Posted on 12/16/2003 1:15:09 PM PST by PeaRidge
Depends. If the roads are completely iced over and the snow plows operating slowly then yes - it is too cold to get to work. On those occassional days where it is 20 degrees out yet also clear of precipitation, then it would be theoretically possible to get to work. But then again we are talking about the 19th century. They didn't have snowplows back then nor did they have heated transportation or even effectively heated buildings. Thus the temperature's toll on productivity would be even more extreme than it is today.
BTW there are days in July when it is 70 deg in New York, and 100 in New Orleans or Houston with 100% humidity. Does that high temp keep people from working?
Not at all. The human body is more able to adapt to and handle a higher range of temperatures than a lower one (i.e. a healthy individual can go outside in 100 degree temperature without significant protection from the elements and walk away with at worst a sunburn. He could not similarly walk outside in 20 degree temperatures and survive the day without protective clothing). Additionally, when it hits 100 degrees in Houston the roads don't clog up with snow and ice every time precipitation comes. Not so when it is 20 degrees on the northeast coast where transportation is shut down or delayed any time there is an ice storm.
That's exactly the point, Walt. If the south enacts low tariffs and trade continues, the north's high tariffs are completely undermined.
President Lincoln never said anything as ridiculous as "what will become of my tariff?"
The historically documented reality of the situation says otherwise. To date you have yet to offer so much as one single piece of evidence refuting that record.
For one thing, it is totally out of character for the man.
Not so. Tariffs were the defining issue of Lincoln's political career. They are the one position that he ALWAYS adhered to, ALWAYS advocated, and ALWAYS pursued in every office he ever held or ran for. That he would speak on them in 1861 barely a month after publicly pledging to make them his top legislative priority is, if anything, completely within the sorry character of the man.
No it isn't. It just takes a little longer, so you leave for work a little earlier. If you worked for me and called off because it was 20 degrees, I'd fire your butt.
But then again we are talking about the 19th century. They didn't have snowplows back then nor did they have heated transportation or even effectively heated buildings.
LOL. Snowplows! They didn't need any damn snow plows back then. They walked or rode a horse. In 19th century cities, people lived close to where they worked. As to effective heating, they survived quite nicely with their Franklin stoves.
Thus the temperature's toll on productivity would be even more extreme than it is today.
That explains why Northern Europe and the Northern US never became the industrial engines of the world like say industrial empires in Equatorial Africa or Southeast Asia or the Mississippi delta. People just freeze to a stop anyplace north of the Mason Dixon line I quess. < /sarcasm >
He could not similarly walk outside in 20 degree temperatures and survive the day without protective clothing). Additionally, when it hits 100 degrees in Houston the roads don't clog up with snow and ice every time precipitation comes. Not so when it is 20 degrees on the northeast coast where transportation is shut down or delayed any time there is an ice storm.
Excuse me, but humans figured out how to make warm clothing about 20,000 years ago. I have worked and played outdoors all day in far colder temps than 20 and it did not phase me one bit. (The operative word there BTW is work!) The old timers had a saying about cutting fire wood. It warms you twice. Once when cutting and a second time when you burn it.
I don't have the stats, but I'd be willing to guess that roads in Houston are closed more frequently from flooding from tropical storms (I've had it happen to me twice while visiting Houston) than roads in New York or Chicago are closed by snow or ice. People in the North can drive through ice and snow. People in Houston can not drive through 3 feet of water.
Another thing for you to think about. The growth of the Sun Belt did not happen until air conditioning became affordable for the average homeowner. That says something about people's attitude to relatively colder or warmer climets.
Hardly. New York may have been mapped in the 1500's but it wasn't settled as a city until about 1625. The Mississippi River was first explored in 1541 not long after New York harbor was discovered. New Orleans was settled as a city in 1718, making the difference with New York City less than a hundred years.
New York also had the historical advantage of being defendable from the sea, and not being situated near other potentially hostile foreign powers.
New York was no further from Europe than any other east coast port and in fact was closer to European colonial settlements (Canada) than Charleston ever was. New Orleans was indeed within the boundaries of another country but that ceased after the Louisiana Purchase.
the Mississippi delta on which it was built was a swampy geologic region with no high ground, prone to excessive heat, annual floods, hurricanes, heavy rains, mosquitoes, and disease.
Heat can be dealt with by the human body in a significantly greater capacity than freeze. Rain, unlike snow, does not tend to shut down or significantly impair transportation. Floods may be easily dealt with by geographic identification of the flood plains before construction or, in the case of New Orleans, a system of levies an dams to control them. Hurricanes are bad but they are also chance events that happen once a decade or less. One or more major snowstorm hits the north without fail every single winter. And having been hit by two major hurricanes and several blizzards, I can tell you that the latter shuts down far more stuff and has a far wider range of impact. Oh, and disease - yes, mosquitos do tend to exacerbate that...but no more than the rats, urine, and excrement that flow freely on the sidewalks of New York and every other urban cesspool in yankeeland.
I suppose someone who thinks, when its 20 degrees out, its too cold to work
Try visiting the northeast coast the next time a big freeze hits. They've been coming once every week or two of late so that shouldn't be too hard for you to find. The schools close down, the governments go on liberal leave, the trains and subways go on delayed schedules, corporations tell their workers not to come in, all but the largest of roads become difficult to travel on etc. etc. etc. It seldom lasts more than a day at a time but those ice storms quickly add up and in doing so deprive the entire region of several days work. It's particularly noticeable when a major blizzard hits, as happened last winter. Washington D.C. was for all practical purposes shut down for about four days straight under about four feet of snow and temperatures that did not rise above 30 degrees for the duration. Similar conditions occurred all the way up the coast to Boston. Transit cut back its schedules then shut down entirely, the federal government ran on a skeleton crew for a week, schools shut down for a week and as a result had to extend their schedules into the summer...heck, I even remember trying to go to Safeway and McDonalds during the middle of the thing only to find them all closed midday - and McDonalds NEVER closes. I've gone through the McDonalds drive through line during a tropical storm before and it stayed open. I also recall driving I-95, the major north-south interstate of the east coast, during last year's storm. In parts it was down to only one lane in either direction with mounds of plowed snow covering the other two lanes on each side. Traffic ground to a halt.
Omnis ratihabitio retrotrahitur et mandato equiparatur - every ratification is retroactive and equivalent to a previously granted authority. So why write that "this ratification has operated to perfectly cure the defect"? If it wasn't needed, and no defect existed, why was a retroactive legality necessary?
Second, even if he did believe that then since those actions were not the issues involved in the case then he could not rule on their constitutionality.
What Grier wrote was that depite the real or imagined illegality of Lincoln's actions, the retroactive grant gave Lincoln's action legitimacy. Otherwise the court would have to find Lincoln's actions illegal.
And if you demanded I travel to your company during a major snowstorm that shut down every other company in the city I would first reconsider my place of employment and then explore to what degree you were civilly liable for endangering your employees by requiring that they report to work under penalty of termination in the midst of weather conditions that render travel unsafe by any reasonable degree or measure.
LOL. Snowplows! They didn't need any damn snow plows back then. They walked or rode a horse.
Okay. Next time a snowstorm dumps 4 feet on the east coast go there and either of those two things. Try walking in it or riding a horse through it and tell me how far you get. Heck, try it with 3 feet of snow or 2 feet. And remember, you can't use any plowed road - just the places where the snow has not been removed or altered in any way since it fell. You will find it very slow and difficult at best and most likely abandon your effort in less than half an hour.
In 19th century cities, people lived close to where they worked. As to effective heating, they survived quite nicely with their Franklin stoves.
Yeah, you gotta hover around a tiny stove in the middle of a small closed off room. Thus the stove is as much a confining device to work as it is a source of heat. Now tell me what you plan on doing if you are a dockworker and there aren't any stoves, there aren't any rooms, and there aren't any means of heat on your job site other than the coat on your back.
That explains why Northern Europe and the Northern US never became the industrial engines of the world
Nope. As Jefferson famously observed, manufacturing is pursued by necessity when the alternative of agriculture is untenable. In extreme northern climates the weather limits crop choices, so the people there pursue other means of economic productivity by necessity. Holding all else equal though and placing an industrial plant of comparable nature in both a warm and cold climate, you will find that the warmer climate plant tends to have greater success. Witness the automobile factories of the south today in comparison to their counterparts in Detroit. Detroit's factories are decrepit, inefficient, underproductive, and on the verge of shutting down whereas the opposite is true in the south.
Excuse me, but humans figured out how to make warm clothing about 20,000 years ago.
If warm clothing is the answer then to all the problems of the cold, I suppose places like Greenland, Antarctica, ANWR, Siberia, and Canada's Northwest Territory should all be bustling population centers! The simple fact is, non-seq, cold climates are more taxing upon human survival than warm ones. Moderately cold climates, or climates that are only cold for part of the year, may be mitigated by clothing and stoves but they are still cold and still taxing upon their residents. Permafrost climates are virtually uninhabitable or, if inhabitable, so undesirable to most people that nobody will live there.
I don't have the stats, but I'd be willing to guess that roads in Houston are closed more frequently from flooding from tropical storms (I've had it happen to me twice while visiting Houston) than roads in New York or Chicago are closed by snow or ice.
