Paul Craig Roberts explains the origins of Labor Day versus what it is today. Most Americans know little of the story ...including the blogger, who hopes you will also visit his preceeding post with an additional little known story of U.S. history.

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Labor Day

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June , 2016 | Original Here | If you wish to receive his newsletter via email go to Original and sign up at bottom.

Paul Craig Roberts

Labor Day—what is it? Perhaps not many Americans any longer know, so here is my explanation.

In my time Labor Day was the unofficial end of summer, because school began after Labor Day.

Today school begins almost a month before. When I was in school that would not have been possible, especially in the South. The schools were not air-conditioned. If school had started in August no one would have showed up. It was difficult enough getting through May before school was out in June.

As most Americans probably thought of Labor Day as the last summer holiday, now that Labor Day has lost that role, what is Labor Day? The holiday originated as an apology capitalists tossed to labor to defuse a standoff.

Workers understood that labor was the backbone of the economy, not Wall Street moguls or bankers in their fine offices. Workers wanted a holiday that recognized labor, thus elevating labor in public policy to a standing with capital. Some states created labor day holidays, but it wasn’t until 1894 that Labor Day was made a federal holiday.

Congress created the federal holiday in response to the murder of strikers by US Army troops and federal marshalls during the Pullman strike of 1894. The factory workers who built Pullman railway cars lived in the company town of Pullman. George Pullman provoked a strike by lowering wages but not the rents charged in the company town.

President Grover Cleveland relied on Attorney General Richard Olney to restore capitalist control. Olney, a former railway attorney, sent in the federal violence to break up the strike. Olney still received a retainer from his railway company that was larger than his salary as US Attorney General. So we know whose side he was on. The presstitute media portrayed the beaten down strikers as unpatriotic foreigners, and the strike leader, Eugene Debs, was sentenced to federal prison. The experience radicalized Debs and turned him into a socialist.

The obvious injustice created more sympathy for labor than capitalists could stomach, so Congress defused the situation by creating Labor Day. President Cleveland washed his hands of the blood on them by signing the legislation.

Officially what we are celebrating on the first Monday of September is American labor, but what is really being celebrated is the success of capitalists again flummoxing the people and avoiding a real social revolution.

The labor movement, which gave us Labor Day, is no longer with us. The American labor movement died about ten years after the death of its most famous leader, George Meany of the AFL-CIO. Meany, born in 1894, died in 1980.

I remember when labor was at the center of politics and policy. There was even a field of economics called “labor economics.” The political influence of labor ended with the offshoring of US industrial and manufacturing jobs. For years US capitalists tried to avoid a fair shake for labor by locating their facilities in Southern states that had right to work laws. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the change in attitude of India and China toward foreign capital, capitalists learned that they could increase profits by using foreign labor offshore to produce the goods and services that they sold to Americans. The difference in labor costs flowed directly into profits, executive bonuses, and shareholder capital gains.

Free market economists, who live in a make-believe world, pretend that the lower labor costs flow into lower US consumer prices and that consumers beneift despite the loss of well-paying jobs. The problem with free market economics is that a priori reasoning takes precedence over empirical fact. For free market economists, the way the world should be prevails over the way that the world actually is.

As a consequence of jobs offshoring, industrial and manufacturing cities became semi-ghost towns with declining populations. Municipal and state governments, deprived of tax base, found themselves under duress to make pension payments. To avoid immediate bankruptcy, cities such as Chicago sold off public assets such as 75 years of parking meter revenues for a one time payment.

The Democratic Party, which had been the countervailing power against the Republican business party, was deprived of union funding as the jobs that paid union dues were no longer in America. By moving production offshore, capitalists turned the Democrats into a second capitalist political party dependent on funding from the business sector.

Today we have one party with two heads. The competition between the parties is about which party gets to be the whore for the capitalists for the next political term. As Democrats and Republicans swap the whore function back and forth, neither party has an incentive to do anything different.

The offshoring of high productivity, high value-added US jobs has destroyed the labor movement. How much luck will labor leaders have organizing people who hold part-time jobs as waitresses, bartenders, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks? As I have pointed out for years in my reports on the monthly payroll jobs reports, the United States now has the labor profile of a Third World country. The absence of jobs that can support an independent existence and family life is the reason that more Americans aged 24-34 live at home with parents than live independently. The absence of jobs is the reason the labor force participation rate has declined for years. The absence of jobs that pay sufficiently to provide discretionary income is the reason the economy cannot grow.

