
The union consistently said that it didn't object to mail cars. It was having a Pullman car attached that was unacceptable.
> wherever Debs went, violence followed!
since he stayed in Chicago while violence was all over, that's certainly not "literally true."
The contempt of court charge he was convicted of was for disobeying a court injunction to stop "ordering, directing, aiding, assisting, or abetting" the strikes, which had since turned increasingly violent and riotous! That is extremely noteworthy in a time when the courts were much more judicious, and Debs had the clout, influence, and connections expected of a high profile man and former state Congressman! Even overtly violent criminals like Al Capone were never able to be convicted of anything even indirectly related to violence.
Also, I did not misspeak when I said locomotive. The rioters, after setting fire to buildings, did literally derail the entire locomotive. And this locomotive had a US mail car. Again you pay too much attention to words. You're completely right that the Union said they didn't object to anything except Pullman cars. They would have also said they don't support setting buildings on fire. Yet, a brief meeting with Debs and off goes his followers to set buildings on fire, derail entire locomotives - including those carrying US mail, and partaking in general hooliganism. This is yet more evidence of why words are utterly irrelevant.
Once again you demonstrate how little you know about this. You are just a troll who wants attention. I'm sorry I've given you even this much, but that's all you're getting. Go away.
Whoa, we finally have a pro-Pullman guy here. Amazing /s.
> The initial strike was largely ineffectual.
Yes. Pullman refused to even meet with the union. The title is "Anarchy in the US" for a reason.
Nowadays, "secondary boycotts" are expressly regulated, which is part of the evolution in labor laws that came about partly in response to the Pullman strike.
Debs was not "actively at the head of these strikes/riots." Maybe read something other than Wikipedia.
> preventing other trains and workers from being able to operate, including with violence
Again: "anarchy." The other unions would happily run trains with no Pullman cars. The railroad managers refused because they were standing together to keep the union from winning.
> He ended up serving 6 months in prison for it.
wrong again. The 6 months were for contempt of the injunction. His grand trial for the more serious things you're talking about was dropped when Pullman defied a subpoena and refused to testify.
The US government suppressed strikes back then, which proved it was a democracy for capitalists, and a dictatorship for workers.
No need to suppress them nowadays, for unions have been significantly weakened by decades of red scare propaganda, which makes the US government a democracy for capitalists, and a dictatorship for workers.
> The US government suppressed strikes back then, which proved it was a democracy for capitalists, and a dictatorship for workers.
I'm not sure it proves that at all.
The anarchist "protests" involved significant violence including more than 40 bombings including letter bombs mailed to the Attorney General of the US and FBI.[1]. As well as bombings of public areas that were up to 25 pounds of TNT.[2]
I don't know of any country that wouldn't treat it as a crime.
In context, the 1919 bombings carried out by the Galleanisti (who were a small part of a much larger labour force) came after a decade of violent strikebreaking.
It's incorrect to frame the violence as justified because of a small group of anachists who later retaliated with small bombs.
Oh I'm not saying the US is in any way special in that case. Most countries nowadays are defacto dictatorships for their workers.
Also a gentle reminder that most of your rights were gained through violence. It's a sad fact, but peaceful protests and sending gentle letters to your representatives is rarely effective. Debates are great and functional only when there is a little power asymmetry between the involved parties. Otherwise the US didn't gain its independence from Great Britain just by whining about it in London lol.
Every time a democratic US president suppresses a strike, the world acts like it's the greatest thing ever.
A lot of kennedy era political art and the positivity around him was from him "crushing" labor unions, especially big steel. I was struck by this while visiting his presidential library in Boston.
I kind of hate it. The reality is that most people "think" they like unions, but in reality they seem not to.
It's not surprising. Most newspapers(and political parties) are owned by capitalists, and therefore defend Capital, so it's not surprising to see that most people don't like unions. None of us are immune to propaganda after all, even more if it comes from a reputable source.
This is never more clear than when you think about the last time "union" was used on a televised newscast on labor day. Sure, they may say "the parade included members of XYZ union local 995" or whatever, but absolutely nothing about "the day set aside to celebrate all the things made possible via the prior sacrifices of unions and other labor organizers".
And the insidious thing about that omission is that there are plenty of perfectly valid arguments in defense of the journalistic integrity of everybody in that office, until you get to the interface between editor-in-chief and the actual owner of the newspaper. And even then, there's an apparently huge difference between "tell people that labor day is actually meant to celebrate the noble spirit of the lone entrepreneur, laboring to make our civilization great" and "just don't mention it, people don't care". That the actual intent is identical either way is not anywhere near as apparent as the surface-level differences between the two.
That's not suppressed, at least not in the same way things were suppressed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Ruling that the strike would be illegal under the Railway Labor Act" is a long way from "send in the US Army to break up the strike".
I think the fact that the strike was resolved via legislative action (which I suppose, somewhat circuitously imply threats of violence) and not via overt violence is pretty telling.
While in general, strike tactics have moderated, its also true that companies' first step in breaking a strike is no longer physical violence against union organizers.
This is a distinction without a difference. The US government said, "you aren't allowed to strike, if you do there will be consequences."
The strikers backed down because the violence they feared. The government has a reputation, and if they say "we're going to hurt you" they probably will.
> for unions have been significantly weakened by decades of red scare propaganda
Let's be honest, though, the single biggest weakening function is the general decline in value of labour. People with low paying jobs simply can't afford to strike. The other side can just wait them out until they start to starve. It'll only take a few days.
There is good reason why unions remain strong in high paying professions, but nowhere else. Those in high paying professions generally have much greater access to resources to maintain a strike for months or even years.
There have been studies conducted on this phenomenon. Unions apparent weakening are also due to the way our economy has changed. Big production centres went through a phase of either decentralisation, or delocalisation. The former having for consequence that it's way harder to organise many smaller independent and geographically distributed locations than one big factory.
There were a lot of similar strikes then. Against Rockefeller mines e.g. Usually the industrialists just hired guns to shoot the strikers, but in some bigger cases they hired the army or national guards to shoot the strikers. The Texas railroad commission war e.g.
Nowadays they can still hire guns, the army (eg the Banana war) or the CIA (foreign policy of secret wars). But buying the press is usually enough. The Detroit major mass-murder still runs free e.g. That's what we call anarchy.
And never ever was anyone prosecuted. I mean the only fascist who went to prison was the John du Pont for being extraordinary stupid.
this is not just an ad hominem, it is also senseless. "you can safely assume this person knows nothing of our history, because he finds our tourists annoying" is not a valid argument.
Is there a good primer on the history of unionization in the United States?
I've been living here for almost half a century and I know next to nothing about how it works. I've read and enjoy Grapes of Wrath, have heard about the Pinkertons, and have seen one or two picket lines in the streets of Downtown Austin. But I still have no clue how any of that stuff works. It seems like a vastly different world to me.
As I understand it, this book is generally polemical and caters more to activism than disinterested truth-seeking. A book taking an opinionated position on a big topic is totally forgivable and above board for a non-fiction books, however when I see that it is the primary reference for so many different ideas, I get concerned that too much is taken for granted. I see enough objections, especially on its treatment of history, to this book whenever it is mentioned for me to approach it with a good deal of skepticism.
I haven't even read it, so I have to reserve judgement. It does appear to be very influential, so it is high on my political reading list whether I like it or not.
All of this is said to build context for what I'd really like to ask: what were your expectations when your read People's History of the United States? Did you have similar reservations?
As a self-described disillusioned centrist, I have to raise my eyebrow when I see that so much political prescription appears to be based on this singular book that generally appears to be an other-side-of-history opinion piece.
I am not the person you responded to, but I have read Zinn and yes, it is very obviously written with a bias. That is to say, not only does he have inevitable subjective bias that all historians have, he is very pointedly writing his book as a corrective. The book has many good qualities, but neutrality is not among them. This isn't a problem unless the people who read it aren't aware of that.
I'm in the same position as you re: popular political books, although I would not describe myself at all as a centrist.
A while back, I read "Rise and Kill First", which is a history of Israel's assassination programs dating back to the Irgun, and I attempted to read "Killing Hope", which is similar, but about the CIA. "Rise and Kill First" is clearly written by someone who loves Israel, but is deeply disturbed by the long history of these assassination programs. "Killing Hope" is written by someone who is, if not actually a tankie, certainly tankie-adjacent. Even as leftist as I am, I found it intolerable and had to put it down. I fully expect that I'll have the same response to Zinn.
The history of strikes before federal labor law illustrates exactly why federal labor law is so essential to maintain a functioning economy that is fair for both capital and labor.
Would you rather have a system run by the government where workers can vote to form unions and the unions can formally negotiate working conditions with the employer or an informal system where workers can form unauthorized unions and renegotiate or even go on strike at any time they wish? Would you rather have peaceful strikes where the union stands outside protesting but ensures no damage is done to the equipment or strikes where the union vandalizes the equipment and federal troops get called in to shoot union members?
