Posted on 09/04/2019 1:03:11 PM PDT by Perseverando
LABOR DAY
To appreciate it, one needs to know the history preceding it.
At the time the United States was founded, most people were farmers or worked in trades, such as blacksmiths, cobblers, bakers, upholsterers, etc.
Then, the Industrial Revolution began when the Scottish inventor James Watt developed a steam engine to pump water out of coal mines.
Steam and water were soon harnessed in the early 19th century to power pumps, railroads, ships, and factories, which mass produced products, such as textiles.
This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively.
Originally, there was no Federal Income tax.
The Federal Government was financed primarily from:
EXCISE TAXES on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;
and
TARIFF TAXES on imports.
Tariffs made products imported from European factories more expensive, causing consumers to buy the less expensive products made in American factories.
Most of America's factories were located in Northern states.
The problem was, the tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was predominately agricultural and had few factories to protect.
At one point, nearly 90 percent of the Federal Budget came from Tariff Taxes collected at Southern Ports.
This fueled animosity between the states leading up to the Civil War.
After the Civil War, the North passed even more tariff taxes which successfully allowed Northern factories to grow enormous.
Manufacturing produced items like clothes, glass, dishes, and farm tools for a fraction of the previous costs.
Machines freed women up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.
Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.
New ways of making stronger iron and steel led to the
(Excerpt) Read more at myemail.constantcontact.com ...
There were serious problems with the treatment of American workers or those of any Western nation at the beginning of industrialization and mass markets. It didn’t happen elsewhere because other countries outside of Europe and the US didn’t have the level of development that would break up their quasi-feudal or quasi-tribal work relationships.
One of the bad things is that the Socialists and their shock troops, the anarchists, had been disrupting stuff in Europe for a long time without an effective response. This was so even though most European countries and monarchs, including the Russians, had been attempting to bring about a reform, since their countries were just teetering on the bring of industrialization.
So when mostly German or Eastern European Socialists (coffee shop Marxists) got to the US, they infected us with their plague. And then working people who actually needed defenders and help got Marxist loonies who wanted to bring the whole thing down.
The irony is, Marx thought Russia would be the last place that would adopt Communism, because it was so backward.
bmp for later reading
That stamp looks as if it could have been issued in East Germany.
I don’t get the B/W photo.
The soldiers look like Japs and the prisoners Chinese.
The reprehensible racist Democrat Woodrow Wilson also jailed EV Debs to keep him from drawing votes from his own candidacy.
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