Looking at last Friday’s BLS payroll report, the jobs are in the lowly paid, part-time service sector. The goods producing sector of the economy lost 24,000 jobs. The jobs are in retail trade, health care and social assistance, waitresses and bartenders, and government which is tax supported employment.

Whether Washington policymakers realize it or not, the American work force smells like India’s of a half centruy ago. Whatever deranged Hillary and her neoconservatives claim, there is no evidence in the compositon of the US labor force that the US is a superpower. Indeed, what the employment statistics show is that the United States is a third world country, a country whose leaders are so out of their minds that they are picking fights with first world countries—Russia and China.

The United States of America is on its last legs. As there is no willingness to recognize this, nothing can be done about it. America’s last function is to cause World War 3 in which all of us will expire.

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For any of those who think that Colin Kaepernick is some kind of a traitor and/or a disgrace to America, read the real truth below. It exposes a little known event in American history which took place when the young United States decided to grab Canada from the British Empire. It is something never mentioned in U.S. schools.

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Colin Kaepernick Is Righter Than You Know: The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery

Before a preseason game on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When he explained why, he only spoke about the present: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Twitter then went predictably nuts, with at least one 49ers fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey.
Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.

Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. But we don’t ever talk about how the War of 1812 was a war of aggression that began with an attempt by the U.S. to grab Canada from the British Empire.

However, we’d wildly overestimated the strength of the U.S. military. By the time of the Battle of Fort McHenry in 1814, the British had counterattacked and overrun Washington, D.C., setting fire to the White House.

And one of the key tactics behind the British military’s success was its active recruitment of American slaves. As a detailed 2014 article in Harper’s explains, the orders given to the Royal Navy’s Admiral Sir George Cockburn read:

Let the landings you make be more for the protection of the desertion of the Black Population than with a view to any other advantage. … The great point to be attained is the cordial Support of the Black population. With them properly armed & backed with 20,000 British Troops, Mr. Madison will be hurled from his throne.

Whole families found their way to the ships of the British, who accepted everyone and pledged no one would be given back to their “owners.” Adult men were trained to create a regiment called the Colonial Marines, who participated in many of the most important battles, including the August 1814 raid on Washington.

Then on the night of September 13, 1814, the British bombarded Fort McHenry. Key, seeing the fort’s flag the next morning, was inspired to write the lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

So when Key penned “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” he was taking great satisfaction in the death of slaves who’d freed themselves. His perspective may have been affected by the fact he owned several slaves himself.

With that in mind, think again about the next two lines: “And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
The reality is that there were human beings fighting for freedom with incredible bravery during the War of 1812. However, “The Star-Spangled Banner” glorifies America’s “triumph” over them — and then turns that reality completely upside down, transforming their killers into the courageous freedom fighters.

After the U.S. and the British signed a peace treaty at the end of 1814, the U.S. government demanded the return of American “property,” which by that point numbered about 6,000 people. The British refused. Most of the 6,000 eventually settled in Canada, with some going to Trinidad, where their descendants are still known as “Merikins.”
Furthermore, if those leading the backlash against Kaepernick need more inspiration, they can get it from Francis Scott Key’s later life.

By 1833, Key was a district attorney for Washington, D.C. As described in a book called Snowstorm in August by former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, the police were notorious thieves, frequently stealing free blacks’ possessions with impunity. One night, one of the constables tried to attack a woman who escaped and ran away — until she fell off a bridge across the Potomac and drowned.

“There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district,” an abolitionist paper wrote. “No fuss or stir was made about it. She was got out of the river, and was buried, and there the matter ended.”

Key was furious and indicted the newspaper for intending “to injure, oppress, aggrieve & vilify the good name, fame, credit & reputation of the Magistrates & constables of Washington County.”

You can decide for yourself whether there’s some connection between what happened 200 years ago and what Colin Kaepernick is angry about today. Maybe it’s all ancient, meaningless history. Or maybe it’s not, and Kaepernick is right, and we really need a new national anthem.

