Gen. William T. Sherman, leaning on breach of
gun, and staff at Federal Fort No. 7, Atlanta, September-November 1864. Photo
by George N. Barnard. Library of Congress.
You,
you the people of the South, believe there can be such a thing as peaceable
secession. You don’t know what you are doing. I know there can be no such thing.
If you will have it, the North must fight you for its own preservation. Yes,
South Carolina by this act precipitated war. Other Southern States will follow
thorough sympathy. This country will be drenched in blood. God only knows how
it will end. Perhaps the liberties of the whole country, of every section and
every man will be destroyed, and yet you know that within the Union no man’s
liberty or property in all the South is endangered. Then why should any
Southern State leave the Union.
Oh,
it is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization.
You
are driving me and hundreds of others out of the South who have cast our
fortunes here, love your people, and want to stay. I have more personal friends
in South Carolina and am better known there than I am in Ohio. Yet I must give
up all and go away; and if war comes, as I fear it surely will, I must fight
your people whom I best love.
You
people speak so lightly of war. You don’t know what you are talking about. War
is a terrible thing. I know you are a brave, fighting people, but for every day
of actual fighting, there are months of marching, exposure and suffering. More
men die in war from sickness than are killed in battle. At best war is a
frightful loss of life and property, and worse still is the demoralization of
the people. And now our free and prosperous country is to be plunged into such
horrors. And for what? No real cause whatever.
You
mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people, but an
earnest people, and will fight too, and they are not going to let this country
be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it.
Besides,
where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The Northern
people not only greatly outnumber the whites at the South, but they are a
mechanical people with manufactures of every kind, while you are only
agriculturists—a sparse population covering a large extent of territory, and in
all history no nation of mere agriculturists ever made successful war against a
nation of mechanics.
Besides
the great preponderance in numbers, the North has almost unlimited advantages
over you in mechanical appliances. The North can make anything it needs; you
can make scarcely anything you need. The North can make a steam-engine,
locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you
make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously
mechanical and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to
fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all
else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.
At
first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and
shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will
begin to wane. The North is many times more powerful than you are; and if your
people would but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely
fail.
But,
as I have said, in forcing you back into the Union the war necessary to do this
may endanger the liberties of all; and I have no heart to think of the dreadful
calamity that threatens us. O, it is all so wrong!
DEAR SAWYER: In my former
letters I have answered all your questions save one, and that relates to the
treatment of inhabitants known or suspected to be hostile or “secesh.” This is
in truth the most difficult business of our army as it advances and occupies
the Southern country. It is almost impossible to lay down rules, and I
invariably leave this whole subject to local commanders, but am willing to give
them the benefit of my acquired knowledge and experience.
In Europe, whence we derive our
principles of war, as developed by their histories, wars are between kings or
rulers, through hired armies, and not between people. These remain, as it were,
neutral, and sell their produce to whatever army is in possession. Napoleon,
when at war with Austria and Russia, bought forage and provisions of the
inhabitants, and consequently had an interest to protect farms and factories
which ministered to his wants. In like manner the allied armies in France could
buy of the French habitants whatever they needed — the produce of the soil or
manufactories of the country. Therefore the rule was and is, that wars are
confined to the armies and should not visit the homes of families or private
interests. But in other examples a different rule obtained the sanction of
historical authority. I will only instance that when in the reign of William
and Mary the English army occupied Ireland, then in a state of revolt, the
inhabitants were actually driven into foreign lands and were dispossessed of
their property and a new population introduced. To this day a large part of the
north of Ireland is held by the descendants of the Scottish emigrants sent
there by William’s order and an act of Parliament.
The war which now prevails in
our land is essentially a war of races. The Southern people entered into a
clear compact of government, but still maintained a species of separate
interests, history, and prejudices. The latter became stronger and stronger
till they have led to a war, which has developed fruits of the bitterest kind.
We of the North are beyond all question right in our lawful cause, but we are
not bound to ignore the fact that the people of the South have prejudices which
form part of their nature and which they cannot throw off without an effort of
reason or the slower process of natural change. Now, the question arises,
should we treat as absolute enemies all in the South who differ from us in
opinion or prejudices, kill or banish them, or give them time to think and
gradually change their conduct so as to conform to the new order of things
which is slowly and gradually creeping into their country?
When men take arms to resist
our rightful authority we are compelled to use force, because all reason and
argument cease when arms are resorted to. When the provisions, forage, horses,
mules, wagons, &c., are used by our enemy it is clearly our duty and right
to take them, because otherwise they might be used against us. In like manner
all houses left vacant by an inimical people are clearly our right, or such as
are needed as store-houses, hospitals. and quarters. But a question arises as
to dwellings used by women, children, and non-combatants. So long as
non-combatants remain in their houses and keep to their accustomed business
their opinions and prejudices can in nowise influence the war, and therefore
should not be noticed; but if any one comes out into the public streets and
creates disorder, he or she should be punished, restrained, or banished, either
to the rear or front as the officer in command adjudges. If the people or any
of them keep up a correspondence with parties in hostility they are spies, and
can be punished with death or minor punishment.