Getting rid of labor law does not eliminate unions. It simply turns labor disputes into small scale wars rather than peaceful negotiations that usually end with concessions from each side. Besides, it is much easier for corporations to just use anti-union propaganda to ensure the union loses the secret ballot election or get the legislature to pass "right to work" laws so people can work at a unionized workplace without joining the union.
State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly.
States can enact labor laws more quickly in response to local labor market conditions, and state-level regulations can be tailored to address specific economic and social contexts.
States can experiment with new labor policies, fostering innovation in labor relations. Favorable labor laws in some states may attract businesses and workers, fostering healthy competition.
Proximity between policymakers, workers, and employers facilitates better understanding and responsiveness
This is a big problem because corporations will just leave a state if they don't like its labor laws and operate out of whatever state has the laxest labor laws.
States used to have their own laws limiting interest on loans, usually between 10 and 20 percent. Then in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled[0] that banks can ignore these state laws if they are based out of a different state. This eventually led to pretty much all of the banks moving their headquarters to South Dakota or Delaware which repealed their laws limiting interest rates to attract banks to those states. Today, pretty much every credit card charges an interest rate well above the old legal limits.
> State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly.
In theory, yes. In practice:
1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately.
2. Federal-level regulation is needed to prevent a "race to the bottom" among states competing to be the most "business-friendly" in the hope of attracting jobs. See, e.g., South Dakota's banking laws that caused so many banks to locate their credit-card operations in that state, as well as Delaware's famously management-friendly corporate laws.
> 1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately.
There's functionally no difference here from federal legislators.
You might think "oh a federal congressperson runs a larger campaign so it would take more money to buy them off".
Then you'd look at the scale of the donations it took some of them to vote certain ways for interest groups. Net neutrality was a recent example. Single digit thousands was all it took for some.
That's not out of the reach of any business with an interest in influencing legislation.
> Then you'd look at the scale of the donations it took some of them to vote certain ways for interest groups. Net neutrality was a recent example. Single digit thousands was all it took for some.
Or, they got single digit thousands of donations from interest groups that aligned with their natural voting inclination (or the way party groups or other groups they are concerned with aligning with beyond direct issue-specific donations wanted), and ascribing the donation easily attributable to the position as a significant reason for the vote is wrong.
The caliber of individuals in the Georgia State legislature is irrelevant to a company that can trivially move operations across the state line into Alabama. Assuming they even managed to get Amazon into a courtroom the Georgia State office of the Attorney General employs somewhere between 200-500 people according to linkedin. Assuming all criminal and civil enforcement actions statewide grind to an immediate halt to permit the state to focus 100% of it's legal resources on Amazon, according to law.com Amazon would have them outnumbered 4 to 1 before they even looked at hiring outside counsel. Were you being intentionally obtuse?
I don't know if you're being obtuse, but there's a pretty clear reason why Federal jurisdiction is required: the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.
So the Georgia labor laws applied to Amazon workers are all moot? Something else?
I genuinely don’t understand why you’re saying federal is required. The commerce clause exists but it doesn’t have to be used when there are better options
And bonus, its a lot cheaper and easier to bribe a state legislator, with only oversight from his or her state's (likely underfunded and understaffed) regulatory bodies, than it is to bribe a US congressperson.
Devils advocate: that’s competition (checks and balances). Not good per se, but maybe, better than the alternative. The alternative is that only massively oppressive globomegacorps can influence governance, because they can afford it
However, if I'm an oppressive globomegacorp, I'd definitely prefer only having to bribe these tin pot staties. You can probably buy off the entire West Virginia state legislature for less than the cost of a single US Senator. And you need 51 senators and 218 representatives to get things done.
If all we can do is make sure bribery is a cost of doing business, then we can at least make sure that the cost is high.
There are two parties: capital and labor. Your arguments are on behalf of labor. There are arguments also on behalf of capital. In the USA, capital is under federal jurisdiction, not state. It is the US Congress that gives the Federal Reserve its monopoly over central banking. The states do not issue money.
Worth noting that a major factor in lowering the tempo from the Battle Blair Mountain (first confirmed use of airplane-dropped bombs and chemical weapons on American soil) to your average strike at a Starbucks is the huge concessions wrung out of the capital holding class.
The Battle of Blair Mountain was precipitated by the forced evictions of miners' families from company towns, over the miners' attempts to unionize. Its hard to fathom now, but imagine that the only job available was to work in a mine, the only way to do so was to live in a company town, you worked completely at will and could be fired at any time, and your family had minutes to vacate the house the company rented to you, if you got fired (and you still owed any debt you'd racked up at the company store, which was your only source for food and supplies). There are all kinds of horrendous allegations leveled against the mine operators because of the extreme leverage they had over their workers (its not clear if it ever actually happened, but the allegation of forced prostitution of miners' wives to cover the "debts" incurred when their husbands failed to meet quota because of injury or mine collapse are pretty common). Its not clear if those allegations are true, if so, indicative of a systemic issue or just the natural consequence of putting in power people with a natural penchant for imperiousness and brutality.
The coal wars are as close to a second civil war as the US has ever gotten since the first one. When you consider the working conditions the workers were trying to fix, its not difficult to say that those workers were as close to being legal slaves as it was possible to be after the first civil war without being prisoners. Of course, some mines did use prison labor, which is explicitly slavery. To further complicate that comparison most labor unions of the time explicitly barred black members, so many strikebreakers were black, and the mine operators sought them out for that reason.
Coal mining remains, to this day, one of the most dangerous jobs you can work, with horrendous impacts on the workers' health long-term, provided you survive long enough to retire. It was so much worse in the past that miners fought actual battles, with machine guns and artillery, just for the seemingly basic rights they have today.
Thanks for all the comments. Usually when you hear of "armed thugs breaking a strike" it's in the 1930s and they're Pinkertons or equivalent. I don't know of any others where regular US Army troops were used.
National Guard: yes. Those are usually under state control, though.
I have at least two more posts on this coming. Stay tuned.
>”Workers weren’t required to live there. Rents were actually a little higher than in the surrounding villages, especially in the Panic of 1893, but there was a belief among the workers that you’d be favored if you lived there. Plus, it was a short walk to the factory.”
Sounds like the same arguments for return to office, and we can deduce the same outcome. It benefits one group. The executive.
95 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadWe’ve had a presidential candidate run from prison. His crime was protesting WWI…
What exactly?
I do not see much that Donald Trump has in common with Eugene Debs.
Defensive and Just wars are not exactly the same as carving out political spheres of influence.
A quote from Stalin was that, "I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the winds of history will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." And I think that's probably true of many people. How we see things in one era often looks very different in the future -- you're left with just the big picture, less muddied by the liminalities and biases of the day.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
If anything, Stalin has an even worse reputation today as in the years after his death. And I actually hope this won't change, as it would mean viewing mass murder and totalitarism in a good light again.
"overall positive in many ex-communist states"
So examples please?
Drawing a parallel between Donald Trump and Eugene Debs running for president from prison is an absurd comparison. Sure, it's true that Trump may end up running for president from prison just as Eugene Debs did, but that's possibly the only similarity between these two figures. Making this comparison, as if Donald Trump is some sort of fighter for workers, sounds awfully politically motivated.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
While not everyone in the strike remained peaceful, Debs himself was very firmly a believer in peaceful protest. From the link you posted, Debs said:
> Strong men and broad minds only can resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly. Do not be frightened at troops, injunctions, or a subsidized press. Quit and remain firm. Commit no violence. American Railway Union will protect all, whether member or not when strike is off.
Emphasis mine. Also notable, none of the things Debs was charged with were violent crimes.
Don't link things that don't support your point as if they do. At best that means you didn't read it, and at worst you're being intentionally dishonest.
Debs lead strikes which turned into riots, resulting in massive property damage and numerous deaths, multiple times. This is a fact. You trying to spin him into being some sort of dedicated believer in peaceful protest is your opinion, and a poorly supported one at that. That's not to say you can't hold that opinion - you can believe whatever you want. But what you can't (or at least shouldn't) do is reject the facts around the past, which is what you are also doing.
On the contrary, I embraced the facts which you linked--it's just that the facts which you linked don't say what you claim they do. I would encourage anyone reading this conversation to click the link somenameforme posted and see that in fact, the link says what I'm saying it does.
> Debs lead strikes which turned into riots, resulting in massive property damage and numerous deaths, multiple times.
Did Debs incite that violence? You can juxtapose him next to violence all you want, but that's not evidence that did anything to cause it.
> This is a fact. You trying to spin him into being some sort of dedicated believer in peaceful protest is your opinion, and a poorly supported one at that.
Well, we can agree to disagree about whether the quote you linked supports my opinion well or poorly. But I don't feel that I need to support my opinion better than I have, given your total absence of any support for your opinion. If you choose to post any evidence which actually supports your opinion I'll be happy to do more thorough research (and admit I'm wrong, if I am wrong).