Nah. Having lived in Houston and on the northeast coast the two are simply incomparable. Houston's roads close down when (a) a hurricane hits us head on, which happens less than once a decade, or (b) when rain or tropical storms linger over the city for extended periods of time thus saturating the ground and inhibiting runoff. You may get two or three days a year at most where the latter happens in any significant sense (unless, of course, you are stupid enough to build your house on a flood plain...and there are a few people who do fit into that category). Contrast that with the north where the average blizzard will shut things down for the better part of a week. You can pretty much count on about one mid-sized blizzard every winter, so that in itself should offset the hurricane and flood days of the gulf coast. Add in the smaller freezes, snowstorms, and additional blizzards in some years and the north takes a large lead in closures.
Though it is an unscientific measure, perhaps a good comparison between the two is the number of inclement weather days in which the local schools closed down. The decision to close the schools, after all, is almost always based on road conditions where the busses operate so that alone is a good guide to the number of days when conditions are poor. I attended public school in Houston for several years as a child and can count on one hand the number of days that weather shut down the schools. Once we had a hard freeze that knocked down a bunch of power lines and iced over the roads. Two or three other times we had tropical storms. On average it ammounted to approximately one day of school closures a year if even that. Contrast that with the northeast, where I have also lived and worked. Up here they pre-plan snow days into their annual school schedules with an allotment of about a week that can be missed without having to extend the school year. I cannot think of any time in recent memory in which the schools did not meet or exceed their alloted snow days. Last year was particularly bad and most schools extended their year into the summer. This year is already on pace to do the same with two major December freezes already.
When the federal gov't attacks(civil war) some of the states. State rights are suspended "de facto"... The federal gov't before the civil war was a vassal of the states, after the civil war the states became a vassal of the federal gov't. To this day... What happened to the republic ?... We lost it.. and the acendancy of "democrats" was assured... us being a democracy and no longer a republic..
America has become a democracy thats why mobs rule in Washington D.C. and some think that is a good thing. Democrats know that and work for this democracy, most republicans still think america is a still a republic and mentally masterbate that lie. If republicans ever realize the truth the march to socialism will stop.
** Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
** Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
And 20 degrees qualifies under your lust for lawsuit. Don't show up for jury duty because it's 20 degrees, and see how understanding the legal system is with you.
In over 30 years of working, my place of business here in the Northeast has never once closed because of snow. Not once. My kids when through 12 years of school, and I can't recall more than one or two, "snow days." They always finished their school year in the first week of June. Washington DC shuts down with a few flurries, but that's Washington --- too many Rebels there who totally freak-out when they see a snow flake. I was in Dallas a few years back and there were forecasts of temps in the low 20s and possibility of an inch of snow. You would have thought the damn world was coming to an end by listening to the people. They were scared to death. I got a kick out of it.
Well?
...importers were taking advantage of the 1846 Warehousing Act.
Ah yes, the ever popular Warehousing Act of 1846. For those unitiated in the sothron interpretation why not outline for us why one simple piece of legislation would trump common economic logic: ie, ship the goods directly to those consuming them?
Justice Grier at no time suggested that it was necessary, so your implying that he disapproved of President Lincoln's actions or that he thought them illegal is not accurate.
No. As I said, "weather conditions that render travel unsafe by any reasonable degree or measure."
In over 30 years of working, my place of business here in the Northeast has never once closed because of snow. Not once. My kids when through 12 years of school, and I can't recall more than one or two, "snow days." They always finished their school year in the first week of June.
If you say so, and for all I know that is probably true in some places such as rural Maine. The major urban areas (DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC) are a different story from my own experience. With every major snowstorm the TV announces several school closings - I have seen this for Baltimore, DC, and Philadelphia and read about it in NYC. I've also gotten several days off at work due to snow and freezes.
Washington DC shuts down with a few flurries, but that's Washington --- too many Rebels there who totally freak-out when they see a snow flake.
That does not seem to be the case very much. When I worked in Washington I went in on several days where there were flurries as well as snow on the ground. They did close there after a night of heavy snowfall and definately during blizzards. There were perhaps a couple days when the schools jumped the gun in shutting down, but more often than not it was on days where closing was justified. After heavy snow storms Washington behaved no differently than Baltimore, Wilmington, or Philadelphia - they all shut down as well. Last year's blizzard is a good case in point. As I noted in a post to another, even McDonalds closed during that one and McDonalds almost never closes.