These are well-established
principles of war, and the people of the South having appealed to war are
barred from appealing to our Constitution, which they have practically and
publicly defied. They have appealed to war, and must abide its rules and laws.
The United States as a belligerent party, claiming rights in the soil as the
ultimate sovereign, have a right to change the population, and it may be and is
both politic and just we should do so in certain districts.
When the inhabitants persist
too long in hostility it may be both politic and right we should banish them
and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population. No man will
deny that the United States would be benefited by dispossessing a rich,
prejudiced, hard-headed, and disloyal planter, and substituting in his place a
dozen or more patient, industrious, good families, even if they be of foreign
birth. I think it does good to present this view of the case to many Southern
gentlemen who grew rich and wealthy, not by virtue alone of their personal
industry and skill, but by reason of the protection and impetus to prosperity
given by our hitherto moderate and magnanimous Government.
It is all idle nonsense for the
Southern planters to say that they made the South, that they own it, and that
they can do as they please, even to break up our Government and shut up the
natural avenues of trade, intercourse, and commerce.
We know, and they know, if they
are intelligent beings, that as compared with the whole world they are but as
five millions are to one thousand millions; that they did not create the land;
that the only title to its use and usufruct is the deed of the United States,
and if they appeal to war they hold their all by a very insecure tenure.
For my part I believe this war
is the result of false political doctrine, for which we all as a people are
responsible; that any and every people have a natural right to self-government,
and I would give all a chance to reflect and when in error to recant. I know
slave owners, finding themselves in possession of a species of property in
opposition to the growing sentiment of the whole civilized world, conceived
their property in danger and foolishly appealed to war, and by skillful political
handling involved with themselves the whole South on the doctrine of error and
prejudice. I believe that some of the rich and slave-holding are prejudiced to
an extent that nothing but death and ruin will extinguish, but hope, as the
poorer and industrial classes of the South realize their relative weakness and
their dependence upon the fruits of the earth and good will of their
fellow-men, they will not only discover the error of their ways and repent of
their hasty action but bless those who persistently maintained a constitutional
Government strong enough to sustain itself, protect its citizens, and promise
peaceful homes to millions yet unborn.
In this belief, whilst I assert
for our Government the highest military prerogatives, I am willing to bear in
patience that political nonsense of slave rights, States’ rights, freedom of
conscience, freedom of the press, and such other trash as have deluded the
Southern people into war, anarchy, bloodshed, and the foulest crimes that have
disgraced any time or any people.
I would advise the commanding
officers at Huntsville, and such other towns as are occupied by our troops, to
assemble the inhabitants and explain to them these plain, self-evident
propositions, and tell them that it is now for them to say whether they and
their children shall inherit the beautiful land which by the accident of nature
has fallen to their share.
The Government of the United
States has in North Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in
war — to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything — because
they cannot deny that war does exist there, and war is simply power
unrestrained by constitution or compact.
If they want eternal war, well
and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in
their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice
would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations
there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war
three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a
little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and
prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their
slaves, but now it is too late.
All the powers of earth cannot
restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year
their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too,
and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will
persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many,
many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.
My own belief is, even now the
non-slaveholding classes of the South are alienating from their associates in
war. Already I hear crimination. Those who have property left should take
warning in time.
Since I have come down here I
have seen many Southern planters who now hire their negroes and acknowledge
that they knew not the earthquake they were to make by appealing to secession.
They thought the politicians had prepared the way and they could part in peace.
They now see that we are bound together as one nation by indissoluble ties, and
that any interest or any people that set themselves up in antagonism to the
nation must perish. Whilst I would not remit one jot or tittle of our nation’s
right in peace or war, I do make allowances for past political errors and
prejudices. Our national Congress and supreme courts are the proper avenues on
which to discuss conflicting opinions, and not the battle-field. You may not
hear from me again, and if you think it will do any good, call some of the
better people together and explain these, my views. You may even read to them
this letter and let them use it so as to prepare them for my coming.
To those who submit to the
rightful law and authority all gentleness and forbearance; but to the petulant
and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is
disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saints of Heaven were allowed
a continuous existence in hell merely to swell their just punishment. To such
as would rebel against a Government so mild and just as ours was in peace, a
punishment equal would not be unjust.
We are progressing well in this
quarter, though I have not changed my opinion, that although we may soon assume
the existence of our National Government, yet years will pass before
ruffianism, murder, and robbery will cease to afflict this region of country.