The fact is, Eugene Debs did write to the strikers, "Commit no violence." If you want to ignore that fact so you can pretend he's some sort of terrist, it might have been easier if you hadn't linked a page with that very quote in it. :)
---
- "I am asking everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the party of Law & Order - respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
- "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!"
- During his speech prior to the riots he also said, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today."
---
So is Trump now very firmly a believer in peaceful protest? Or is it now somehow different because it's somebody you have a negative view of saying such things, and not somebody you have a positive view of saying such things?
You seem to be under the delusion that if you only state facts and never state your opinion, no one will notice that you're arguing for an opinion.
Yes, you're doing a good job of stating a very small percentage of the facts which supports the opinion that Eugene Debs was a proponent of violence.
You haven't explicitly stated that it is your opinion that Eugene Debs was a proponent of violence, but given you're only accepting facts that supports that opinion, I think it's pretty obvious what your opinion is. Whether you state your opinion or not, it's obvious that you have an opinion, and it's obvious what your opinion is.
And I'm not even saying it's a bad thing that you have an opinion: I have an opinion too. Everyone has opinions. Bias is unavoidable. My only objection is that it's absurd that you're trying to present yourself as having no bias.
> [Trump tweets encouraging peace]
> So is Trump now very firmly a believer in peaceful protest?
If those Tweets were the only things in evidence, I'd be happy to say that Trump is firmly a believer in peaceful protest. Those Tweets aren't the only things in evidence, though[1].
> Or is it now somehow different because it's somebody you have a negative view of saying such things, and not somebody you have a positive view of saying such things?
It's somehow different because there's more evidence than just those tweets[1]. If there's more evidence that Debs was a proponent of violence, I'd be happy to consider it, but so far all you've presented is that he was proximal to violence.
Believe it or not, I'm actually not 100% convinced that Trump was involved in the January 6 attacks--simply because I am aware there's a lot of evidence I haven't looked at. It hardly matters--there's plenty of other reasons to think he's a horrible human being--but I'd prefer not to form opinions when I know I haven't looked at most of the evidence.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/23/1145209559/jan-6-committee-fi...
"Summarizing Debs's thought in this period, the historian David A. Shannon wrote: "Debs's desideratum was one of peace and co-operation between labor and capital, but he expected management to treat labor with respect, honor and social equality"."[1]
"Debs said in part: 'Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means.'"[1]
"In 1924, Debs was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Finnish Socialist Karl H. Wiik on the grounds that "Debs started to work actively for peace during World War I..."[1]
"On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois."[2]
"Debs first welcomed the military, believing that they would help to keep the peace and allow the strike and boycott to continue peacefully."[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike
I'm not starting with an opinion and then seeking facts to support it. That's the beauty of the past - I don't really care about Debs one way or the other. If anything I'd be quite aligned with him on many things, particularly his views on imperialism. But I tend to give near 0 weighting to words and opinions, because assuming the truth of words is itself little more than a proxy for a view on the person saying them. The reason I gave Trump as the example there is to emphasize that I think most people also intuitively think this way, and only resort to words when convenient. In either case, I give immense weighting to actions, and in this regard I see nothing to support the notion that Debs wasn't more than fine with violence.
The Pullman Strikes were not a one-off thing. Debs was also involved in the Burlington railroad strike of 1888 [1], and it also turned violent. And in general taking a role in labor conflicts in the 19th to early 20th century was an implicit acceptance of violence. It was an era when workers were cheap and easily replaced. Nobody cares about a bunch of people running around with signs - companies would simply hire new workers, 'strike breakers.' So strikers would respond to this by carrying out sabotage, attacking or intimidating the strike breakers, and so on. The rare time strikes ended peacefully tended to be when the strikers were able to get some form of leverage, like convincing a town to boycott the business.
I also hold no judgement against this either. To me it's just another interesting part of history. And I can see many parallels between the past, and the present.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_railroad_strike_of_...
If this were like most social networks that allow Blocks for people like you, everyone would have Blocked you already. You can reply to this with hundreds of more words of blather, but I won't be responding any further.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that this is true, but I do care about the past, and correctly understanding the past, because actions today are informed by our understanding of the past.
> But I tend to give near 0 weighting to words and opinions, because assuming the truth of words is itself little more than a proxy for a view on the person saying them. The reason I gave Trump as the example there is to emphasize that I think most people also intuitively think this way, and only resort to words when convenient.