I consider myself a fairly experienced driver in wintery conditions and have manuevered through the mountains before during snowfall. My truck is setup for that kind of stuff and has features where I could even stick a plow on the front if I so desired. I drove during last year's blizzard and others and can tell you first hand that there were many situations that the majority of drivers on the road would have had great difficulty maneuvering, be they in Washington or New York. I drove I-95 in parts where it was down to one lane in each direction where there are normally three or four. It is unreasonable to expect most people to come to work with road conditions like that no matter how accomodated to the cold you are. The decision to shut down during those conditions was the correct one to make.
I was in Dallas a few years back and there were forecasts of temps in the low 20s and possibility of an inch of snow. You would have thought the damn world was coming to an end by listening to the people. They were scared to death. I got a kick out of it.
Then I am sure you know the amusement I got last fall when that hurricane moved up the east coast.
Simple. Because your "common economic logic" is neither logical nor economical. As has been noted previously, by your irrational assumptions Wal-Mart bases its largest distributership out of Bentonville, Arkansas because that is where most of the consumers live. Granted, while there may be a lot of trailer parks to consume cheap retail crap in Bentonville, it is absurd to believe that a rural town in the middle of nowhere outconsumes the rest of the nation.
The Warehousing Act encouraged importers to drop their goods off at a single point by providing economic incentives to warehouse. Specifically, an importer could delay payment on the tariff until he had a buyer for his goods by storing them tax-free in a warehouse. Since NYC had lots of warehouses to be used for this purpose it became the dropoff place for goods that were later reexported to buyers elsewhere in the country.
And by your logic are we to assume that each and every product Walmart sells passes through Bentonville?
Specifically, an importer could delay payment on the tariff until he had a buyer for his goods by storing them tax-free in a warehouse.
Read the legislation.
New Orleans was an island in the middle of a swamp surrounded by a leaky three foot levee in 1718. John Law's land scheme was a dismal failure for thousands of Frenchmen. New Orleans didn't begin to grow signifigantly until the early 1800s, and only then after importation of thousands of African slaves.
Floods may be easily dealt with by geographic identification of the flood plains before construction or, in the case of New Orleans, a system of levies an dams to control them.
As opposed to a natural, sheltered, deep water harbor that doesn't need constant dredging and is free of ice year round? (lol)
Heat can be dealt with by the human body in a significantly greater capacity than freeze.
The death toll differences between the northern and southern colonies tell a different story, at least among the northern european settlers.
When the federal gov't attacks(civil war) some of the states. State rights are suspended "de facto"...
A rational person would conclude by the evidence that some of the states attacked the federal government, not the other way around. You may believe that SC was justified in firing on Sumter, but they did shoot first.
BTW, the Union Army did not invade VA till May 27, long after VA had initiated hostile action against the Union, including attacks on Hampton Roads and Harper's Ferry begun (traitorously by strict constitutional definition) prior to secession.
You are correct, however, that civil war brings an end to civil and state's rights. That is even recognized in the Constitution, "Clause 2: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Which it did in 1861.
The South rebelled. They lost. Get over it.
The federal gov't handleing just interstate commerce is one thing.. refuseing an invitation to leave soverign SC territory is another... unless SC was'nt a soverign state.. that is what precipated the war.. That question was exaserbating for servral years before the war..
Same type problem is currently happening... are american unalienable rights secured by God or by the federal gov'ts largess and not rights but privledges... america is deporting God but not illegal aliens.. america is seething, I know I am, and almost everybody I know is too. Not to worry, most republicans are dumbed down so much they don't even know the difference between a right and a privledge and would'nt if/when they lost them. i.e. Sandra Day O'Conner, Souter and a coupla other "PEter principle'd" shysters..
GET OVER IT.?.. NEVER...lock and load.. lead, follow or get out the way...
Yeah, and New York, or New Amsterdam as it was called in its early days, did not experience significant growth until after 1700. For over a year after it was founded in 1625 the land ownership wasn't even certain and the city was little more than a trading post. Most cities on this continent followed similar paths before becoming something certain. Regardless, my original point stands: NYC did NOT have a two-century advantage over New Orleans as less than a century separated their foundings.
As opposed to a natural, sheltered, deep water harbor that doesn't need constant dredging and is free of ice year round?
Yeah, a natural harbor at the northern extremity of the nation. A central location at the mouth of the continent's largest waterway is still preferable to that.
The death toll differences between the northern and southern colonies tell a different story, at least among the northern european settlers.
The fact that they landed in NYC in no reasonable way attests to a climate preference. In fact, the main testimony to that is found in the actions of their descendants who flock in waves to Florida as soon as other more pressing factors and their retirement permits them.
About twentyfive years ago when Bentonville was their only distributorship they sure did! Today it handles a portion of the load along side other distribution centers of a similar nature. The one thing that does NOT happen with Wal-Mart goods is direct shipment to each and every individual store from the country or origin or even the port where goods arrive.
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