Truly, your friend,
W. T. SHERMAN, Major - General, Commanding.
Source: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol. 32, Pt. 2 (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1891), pp. 278-281.
DEAR GENERAL: I
have your more than kind and characteristic letter of the 4th. I will send a
copy to General McPherson at once.
You do yourself
injustice and us too much honor in assigning to us too large a share of the
merits which have led to your high advancements. I know you approve the
friendship I have ever professed to you, and will permit me to continue, as
heretofore, to manifest it on all proper occasions.
You are now
Washington’s legitimate successor, and occupy a position of almost dangerous
elevation; but if you can continue, as heretofore, to be yourself – simple,
honest, and unpretending – you will enjoy through life the respect and love of
friends, and the homage of millions of human beings that will award you a large
share in securing to them and their descendants a government of law and
stability.
I repeat, you do
General McPherson and myself too much honor. At Belmont you manifested your
traits, neither of us being near; at Donelson also you illustrated your whole
character; I was not near, and General McPherson in too subordinate a capacity
to influence you.
Until you had won
Donelson I confess I was almost cowed by the terrible array of anarchical
elements that presented themselves at every point; but that admitted the ray of
light which I have followed since.
I believe you are
as brave, patriotic, and just as the great prototype, Washington; as unselfish,
kind-hearted, and honest as a man should be, but the chief characteristic is
the simple faith in success you have always manifested, which I can liken to
nothing else than the faith a Christian has in a Savior. This faith gave you
victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you have completed your last
preparations you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chattanooga, no
doubts, no reserves; and I tell you it was this that made us act with
confidence. I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a
tight place you would come if alive.
My only points of doubt
were in your knowledge of grand strategy, and of books of science and history,
but I confess your common sense seems to have supplied all these.
Now as to future.
Don’t stay in Washington. Halleck is better qualified than you to stand the
buffets of intrigue and policy. Come West; take to yourself the whole
Mississippi Valley. Let us make it dead sure, and I tell you the Atlantic slopes
and Pacific shores will follow its destiny as sure as the limbs of a tree live
or die with the main trunk. We have done much, but still much remains. Time and
time’s influences are with us; we could almost afford to sit still and let
these influences work. Even in the seceded States your word now would go
further than a President’s proclamation or an act of Congress. For God’s sake
and your country’s sake come of out of Washington. I foretold to General
Halleck before he left Corinth the inevitable result, and I now exhort you to
come out West. Here lies the seat of the coming empire, and from the West, when
our task is done, we will make short work of Charleston and Richmond and the
impoverished coast of the Atlantic.
Your sincere
friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.
Source:
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation
of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol.
32, Pt. 3 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891), p. 49; Memoirs of General William T. Sherman.
Second Edition. Vol. 1. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1904), pp. 427-428.
GENTLEMEN:
I have your letter of the 11th, in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders
removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give
full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet
shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the
humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which
millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have
peace, not only at Atlanta, but in all America. To secure this, we must stop
the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we
must defeat the rebel armies which are arrayed against the laws and
Constitution that all must respect and obey. To defeat those armies, we must
prepare the way to reach them in their recesses, provided with the arms and
instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose.
Now,
I know the vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of
military operations from this quarter; and, therefore, deem it wise and prudent
to prepare in time.The use of Atlanta
for warlike purposes is inconsistent with its character as a home for
families.There will be no manufactures,
commerce, or agriculture here, for the maintenance of families, and sooner or
later want will compel the inhabitants to go.Why not go now, when all the arrangements are completed for the
transfer, instead of waiting till the plunging shot of contending armies will
renew the scenes of the past month?Of
course, I do not apprehend any such thing at this moment, but you do not
suppose this army will be here until the war is over.I cannot discuss this subject with you
fairly, because I cannot impart to you what we propose to do, but I assert that
our military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can
only renew my offer of services to make their exodus in any direction as easy
and comfortable as possible.
You
cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and
those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions
a people can pour out.I know I had no
hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any
of you to secure peace.But you cannot
have peace and a division of our country.If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but
will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.The United States does and must assert its
authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it
is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling.This feeling assumes various shapes, but
always comes back to that of Union.Once
admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government,
and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of
war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding
you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may.I know that a few individuals cannot resist a
torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you
can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who
insist on war and its desolation.
You
might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible
hardships of war.They are inevitable,
and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and
quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it
began in error and is perpetuated in pride.
We
don’t want your negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your lands, or any
thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of
the United States.That we will have,
and, if it involves the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.
You
have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by
falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters,
the better.I repeat then that, by the
original compact of Government, the United States had certain rights in
Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South
began war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, customhouses, etc., etc., long
before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of
provocation.I myself have seen in
Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women
and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding
feet.In Memphis, Vicksburg, and
Mississippi, we fed thousands upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers
left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to
you, you feel very different.You
deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of
soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky
and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people
who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of
their inheritance.But these comparisons
are idle.I want peace, and believe it
can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a
view to perfect and early success.
But,
my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing.Then will I share with you the last cracker,
and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every
quarter.
Now
you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and
build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against
the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow the Union and
peace once more to settle over your old homes at Atlanta.
Yours
in haste,
W.
T. SHERMAN, Major-General commanding.
Source:
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman.
Second Edition. Vol. 2. (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1904), pp. 125-127;
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation
of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, Vol.
39, Pt. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1892), pp. 418-419.
I was as glad as you could have
been to learn that those boxes of stores, prepared by you with so much care and
promptness for the Andersonville prisoners, reached them at last. I don't think
I ever set my heart so strongly on any one thing as I did in attempting to
rescue those prisoners; and I had almost feared instead of doing them good I
had actually done them harm, for they were changed from place to place to avoid
me, and I could not with infantry overtake railroad trains. But at last their
prison-doors are open; and I trust we have arrived at a point when further war
or battle, or severity, other than the punishment of crime by civil tribunals,
is past.
You will have observed how
fiercely I have been assailed for simply offering to the President “terms” for
his approval or disapproval, according to his best judgment—terms which, if
fairly interpreted, mean, and only mean, an actual submission by the rebel
armies to the civil authority of the United States. No one can deny I have done
the State some service in the field, but I have always desired that strife
should cease at the earliest possible moment. I confess, without shame, I am
sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most
brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of
distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers. You, too,
have seen these things, and I know you also are tired of the war, and are
willing to let the civil tribunals resume their place. And, so far as I know,
all the fighting men of our army want peace; and it is only those who have
never heard a shot, never heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and
lacerated (friend or foe), that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more
desolation. I know the rebels are whipped to death, and I declare before God,
as a man and a soldier, I will not strike a foe who stands unarmed and
submissive before me, but would rather say—“Go, and sin no more.”
Source: William Tecumseh
Sherman to James E. Yeatman, May 21, 1865, excerpted in Samuel Millard Bowman
and Richard Biddle Irwin, Sherman and His
Campaigns: A Military Biography (New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1865),
pp. 487-488.
Flapper Jane. By Bruce Bliven. The New Republic, May 8, 2013. Originally published September 9, 1925. Also find it here and here.
Bliven:
Jane’s a flapper. That is a quaint, old-fashioned term, but
I hope you remember its meaning. As you can tell by her appellation, Jane is
19.If she
were 29, she would be Dorothy; 39, Doris; 49, Elaine; 59, Jane again — and so
on around. This Jane, being 19, is a flapper, though she urgently denies that
she is a member of the younger generation. The younger generation, she will
tell you, is aged 15 to 17; and she professes to be decidedly shocked at the
things they do and say. This is a fact which would interest her minister, if he
knew it – poor man, he knows so little! For he regards Jane as a perfectly
horrible example of youth – paint, cigarettes, cocktails, petting parties–oooh!
Yet if the younger generation shocks her as she says, query: how wild is Jane?
Before
we come to this exciting question, let us take a look at the young person as
she strolls across the lawn of her parents’ suburban home, having just put the
car away after driving sixty miles in two hours. She is, for one thing, a very
pretty girl. Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up,
not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect—pallor mortis,
poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes—the latter looking not so much
debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic. Her walk duplicates theswagger supposed by innocent America to go
with the female half of a Paris Apache dance. And there are, finally, her
clothes.
These
were estimated the other day by some statistician to weigh two pounds. Probably
a libel; I doubt they come within half a pound of such bulk. Jane isn’t wearing
much, this summer. If you’d like to know exactly, it is: one dress, one
step-in, two stockings, two shoes.
. . . .
“Jane,”
say I, “I am a reporter representing American inquisitiveness. Why do all of
you dress the way you do?”
“I
don’t know,” says Jane. This reply means nothing: it is just the device by
which the younger generation gains time to think. Almost at once she adds: “The
old girls are doing it because youth is. Everybody wants to be young,
now—though they want all us young people to be something else. Funny, isn’t it?”
“In a
way,” says Jane, “it’s just honesty. Women have come down off the pedestal lately.
They are tired of this mysterious feminine-charm stuff. Maybe it goes with
independence, earning your own living and voting and all that. There was always
a bit of the harem in that cover-up-your-arms-and-legs business, don’t you
think?”
“Women still
want to be loved,” goes on Jane, warming to her theme, “but they want it on a
50-50 basis, which includes being admired for the qualities they really
possess. Dragging in this strange-allurement stuff doesn’t seem sporting. It’s
like cheating in games, or lying.”
“Ask
me, did the War start all this?” says Jane helpfully. “The answer is, how do I
know? How does anybody know?”
“I read
this book whaddaya-call-it by Rose Macaulay, and she showed where they’d been
excited about wild youth for three generations anyhow—since 1870. I have a
hunch maybe they’ve always been excited.”
“Somebody
wrote in a magazine how the War had upset the balance of the sexes in Europe
and the girls over there were wearing the new styles as part of the competition
for husbands. Sounds like the bunk to me. If you wanted to nail a man for life
I think you’d do better to go in for the old-fashioned line: ‘March me to the
altar, esteemed sir, before you learn whether I have limbs or not.’ Of course,
not so many girls are looking for a life meal-ticket nowadays. Lots of them
prefer to earn their own living and omit the home-and-baby act. Well, anyhow,
postpone it years and years. They think a bachelor girl can and should do
everything a bachelor man does.”
“It’s
funny,” says Jane, “that just when women’s clothes are getting scanty, men’s
should be going the other way. Look at the Oxford trousers —as though a man had
been caught by the ankles in a flannel quicksand.”
Do the
morals go with the clothes? Or the clothes with the morals? Or are they
independent? These are questions I have not ventured to put to Jane, knowing
that her answer would be “so’s your old man.” Generally speaking, however, it
is safe to say that as regards the wildness of youth there is a good deal more
smoke than fire. Anyhow, the new Era of Undressing, as already suggested, has
spread far beyond the boundaries of Jane’s group. The fashion is followed by
hordes of unquestionably monogamous matrons, including many who join heartily in
the general ululations as to what young people are coming to. Attempts to link
the new freedom with prohibition, with the automobile, the decline of
Fundamentalism, are certainly without foundation. These may be accessory, and
indeed almost certainly are, but only after the fact.
That
fact is, as Jane says, that women to-day are shaking off the shreds and patches
of their age-old servitude. “Feminism” has won a victory so nearly complete
that we have even forgotten the fierce challenge which once inhered in the very
word. Women have highly resolved that they are just as good as men, and intend
to be treated so. They don’t mean to have any more unwanted children. They
don’t intend to be debarred from any profession or occupation which they choose
to enter. They clearly mean (even though not all of them yet realize it) that
in the great game of sexual selection they shall no longer be forced to play
the role, simulated or real, of helpless quarry. If they want to wear their
heads shaven, as a symbol of defiance against the former fate which for three
millennia forced them to dress their heavy locks according to male decrees,
they will have their way. If they should elect to go naked nothing is more
certain than that naked they will go, while from the sidelines to which he has
been relegated mere man is vouchsafed permission only to pipe a feeble Hurrah!
Today
we learned that our government targeted and harassed conservative Americans who
simply wanted to be involved in the national discussion. Is it any wonder why
Americans are so distrustful of D.C.? I’m sure President Obama is grateful for
all the help the IRS gave his reelection campaign, but, still, you have to
wonder how the bureaucrats who tried to pull this off can sleep at night.
So many
Americans knew this was happening, but many felt defenseless and even helpless
against a government that seems to roll along without accountability or sense
of obligation to the people it’s supposed to serve. These Americans were mocked
for being concerned about this, but now we see light shining on the truth,
finally.
This
IRS revelation is another step in the unraveling of the Obama administration’s
self-proclaimed “hope and change.” Between the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS
targeting Obama’s political opponents, we see the corruption at the heart of
big government.
Americans
should remember that this same corrupt IRS will be in charge of enforcing
Obamacare. And this same inept and corrupt government will supposedly secure
our now unsecured borders in advance of immigration reform and will implement a
completely ethical and non-political IPAB panel to make life and death health
care decisions for you and your family. Forgive me for not trusting these big
government promises any more than I trust the White House’s latest Benghazi
spin or the IRS’ fairness.
Despite
all of this, I still believe that this “fundamental transformation of America”
is temporary. This attempted transformation into a disheartened, weakened,
unrecognizable nation is so far below anything Americans deserve. It becomes
permanent only if we throw up our hands and surrender to the corruption and
cover-ups.
We must
demand more light shine on all that’s transpiring in D.C.’s self-absorbed
bubble. On the IRS scandal, we must have accountability and a full
investigation. On Benghazi, Speaker Boehner must create a Select Committee with
full investigative and subpoena authority to get to the bottom of the cover-up.
Keep the faith, friends.
Stephen
Hawking, the world-renowned physicist and celebrity, has canceled a planned
trip to Israel, where he was invited to participate in a conference sponsored
by Israeli president Shimon Peres. His explanation: “I have received a number
of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect
the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference.”
It’s an
odd world, isn’t it? By what inverted moral calculus does someone of Hawking’s
stature find it morally problematic to set foot on the soil of the region’s
only democracy? One wonders: How many other nations has Hawking declined to
visit in order to express his disapproval of their policies?
A
glance at his CV reveals that Hawking visited the Soviet Union in 1973. Russia
is no human-rights picnic today (it is one of two chief sponsors of the Assad
regime in Syria, for example), but those were the bad old days of Brezhnev,
when uprisings for freedom in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were ruthlessly
suppressed, the KGB inspired terror, and scientists who displeased the regime
were packed off to the Gulag.
The
incredibly well-traveled Hawking also visited Iran in 2007 for the
International Physics Olympiad. His conscience was apparently untroubled by the
stoning of adulteresses, imprisonment without trial, torture, and persecution
of religious and ethnic minorities — to say nothing of arming terrorists and
threatening to wipe countries off the map.
There
is, alas, no shortage of nations in this world that are richly deserving of
boycotts and other forms of pressure. Atrocities against civilians, including
children, are a daily occurrence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, China,
Cuba, Vietnam, Somalia, Mali, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar,
and Kyrgyzstan, as well as the above-mentioned Russia and Iran, and many others
oppress their populations, flout human rights, disdain judicial procedures, and
muzzle the press.
Yet
there is no worldwide BDS (“boycotts, divestments, and sanctions”) movement
against any of those countries. Some have been sanctioned by the United
Nations, or, in the case of Cuba, boycotted by the United States. But only
Israel is singled out for the BDS treatment by private organizations and
individuals. Hawking joins entertainers Elvis Costello, Santana, Jon Bon Jovi,
and the Pixies in declining to travel to Israel. The Presbyterian Church (USA)
has started the process of divesting from Israel, joining the Canadian Union of
Public Employees, the United Church of Canada, the Church of England Synod, the
Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the World Council of Churches. Archbishop
Desmund Tutu has called for Israel to be treated just as apartheid South Africa
was — a call that Jimmy Carter has come close to echoing.
What do
the advocates of BDS think they are expressing? Disapproval of Israel’s
settlement policies, perhaps? But the boycott of Jewish businesses by the Arab
states actually predates the creation of the state of Israel. The Arab League
formally adopted a blanket boycott after Israel achieved independence in 1948 —
long before the West Bank had come under Israeli sovereignty. The wording of
the Palestinian “Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” lists
“responsibility for the Nakba” as the first indictment. Nakba is the
Palestinian term for Israel’s birth — it translates as the “catastrophe.” In
other words, Israel’s first crime had nothing to do with territory, occupation,
or the “peace process.” Its first crime was being born.
The
Palestinian call itemizes other complaints against Israel. There is the
obligatory comparison to apartheid South Africa and a reference to the “racist
colonial wall.”
The
apartheid slur is damaging but utterly false. Israel is home to 1.6 million
Arab citizens, about 20 percent of its population. There is no such thing as
second-class citizenship. Arabs can participate fully in Israeli life. There
are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, in the foreign service,
in the media, in the police force, and even in the army. Do some have mixed
feelings about their country? Sure. Does anyone in Stephen Hawking’s country?
Of course. And by the way, how many Jews serve in prominent posts in Arab
countries?
As for
the “racist colonial wall,” that’s a reference to the security fence Israel
finally erected to prevent Palestinians from detonating bombs on buses, in
supermarkets, and in pizza parlors. Israel responded to sustained terror
attacks not by curtailing civil liberties, not by revenge attacks on
Palestinian civilians, and not by reoccupying territory ceded to the
Palestinian Authority. No, they just built a fence. That was too much for the
likes of Hawking — which gives you the measure of the man, and the movement he
embraces.
Of the
Big Five questions facing America today, the most pressing and urgent is the
question of jobs. This is more than the problem of recovering from the last
economic slump; it is more than the impact of globalization and automation on
manufacturing jobs. The American economy is shedding jobs, especially
long-term, well-paying jobs with good benefits, and the jobs that replace them
are often less secure and less well paid. The relentless transformation of the
American labor market is changing the nature of American life, calling into
question some of the basic assumptions and building blocks of the last fifty
years, and generating a complex mix of political and social pressures that will
shake the country to its foundations.
Essentially,
the problem is this: automation and IT are moving routine processing, whether
that being processed is information or matter, out of the realm of human work
and into the realm of machines. Factory floors are increasingly automated
places where fewer and fewer human beings are needed to transform raw materials
into finished products; clerical work and many forms of mass employment in
business, government and management are also increasingly performed more
economically by computers than by trained human beings.
The
transformation is only beginning to kick in. Self driving cars and trucks may
reduce the need for human beings in the transportation and freight
industries.Information processing is
beginning to change the nature of the legal profession and even as law school
applications fall by almost 50 percent there is much more change to come.
Computer assisted diagnosis is making itself felt in health care. MOOCs are
likely to change the way much of higher ed works.