All Americans who have completed grades one-through-12 believe that they know American history. However, vertually no one truely understands the American history of the 21st Century. You think not? Well test your knowledge against what you will learn by watching this comprehensive intrview with Paul Craig Roberts. Nuclear war is on the horizon, and the first step to stave it off is for Americans to understand today's history. In addition, PCR the superb (and honest) economist points out that US employment is being faked by the government. Those who have given up finding a job have been written off as nonexistant. If the Labor Force Participation Rate had been considered unemployment would be 23%. In fact the middle class has be rapidly shrinking. For example 50% of age-25 Americans are now forced to live with their parents. PCR also explains the senselessness of the recent up-tic in the Fed's interest rates. Educate yourselves folks, before it's too late!

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US Stupid Enough to Cause Nuclear War-Paul Craig Roberts

By Greg Hunter On December 27, 2015

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com  (Early Sunday Release)

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has a dim view of the so-called “economic recovery.” Dr. Roberts contends, “There has been no recovery whatsoever. . . . If you look at the economy realistically, and that means you don’t use their phony numbers, there has been no recovery whatsoever and, in fact, it continues to worsen. We see that the “Labor Force Participation Rate” continues to sink. . . . When you consider the full measure of unemployment . . . we still have an unemployment rate of 23% after 7 years of an alleged recovery? I think this is the first so-called recovery where the labor force fell. Normally, when you have a recovery, people re-enter the labor force and the participation rate rises. . . . How do you have 5% unemployment when half of all 25 year old people have to live at home with their parents? What kind of a “recovery” is that? They say there is no inflation, but everyone that goes shopping knows that is a lie. . . . It’s all just a package of smoke, mirrors and lies.”

Don’t expect this to turn around anytime soon. Dr. Roberts says, “There is no opportunity for the middle-class. It must be shrinking. I would say the U.S. economy is in long-term decline. 
Rigging the way you measure inflation, rigging the way you measure unemployment, that may fool ordinary people, but that does not fool those of us who look at the numbers.”

On war, Dr. Roberts’ view is dire and goes on to explain, “Everything that previous presidents have done to try to defuse the kind of tensions between nuclear powers that could lead to war, all this has been thrown away by Clinton, George W. Bush and the current White House fool. It’s all due to the Neoconservatives. So, yes, we are in a more dangerous situation than in the worst part of the cold war. Thanks to the Neoconservatives and thanks to the American ‘presstitute’ media with people who lie for a living, we are in more danger than we have ever been. A war could result, and if it doesn’t, then it’s just because Putin has got too much sense. I don’t think Putin is going to absorb these provocations forever, and I don’t think he’s going to put up with any more nonsense in Ukraine. That was a part of Russia longer than the United States has existed. . . .Can you imagine anything more insane and reckless than you go into a part of Russia, that has only been independent for a few years, and overthrow a democratically elected government that is getting along with Russia and stick in an American puppet with all these crazed right-wing Nazi people and cause all this trouble with Russia and tell endless lies about it? What is more reckless and irresponsible? That is the way the United States government is behaving. If you can do things that stupid, you can cause a nuclear war.”
 
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.
 
(There is much more in this in-depth interview.)

https://youtu.be/gZx7JWSOqK0

After the Interview:
There are free articles and information on PaulCraigRoberts.org. If you want to support Dr. Roberts, you can do so by clicking here.

DID THEY DIE IN VAIN? A SHORT HISTORY OF U.S. LABOR'S STRUGGLE TO WIN THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE BY ALAN GRAYSON

Bloggers Note: I just received the material below by e-mail from former U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson. Who is he exactly? Well, if you want to know -- and you should! -- I urge you to read this short biography and/or play the first three videos you will find in the right-hand column of this blog just below my Blog Archive.

Dear David:

On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.

On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.

On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.

Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.

And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.

This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.

Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.

The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the "Right to Organize" Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.

So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st Century?

Because the teabaggers want to "take back America." They want to take it back, all right – take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.

Not to mention slavery.

I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.

They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.

We didn't ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.

As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, "it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny."

I'm ready to fight for what's right. What about you?

Courage,

Alan Grayson