Texas Monkeys

[Charlie Hatchett]

Min e-mailed this to me last night and I just couldn't resist posting it:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/i ... human_cost

[Forum Monk]

Neither could Min. He posted it in the Off-Topic thread.


EDIT: I should have said the Cool Links thread.

[Digit]

There's always a human cost Charley and one that is widely ignored is the effect that immigrants have on their country of origin by leaving.
So many Poles have left for the UK that Poland is now suffering a skills shortage.
Blair boasted how successful he had bee in recruiting medical staff from abroad, and was staggered when the UN condemned the practice for the effect it was having on third world countries.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Neither could Min. He posted it in the Off-Topic thread.


EDIT: I should have said the Cool Links thread.

I really need to keep up better!!

[Charlie Hatchett]

There's always a human cost Charley and one that is widely ignored is the effect that immigrants have on their country of origin by leaving.
So many Poles have left for the UK that Poland is now suffering a skills shortage.
Blair boasted how successful he had bee in recruiting medical staff from abroad, and was staggered when the UN condemned the practice for the effect it was having on third world countries.

True. Can't say I blame the Docs for taking the higher pay, though. We have a lot of Docs from India here in the U.S.

[Minimalist]

There is a perverse sort of logic there though Min, few of those over here doing the shouting seem overly keen to return to their roots, just want us to pay them 'compensation'.
There are few absolutes in this world, but one is that slavery is wrong, but claiming compensation for the ills of past generations smells to me.

Can't argue with that. Yes, slavery was inherently wrong but the fact of the matter was that for most people in 1860 life pretty much sucked. Unless you were one of the top 1-2% of the population life was short and harsh.

Slaves worked long hours in the fields for nothing and were fed and housed by their masters. Factory workers worked long hours and had to fend for themselves on the matters of housing, food, clothing. Hollywood images aside, most slaves were considered costly economic assets whereas the factory worker was totally replaceable at the drop of a hat.

I did see a theory one time that the reason that it was the upper classes which constituted the bulk of the abolitionist movement was that the capitalist class wanted even more cheap labor availabe to scare the Irish into working harder! You aren't going to see that in a revisionist history book, either.

[Digit]

I'll hazard guess Min that freeing the slaves in the US simply resulted in a drop in wages for the whites as the labour market became glutted or that the slaves just carried on working.

[Minimalist]

Generally there was no wholesale migration north until after WWII.

Most remained in the South as share-croppers doing what they had been doing all long except they were "paid" and had to fend for themselves.

Southern whites had a clear understanding of the problems of slavery, as Lee indicated in his letter. Thomas Jefferson once said that "salvery is like holding a wolf by the ears....you don't like it but you don't dare let go." The problem that they had with the abolitionists was that they did not think that the abolitionists had any long term solution to the problem. To the abolitionist, "freedom" was its own end while the southerners wanted to know what was going to happen on the day after. Eventually, the south would convert itself into a cash economy but it was not the sort of upheaval they were going to go through willingly.

[Minimalist]

BTW, the "war-was-about-ending-slavery" crowd usually neglects to mention that when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation entire union regiments deserted. They signed up to restore the union - not free any slaves.

[Forum Monk]

when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation entire union regiments deserted

Got any references? The empancipation proclamation would not have changed the war objectives.

While some of the comments thus far ring true, I have serious problems with the implications that somehow, housed and fed slaves were somehow better off than poor, fend-for-yourselves, freemen. Some human beings believe it is better to die than live as a slave.

[Minimalist]

Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" for a description of the lives of factory workers in the big cities before the rise of unions.

I'll have to look around on the web. I've read a lot of history on the Civil War but not every book makes it online.

[Minimalist]

p.s. There was a line from a 60's movie called "Butterflies are Free."

It goes something like this: "Freedom? Freedom is the most important thing in the world to me. After I've eaten."

[Digit]

In a similar vein Min runs thus, 'principles don't buy bread'.
Your comments about the end of slavery still ring true today, the do gooders just can't seem to look past the first step and see what the outcome of their actions might be. I'll hazard a guess that the older slaves, for example, were worse off 'freed' than as slaves.

[Minimalist]

One need only look at the "reservation-system" established for the American Indians to get some idea of conditions in the shanty towns which sprang up in the South. Disease, poverty, alcoholim, depression, suicide and crime were rampant. Was this any better or worse than the tenement slums in New York or Boston? Probably not. Like I said, in 1860 life was a bitch.

[Forum Monk]

One of the key things to consider when looking at southern shanty towns, after the war, was the state of southern infrastructure and economy. the south was wrecked. The north waged a war of attrition and ripped up the southern infrastructure to devastating effect. The economy was decimated and recovery was slow and painful.

Conditions on the reservations, however, are another story. Here entire cultures were unrooted from the lands of their ancestors and dropped into unfamiliar landscapes. It is one of several dark eras in America's history.