It is
impossible to say now how far and how fast this process will move, but more and
more Americans are experiencing the kind of upheaval that blue collar workers
in manufacturing began to experience in the last generation and white collar
workers and journalists have felt more recently. We are seeing the greatest
wave of economic transition since the mechanization of agriculture reduced the
percentage of the labor force engaged in farming from more than half the
American labor force in 1890 to less than two percent today.
The old
engines of job growth, especially in manufacturing, aren’t working, and the
competition for good jobs keeps getting tighter. With the entry of billions of
Asians and others beyond the old industrial economies of North America, Europe
and Japan into the modern economy, the competition is global. And if low wage
workers can’t do the job cheaper than you, computers and, increasingly, robots
mean that you can still lose your job.
Under
the circumstances it is not surprising that many American families and workers
see bleak prospects before them.Even
workers who are doing relatively well have to work hard to keep their skills
sharp and live with anxiety about the future.
At the
same time, some industries and some individuals are doing very well. Modern
California is something of an image of the post-Fordist world: in Silicon
Valley and in Hollywood, there are pockets of vast wealth creation. Across the
state health care does very well, supporting large incomes for highly skilled
workers and managers. These oases of wealth support professionals and service
providers around them: from accountants and plastic surgeons to pool boys and
gardeners.
But the
state as a whole is not in good shape; even the presence of world beating, high
value added industries in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, two of the world’s most
concentrated centers of innovation, is not enough to create broad and stable
prosperity across the Golden State.
This is
an economy that produces inequality very different from what most citizens of
the old industrial economies are used to, and the social and political
consequences of rising inequality play a growing role in many countries who
once prided themselves on their success in building a vast and stable middle
class.
Much of
the inequality is generational. For many young people, the road to a middle
class job is harder than ever before: more years of school, more years of debt,
more internships, more years of scrabbling after graduation until that first
real, career building job comes through.
But for
many workers, and especially for the young, middle class jobs are less stable,
less desirable and less secure than they used to be. Young workers typically
get less generous benefit plans than older workers in government and corporate
environments. The geezers have been grandfathered into pension and pay
schedules that the new kids don’t get. Because there is so much competition
from the unemployed, and because industries and companies rise and fall so
quickly these days, it is harder to keep good jobs once you have them.
The
question, and it is not only a question for Americans, is where do we go from
here?Is the new economy locking us into
permanent inequality, insecurity, polarization and class conflict? Are we at
the early stage of a Great Unraveling that will roll back the clock on the
social achievements of the twentieth century and fall back from Blue Model
Fordism to Victorian capitalism red in tooth and claw?People in Italy and France are asking this as
much as people in California and Connecticut; these changes in the labor market
are stirring huge and justifiable anxieties across the entire developed world.
A
cyclical crisis like the recession and slow growth following the financial
collapse of 2008 makes everything worse, but the transformation of the American
labor market and the threat to the middle class has been gathering force since
the 1970s. A robust economic recovery will ease our discomfort, and the rise of
well-paid brown jobs in the oil and gas business is going to help. But
automation and globalization aren’t going away; in both good times and bad the
foundations of the old social order will continue to erode.
While
the problems are real, I don’t ultimately buy the pessimist, Great Unraveling
case. People once squealed in as much (genuine) pain about the collapse of the
old farm economy as they do now about the fall of Blue Fordism. People once
bemoaned the collapse of independence and dignity as proud farmers were forced
to become factory hands, engaging in mindless repetitive toil at the orders of
management. Furthermore, the same fears people now voice about the inability of
the new service economy to provide good livings were loudly and repeatedly
shared from Maine to California as the farms fell and the factories rose.Vast inequality, the prophets and the
protestors warned, would be the inevitable consequence of the collapse of the
egalitarian farm system. America would turn from a middle class society into a
society of paupers and plutocrats.
Millions
of lives were thrown into upheaval by the decline and fall of the family farm.
Two generations of American politics were shaped by the pain of this
transition. From William Jennings Bryan and the “Cross of Gold” to John
Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath,
the greatest enrichment in human history was accompanied by a nonstop chorus of
a nation’s brightest and most sensitive weeping and wailing about the wave of
poverty oversweeping the land. Keening with woe, they bemoaned the dying past
and shuddered at the threatening future until the 1950s found the country so
prosperous that in order to keep wringing their hands the professional worriers
were forced to begin the study of the corrosive social effects of mass
affluence. All those nice houses in the suburbs were killing the human spirit!
The
blue Fordist utopia that today’s sentimentalists see fading into the past was
once the hell they feared.Everything
looks better in the rearview mirror. But the pessimists are wrong today for the
same reason they were wrong 100 years ago. Then as now the key reality was that
the productivity of the human race was rising and not falling. Then as now the
challenge was to manage the consequences of success.Now as then the new era, while different and
in some ways more challenging, will be more prosperous than anything ever seen.