I think self-descriptions certainly aren't as reliable as actions, but 0 weighting? I certainly don't think that extremely little of words, and I disagree that almost anyone does.
> In either case, I give immense weighting to actions, and in this regard I see nothing to support the notion that Debs wasn't more than fine with violence.
I don't see any action at all that indicates this is the case. You've only shown a proximity to violence.
> And in general taking a role in labor conflicts in the 19th to early 20th century was an implicit acceptance of violence.
That's an absurd statement. Is it your opinion that workers should have just sucked it up and lived with inhuman treatment because strikes were likely to turn violent?
> It was an era when workers were cheap and easily replaced. Nobody cares about a bunch of people running around with signs - companies would simply hire new workers, 'strike breakers.'
This was sometimes the case (and was in the case of the Burlington railroad strike) but was not the case for the Pullman strike.
I'm also going to point out something: you're talking about "violence" but let's be specific about what that violence was. It was property damage. Workers were killed by military and strike breakers in the Pullman strike, and (2) workers were killed by a foreman and by a scab during the Burlington strike. If you're really just talking about this as an interesting part of history, you have an interesting way of characterizing property damage as unconscionable violence while failing to even mention people being killed.
> I also hold no judgement against this either. To me it's just another interesting part of history.
Bro, you're the only one who believes this bizarre delusion of grandeur that you've somehow risen above human bias.
> And I can see many parallels between the past, and the present.
I mean sure, Debs and Trump said some similar things about violence and might both run for president from jail. They probably also eat food and drink water. Meaningless parallels abound.
Literally everything I have cited has been a fact, while most things you have sourced have been not only opinions, but opinions that should be expected to be anything but impartial. Some of the few facts you have offered are also misleading. For instance you mention that "On June 29, 1894, Debs hosted a peaceful meeting to rally support for the strike from railroad workers at Blue Island, Illinois." Calling it a peaceful meeting is not only an opinion, and also an intentionally misleading one. That meeting is quite relevant, because at its conclusion - the workers set out to riot - setting fire to local buildings and derailing a train. [2] That event is actually what triggered the government crackdown, as the locomotive they derailed was carrying US Mail. It's like wherever Debs went, violence followed!
Finally I would also say that it increasingly feels like you're engaging in active cognitive dissonance. You're half arguing that they didn't engage in violence, and then half arguing that - well they had to engage in violence!
[1] - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...
[2] - https://www.britannica.com/event/Pullman-Strike
You have "literally" continued ignoring the evidence that your facts are wrong, e.g. about what Debs' six-month sentence was for (contempt of court, not for inciting violence). He was never convicted for conspiracy or inciting violence, because Pullman refused to testify.
> locomotive they derailed was carrying US Mail
aside from the pedantic fact that locomotives don't carry mail; mail cars do:
The union consistently said that it didn't object to mail cars. It was having a Pullman car attached that was unacceptable.
> wherever Debs went, violence followed!
since he stayed in Chicago while violence was all over, that's certainly not "literally true."
Also, I did not misspeak when I said locomotive. The rioters, after setting fire to buildings, did literally derail the entire locomotive. And this locomotive had a US mail car. Again you pay too much attention to words. You're completely right that the Union said they didn't object to anything except Pullman cars. They would have also said they don't support setting buildings on fire. Yet, a brief meeting with Debs and off goes his followers to set buildings on fire, derail entire locomotives - including those carrying US mail, and partaking in general hooliganism. This is yet more evidence of why words are utterly irrelevant.
Debs was Debs, Trump was/is Trump. Different times, different circumstances. Can you grasp that?
> Try to find a single incorrect or false statement I made - you will not.
I just did. He was never convicted of rioting, violence, or anything you're alleging.
> The initial strike was largely ineffectual.
Yes. Pullman refused to even meet with the union. The title is "Anarchy in the US" for a reason.
Nowadays, "secondary boycotts" are expressly regulated, which is part of the evolution in labor laws that came about partly in response to the Pullman strike.
Debs was not "actively at the head of these strikes/riots." Maybe read something other than Wikipedia.
> preventing other trains and workers from being able to operate, including with violence
Again: "anarchy." The other unions would happily run trains with no Pullman cars. The railroad managers refused because they were standing together to keep the union from winning.
> He ended up serving 6 months in prison for it.
wrong again. The 6 months were for contempt of the injunction. His grand trial for the more serious things you're talking about was dropped when Pullman defied a subpoena and refused to testify.
