Re: "Strikebreakers/Goons/Scabs" (long) was: When even a Republican can see it....

In article <3sg8639g6p9b6d11a3ml8nb2j5gh5ge5tr@xxxxxxx>,
mike weber <fairportfan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:52:50 -0700, David Friedman
<ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As opposed to remaining and not working? The U.S. a century ago was a
pretty mobile society. Most of the coal workers in Harlan county,
judging at least by the webbed account I found, were people who had
moved there because coal mining was, for a while, paying very well.

It looked, from the outside, as if it were paying well. But, somehow,
with the rent on your company house, and the prices at the company
store (and, often enough, the fact that the mines [and the mills, in
their company towns] paid company scrip that was only good for renting
a company house and shopping in the company store), it didn't work out
that way.

In many cases, you wound up in debt to the company.

The song "Sixteen Tons" is not much, if any, of an exaggeration when
it says "St Peter doncha call me 'cos I can't go - I owe my soul to
the company store".

1. People kept coming into the area, as long as coal prices were high.
Your argument amounts to "I, who wasn't born when all this happens, know
more about it than the contemporaries, as judged by their actions."

2. I haven't noticed a response to my comment on your previous effort at
history via song--assuming I'm right about where you got the apparently
fictitious story that you posted on the assumption that it was true.
It's at least some evidence on the reliability of your version of the
relevant history--coming out of the propaganda of one side of a conflict.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
.

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