That
said, we should not underestimate the magnitude of the vast jobquake now
shaking the country. One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to understand that the
way people relate to the economy is critical to the way a whole society works.
An America dominated by family farmers and small independent business
proprietors was a different place culturally and politically than the America
of big corporations and employees that dominated the twentieth century.
Schools, churches, family structures, political parties: all changed as the
country’s economic foundations changed between 1850 and 1950.
Not all
of these changes were painless or benign and the psychological changes that
individuals underwent as their place in the economic order changed were
sometimes the hardest to bear. The shift from being an independent small farmer
to being one of ten thousand automobile workers in noisy, dangerous factories
was hard. And the life of an industrial worker endlessly performing a single
repetitive step on an endless assembly line is in many ways less rich and more
alienating than a life working side by side with your spouse and growing family
on the homestead where you were born.
The old
farm economy really had to die. The small family farms of pioneer America could
not produce the amount of food the country needed at a price the country could
afford. Less efficient small farmers could not survive with agricultural prices
set by the vast production of large scale, mechanized agribusiness everywhere
from the Canadian prairies to the pampas of Argentina.
When “reformers”
like William Jennings Bryan talked about fixing the economy in the 1890s they
were thinking about policies that would make the small farm viable. When they
thought about providing for American families, they thought about finding ways
for new generations of Americans to farm their own land.
In much
the same way today, much of our policymaking is about trying to resuscitate the
past. Will “onshoring” revive the manufacturing economy? Yes . . . but it won’t
create many jobs. Automation means that a small number of factory workers can
produce enough goods for a whole nation, just as a much reduced number of
farmers can now feed us.
In the
same way, we are going to keep shedding clerical and information processing
jobs. There are no policies that can do more than delay the inevitable, just as
the host of farm support policies developed during the long transition failed
to stop the transformation of agriculture. (These days, farm subsidies
developed to help family farmers now mostly fatten the coffers of huge
agricultural corporate complexes. More or less the same fate awaits any effort
to protect industrial or clerical jobs now: the change won’t stop, and the
money will end up in the wrong pockets.)
The old
jobs are going away and they aren’t coming back. More, we can’t fix the problem
by trying to create new jobs in factories or traditional office bureaucracies
to replace the ones going away. We need new kinds of jobs that don’t involve
manufacturing or traditional forms of information processing. That leaves the
service economy; there is nowhere else to go.
Promoting
new ways for people to make a living in this still young century isn’t as
simple as getting macroeconomic policy right. And it isn’t about figuring out
how to re-industrialize the economy: how to bring the smokestacks back to
Buffalo. That door is shut. That day is done.
Solving
America’s jobs problem and its consequences—slack demand for workers at many
skill levels and the rising consequences for wages, working conditions and
inequality—is going to require both policy and cultural shifts. In the 19th
century most Americans spent their time working with animals and plants
outdoors in the country. In the 20th century most Americans spent their time
pushing paper in offices or bashing widgets in factories. In the 21st century
most of us are going to work with people, providing services that enhance each
others’ lives.
There
will have to be cultural changes. We are hearing almost exactly the same
laments and breast beatings about this transition that our ancestors so
eloquently wailed about the end of the family farm. Manufacturing jobs are “real
jobs”; hustling for customers is servile and degrading? 100 years ago, farming
was a noble, independent occupation worthy of a man and a citizen; a wage slave
was a lowly hireling, and factory work crippled the body and stunted the mind.
We are
going to have to discover the inherent dignity of work that is people to people
rather than people to things. We are going to have to realize that engaging
with other people, understanding their hopes and their needs, and using our own
skills, knowledge and talent to give them what they want at a price they can afford
is honest work.
A
service economy resting on the high productivity agriculture, manufacturing and
information processing will be a more affluent and a more human economy than
what we have now. Human energy will be liberated from wringing the bare necessities
from a reluctant nature; energy and talent will flow into making life more
beautiful, more interesting, more entertaining and easier to use. By 1960 few
American suburbanites really envied their hardscrabble, uneducated ancestors
shivering through the winter in sod huts on the open prairie; one suspects that
few Americans in 2060 will be pining for the glorious old days of 9 to 5 at GM.
But the
change will come hard. The tax system and the financial system will have to
change to promote the rise of a new world of jobs. The educational system will
have to change to prepare young people for new kinds of lives. We are going to
have to make all kinds of changes as our society comes to embody a new kind of
economic logic. The changes won’t be easy but they aren’t optional.
Our
jobs problem won’t be solved by macroeconomic policy shifts or money
manipulation by the central bankers. It’s not going away anytime soon. Like the
nation of family farmers as the industrial revolution took hold, Americans used
to blue model Fordism are going to have to move on.