I think you mean WW1. Debs went to prison for protesting that.
Protests against wars have been handled very differently, depending on the war and who was in power.
(He died in 1873, ~20 years earlier)
No need to suppress them nowadays, for unions have been significantly weakened by decades of red scare propaganda, which makes the US government a democracy for capitalists, and a dictatorship for workers.
I'm not sure it proves that at all.
The anarchist "protests" involved significant violence including more than 40 bombings including letter bombs mailed to the Attorney General of the US and FBI.[1]. As well as bombings of public areas that were up to 25 pounds of TNT.[2]
I don't know of any country that wouldn't treat it as a crime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare#April_1919_mai...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare#June_1919_bomb...
It's incorrect to frame the violence as justified because of a small group of anachists who later retaliated with small bombs.
Also a gentle reminder that most of your rights were gained through violence. It's a sad fact, but peaceful protests and sending gentle letters to your representatives is rarely effective. Debates are great and functional only when there is a little power asymmetry between the involved parties. Otherwise the US didn't gain its independence from Great Britain just by whining about it in London lol.
Labor is gaining power, but there's still interrupts coming from the government.
A lot of kennedy era political art and the positivity around him was from him "crushing" labor unions, especially big steel. I was struck by this while visiting his presidential library in Boston.
I kind of hate it. The reality is that most people "think" they like unions, but in reality they seem not to.
And the insidious thing about that omission is that there are plenty of perfectly valid arguments in defense of the journalistic integrity of everybody in that office, until you get to the interface between editor-in-chief and the actual owner of the newspaper. And even then, there's an apparently huge difference between "tell people that labor day is actually meant to celebrate the noble spirit of the lone entrepreneur, laboring to make our civilization great" and "just don't mention it, people don't care". That the actual intent is identical either way is not anywhere near as apparent as the surface-level differences between the two.
While in general, strike tactics have moderated, its also true that companies' first step in breaking a strike is no longer physical violence against union organizers.
The strikers backed down because the violence they feared. The government has a reputation, and if they say "we're going to hurt you" they probably will.
Let's be honest, though, the single biggest weakening function is the general decline in value of labour. People with low paying jobs simply can't afford to strike. The other side can just wait them out until they start to starve. It'll only take a few days.
There is good reason why unions remain strong in high paying professions, but nowhere else. Those in high paying professions generally have much greater access to resources to maintain a strike for months or even years.
Nowadays they can still hire guns, the army (eg the Banana war) or the CIA (foreign policy of secret wars). But buying the press is usually enough. The Detroit major mass-murder still runs free e.g. That's what we call anarchy.
And never ever was anyone prosecuted. I mean the only fascist who went to prison was the John du Pont for being extraordinary stupid.
Google wasn’t helpful, but I would love to know more; can you expand on what event(s?) you’re alluding to?
flagging for ad hominem
It‘s a mistake I make every now and then, as well.
I've been living here for almost half a century and I know next to nothing about how it works. I've read and enjoy Grapes of Wrath, have heard about the Pinkertons, and have seen one or two picket lines in the streets of Downtown Austin. But I still have no clue how any of that stuff works. It seems like a vastly different world to me.
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
I haven't even read it, so I have to reserve judgement. It does appear to be very influential, so it is high on my political reading list whether I like it or not.
All of this is said to build context for what I'd really like to ask: what were your expectations when your read People's History of the United States? Did you have similar reservations?
As a self-described disillusioned centrist, I have to raise my eyebrow when I see that so much political prescription appears to be based on this singular book that generally appears to be an other-side-of-history opinion piece.
A while back, I read "Rise and Kill First", which is a history of Israel's assassination programs dating back to the Irgun, and I attempted to read "Killing Hope", which is similar, but about the CIA. "Rise and Kill First" is clearly written by someone who loves Israel, but is deeply disturbed by the long history of these assassination programs. "Killing Hope" is written by someone who is, if not actually a tankie, certainly tankie-adjacent. Even as leftist as I am, I found it intolerable and had to put it down. I fully expect that I'll have the same response to Zinn.
1. Working Class History 2. Cool People who Did Cool Stuff
As for how this stuff works, check out the book, Labor Law for the Rank and Filer.
Another option is to contact a nearby IWW chapter or any other union. Union organizers love to talk about organizing.
Would you rather have a system run by the government where workers can vote to form unions and the unions can formally negotiate working conditions with the employer or an informal system where workers can form unauthorized unions and renegotiate or even go on strike at any time they wish? Would you rather have peaceful strikes where the union stands outside protesting but ensures no damage is done to the equipment or strikes where the union vandalizes the equipment and federal troops get called in to shoot union members?
