Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
It was to this practical trade unionism, then, that the American labor movement turned, about 1890, when the idealism of the Knights of Labor had failed. From groping for a cooperative economic order or self-employment, labor turned with the American Federation of Labor to developing bargaining power for use against employers. This trade unionism stood for a strengthened group consciousness.
Namely, that by organized, unselfish co-operation; independent self-employment, producing an abundance for all, may be speedily and practicably substituted for every form of poverty. The Crusade must demonstrate, that ignorance, poverty and crime, are handmaidens, which cannot exist apart.
We observed over the greater part of the history of American labor an alternation of two planes of thought and action, an upper and a lower. On the upper plane, labor thought was concerned with ultimate goals, self-employment or cooperation, and problems arising therefrom, while action took the form of politics.
This philosophy differed in no wise from the philosophy of the old American democracy except in emphasis and particular application, yet these differences are highly significant. Labor read into the Declaration of Independence a condemnation of the wage system as a permanent economic régime; sooner or later in place of the wage system had to come self-employment.
Thereby they would be placed on a competitive level with the middleman, and the wage earner would be assisted to escape the wage system into self-employment. Such was the curious doctrine which captured the leaders of the organized wage earners in 1867. The way had indeed been prepared for it in 1866, when the wage earners espoused producers' cooperation as the only solution.
The government should thus open an escape to the worker from the wage system into self-employment by way of free land. After years of agitation, the same cry was taken up by the Western States eager for more settlers to build up their communities and this combined agitation proved irresistible and culminated in the Homestead law of 1862.
I had already learned the fine art of self-employment and general small-business practice that way, as well as radio and electronic theory, typography and graphic design, the garden seed business, horticulture, and agronomy. When Isabelle moved in with me she also brought most of Great Oak's extensive library, including very hard to obtain copies of the works of the early hygienic doctors.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking