Mark Palermo

If the Bread and Roses Strike Were NOW

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If the Bread and Roses Strike Were NOW
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Public Grief, Private Lives

Long before Democrats started wearing expensive suits and representing the values of Hollywood, when factory workers lived in crowded firetraps and worked in unbelievably wretched conditions, there was the Lawrence Strike of 1912- a demand for “bread and roses.” An area physician at that time, Dr. Elizabeth Shapleigh, reported, "A considerable number of the boys and girls (who work in Lawrence’s mills) die within the first two or three years after beginning work . . . thirty-six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are twenty-five years of age.” The headstrong president of the American Woolen Company, William Wood, who would years later take his own life on a golf course, became locked in a battle of wills with the International Workers of the World.  All of which got me thinking about an interesting scenario.

 

What if today’s radio talk show hosts had been around in 1912? What would they have said about the strike if they had been on the air then? How would they have covered it? For starters, let’s imagine a few of today’s most popular talk show hosts.

 

Howie the Cur (master of thinly veiled anti-immigrant vitriol): responding to one of his irate callers who reported seeing an immigrant woman go through a soup line three times- You know, caller, this is typical. What else can you expect from “these people from Lawrence?” Scam the system as usual, whether it’s insurance fraud, bootlegging, or getting more than their fair share of soup. Striking for higher wages?  Let them go back where they came from and get that kind of money. Personally, I think six bucks a week is a darn good pay for these people. Some Harvard football players and guys from the taverns in Boston ought to go up there to Lawrence and knock some sense into “these people.”

 

Ann (the cruel nun) Coulter: It’s the detestable liberals again. First they stirred up people up over slavery- a legally recognized institution. And now they foment trouble in the mills. These strikers need a lesson about “God and Country.” Give them 24 hours to go back to their machines; If they refuse, then I say we burn them out of their tenements, hold public executions by guillotine and firing squad, take their children away and convert them into Presbytarians.

 

Rush Windbag: (unabashed manipulator and master hypocrite) “Well folks, here you have yet another example of socialism. These immigrants agreed to these wages. The American Woolen Company can set any wage it wants as long as it’s legal. And William Wood is a fine man. ( I was golfing with him just last week). The strikers can quit their jobs any time they want and start their own international textile conglomerate.

 

Jerry (accounts receivable) Fallwell: The authority of the men who run American Woolen Company has come down from the Lord. The Lord is displeased with the strikers, who are godless anarchists and communists. We have a culture war here. Help fight it by sending me your tax deductible contribution.

 

Savage Nation: We should put ‘em all on rafts with a compass and a flask of water and send this ragged, garlic eating, America-hating horde of sub-human vermin back to the stinking hovels and ghettos of Europe.

 

Pat “the hellfire stoker” Robertson: The unfortunate, but necessary murders and clubbings of the men and women on the picket lines are God’s collective retribution for the sin of homosexual inversion that is sweeping this country. This vice must be stopped before it gets out of hand.

 

Alan “Sacher-Masoch” Dershowitz : Torture is justified here.  Women police officers should be specially trained to sexually abuse the men strikers. Torture performed  by women is more humiliating and hence, more effective in breaking the spirit of the strike. We need not concern ourselves with troublesome questions of morality or ethical standards. Those who oppose my viewpoint are merely “self-hating Americans.”

 

Billy “the Enabler” Graham: I once had a dream where it was revealed by the Lord  that  the immigrants must go back to their machines and be grateful for the generous benefactions of industry. They must desist from the treachery and subterfuge of the Wobbly, the anarchist and the communist  agitator. These sons of perdition and  calumny shall have no place in God’s kingdom. So take heed.  Their irreverence and disobedience to the authorities is an abomination unto the Lord. The Bible sanctifies the dignity of work, which is ennobling and makes one worthy of eternal salvation. Trust your government. Trust your leaders. Trust your company. They would never lie to you. Return to your looms, for God cannot love you when you are in a state of sin. It says so in the Bible, which is the word of God. How do I know? Because God said so; it’s right here in the Bible. So do as you’re told…

 

 

 

 

 

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
— Abraham Lincoln