Getting rid of labor law does not eliminate unions. It simply turns labor disputes into small scale wars rather than peaceful negotiations that usually end with concessions from each side. Besides, it is much easier for corporations to just use anti-union propaganda to ensure the union loses the secret ballot election or get the legislature to pass "right to work" laws so people can work at a unionized workplace without joining the union.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly.
States can enact labor laws more quickly in response to local labor market conditions, and state-level regulations can be tailored to address specific economic and social contexts.
States can experiment with new labor policies, fostering innovation in labor relations. Favorable labor laws in some states may attract businesses and workers, fostering healthy competition.
Proximity between policymakers, workers, and employers facilitates better understanding and responsiveness
States used to have their own laws limiting interest on loans, usually between 10 and 20 percent. Then in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled[0] that banks can ignore these state laws if they are based out of a different state. This eventually led to pretty much all of the banks moving their headquarters to South Dakota or Delaware which repealed their laws limiting interest rates to attract banks to those states. Today, pretty much every credit card charges an interest rate well above the old legal limits.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Min....
In theory, yes. In practice:
1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately.
2. Federal-level regulation is needed to prevent a "race to the bottom" among states competing to be the most "business-friendly" in the hope of attracting jobs. See, e.g., South Dakota's banking laws that caused so many banks to locate their credit-card operations in that state, as well as Delaware's famously management-friendly corporate laws.
There's functionally no difference here from federal legislators.
You might think "oh a federal congressperson runs a larger campaign so it would take more money to buy them off".
Then you'd look at the scale of the donations it took some of them to vote certain ways for interest groups. Net neutrality was a recent example. Single digit thousands was all it took for some.
That's not out of the reach of any business with an interest in influencing legislation.
Or, they got single digit thousands of donations from interest groups that aligned with their natural voting inclination (or the way party groups or other groups they are concerned with aligning with beyond direct issue-specific donations wanted), and ascribing the donation easily attributable to the position as a significant reason for the vote is wrong.
I genuinely don’t understand why you’re saying federal is required. The commerce clause exists but it doesn’t have to be used when there are better options
However, if I'm an oppressive globomegacorp, I'd definitely prefer only having to bribe these tin pot staties. You can probably buy off the entire West Virginia state legislature for less than the cost of a single US Senator. And you need 51 senators and 218 representatives to get things done.
If all we can do is make sure bribery is a cost of doing business, then we can at least make sure that the cost is high.
There are two parties: capital and labor. Your arguments are on behalf of labor. There are arguments also on behalf of capital. In the USA, capital is under federal jurisdiction, not state. It is the US Congress that gives the Federal Reserve its monopoly over central banking. The states do not issue money.
The Battle of Blair Mountain was precipitated by the forced evictions of miners' families from company towns, over the miners' attempts to unionize. Its hard to fathom now, but imagine that the only job available was to work in a mine, the only way to do so was to live in a company town, you worked completely at will and could be fired at any time, and your family had minutes to vacate the house the company rented to you, if you got fired (and you still owed any debt you'd racked up at the company store, which was your only source for food and supplies). There are all kinds of horrendous allegations leveled against the mine operators because of the extreme leverage they had over their workers (its not clear if it ever actually happened, but the allegation of forced prostitution of miners' wives to cover the "debts" incurred when their husbands failed to meet quota because of injury or mine collapse are pretty common). Its not clear if those allegations are true, if so, indicative of a systemic issue or just the natural consequence of putting in power people with a natural penchant for imperiousness and brutality.
The coal wars are as close to a second civil war as the US has ever gotten since the first one. When you consider the working conditions the workers were trying to fix, its not difficult to say that those workers were as close to being legal slaves as it was possible to be after the first civil war without being prisoners. Of course, some mines did use prison labor, which is explicitly slavery. To further complicate that comparison most labor unions of the time explicitly barred black members, so many strikebreakers were black, and the mine operators sought them out for that reason.
Coal mining remains, to this day, one of the most dangerous jobs you can work, with horrendous impacts on the workers' health long-term, provided you survive long enough to retire. It was so much worse in the past that miners fought actual battles, with machine guns and artillery, just for the seemingly basic rights they have today.
National Guard: yes. Those are usually under state control, though.
I have at least two more posts on this coming. Stay tuned.
Sounds like the same arguments for return to office, and we can deduce the same outcome. It benefits one group. The executive.