People used to know what work was and they appreciated having work...as little as they were paid. I was taught how to work as a 6 year old babysitting my siblings. At seven, my dad had my little sister and me...haul coal in a bushel basket with a broomstick through it. She on one end of the stick and me on the other to carry the coal to the back of where we lived and put it in the coal bin. It was dumped on the street in front of where we lived...and we had to go around the 5 home row and up a drive to put it into our coal bin, which was in the center of the 5 home row. It took us many days of work to put a couple tons of coal in the bin for the winter. My dad believed in keeping us busy. We had to polish his shoes weekly...and keep the place in order. We learned to paint the house, and use tools, such as screwdrivers and saws. There was no such thing as allowances. We had to earn our keep. I started getting paid for babysitting a neighbor's child at 8...and at 9 started doing light cleaning for a neighbor; and at 11, I earned $20 a day shoveling snow. I made money throughout my teens babysitting for 50 cents an hour. I was the oldest of 5...and my dad taught us all how to work. My three brothers, became hard working and responsible husbands.(Two of them had sizable families to support). Like kahlil Gibran said: "Work is love made visible!."
My father raised 12 of us and we were taught at an early age to work instead of everything handed to us. I believe it builds character and you appreciate it more when earning it yourself.
Learning to work as a child, teaches you to rely on yourself and know you can make the money you need. Children who aren't given this opportunity...will usually depend on their parents... and then others to support them.
Not only should we at desk jobs remember, but this information, pictures, stories, and songs deserve a museum of their own in Washington D.C. Many groups have had their turn at being oppressed minorities.
A Labor Museum in DC which covers non union, at home unpaid, union, Indigenous pre desk jockies and corporate, crafts/arts,land based subsistence traditional skills, so called liw skilled and the unemployed times, labor rights movements etc The whole beautiful stew of American history of human efforts!! All the color in the hour a human spends occupied to get something done!
I’m f’ing half Irish as dad’s parents full Irish came on boat as youth met in America. The maternal half is documented double Mayflower Alden- Mullins. My bio son is college grad and enrolled in Alaska Native tribe as dad is full Koyukon Athabascan and traditional culture bearer as at 74 knows his labor duverse stuff. I went to Catholic School now 69 and raised on f’ing union and labor stories with dash of Irish independence history. Paternal grandfather would get beat up by company goons when he helped start the first Steamfitter Pipefitter Union in NYS/NJ area and later elected to big time union suited leadership positions during JFK era. I myself cleaned toilets for millionaires at the end. So I am of working class roots and I could go on. I cooked Wild Alaskan Cod caught in Bering Sea by Natives - dinner last Monday in Fairbanks for a departing gal, 22 off to Nevada Christian missionary service and her Born in Ireland age 74 still working big machine driver dad and our Inupiat Indigenous to Alaska neighbor. He still has accent since arriving age 18 to Bronx. Still can speak of 800 years of British colonialism in Ireland. Go research the f’ing origins of many of our founding principals and see how Indigenous work of building democratic principles and equality of women from Haudenosaune were incorporated. Labor on this land was red and brown before my own white kin helped mold our character!!! Maybe Hobby Lobby can fund your project. I’ll imagine the diverse mosaic in this country who did the labor funding a authentic museum - not just WEF, Trilateral, Bilderberg, MIC profiteers or pasty shallow versions of what constitutes a Laborer. My dad built Rockefeller Center as a welder supervisor for years driving four hours round trip daily -a building where today my former boss (3 upstate mansions) employs 400 private equity corporate hacks on an entire floor according to Wall Strre reporter articles. I, too, am America. ( Langston Hughes or Sojourner Truth anyone?!)
As Martin Luther King noted working people need to understand that we are all the same and must not allow the divisiveness created by the super wealthy. This divisiveness is created to keep the public at war with itself to the wealthy can maintain their power. Racism is a form of class warfare just as is sexism. But color divide has always been the core of this country which built wealth and power off the backs of working people
Recall the story of Cincinnatus, who left his farm to assume control of the Roman republic, circa 458 BC, whose story inspired, I believe, George Washington. Sadly, modern government always tends to rule by elites who are unfamiliar with the discipline and dignity of manual labour. I recall my grandfather, here in Australia, a distinguished physician, who worked on his country property at weekends and later in retirement. His was perhaps our greatest generation: humble men, elevated to high positions through diligence and good character. He lived a simple life, and took pride in his practical skills. I remember him teaching me, as a child, the elements of plumbing (including, in those days, putting threads on galvanised pipes).
The "elites" ( self-described ) you speak about, if placed anywhere actually meaningful, would have no idea whatsoever about how to do the simplest things.
Nigel Farage is somewhat famous, inter alia, for having characterized the entire EU parliament as a collection of nonentities not one of whom had ever had a real job.
( He himself had spent years in the London Metal Exchange. )
Now he is starting to organize the re establishment of the nation once he becomes PM ( only a matter of time ) starting with the compulsory repatriation of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.
As a friend once said, "Anybody who wants to become a politician should be immediately disqualified from becoming one," which relates to what you said about Cincinnatus.
Farage of course, "never wanted to become one," he was forced into it by what he was seeing, as Britain was destroyed via its membership of the EU, and its increasingly dictatorial and destructive ways.
Separating the real men from the wimps. My mother and father both immigrants to New York in 1945 after the war, taught me the meaning of hard labouring honest work from 10 years of age. Go earn money shovelling snow, raking leaves for the elderly. Volunteer at church as part of the community. What a great life lesson. Still working at 73, although not with the same fire. God Bless the hardworking people of USA. Thanks John Leake for your paying homage to those who built a country and communities. In God we trust.
Well, John, I got so sick of my office job behind a desk that, when I moved decades ago, I took jobs which were on the street (driving commercially) and far more difficult although offered more of the same office work. Today, after eight years of retirement, I suffer some ill physical effects from one of those jobs, but something in me had to experience these jobs--needed these jobs. I would never do so again, but I understand the downtrodden in this country extremely well...the small guys with their backs pressed up against the wall. I equally saw, on a personal basis, the inordinate abuse of power directly in front of my face. This is karma I'll carry forward.
Well said! Good for us European Americans! We build societies, infrastructure, and civilization with culture! Praise our Ancestors!
People used to know what work was and they appreciated having work...as little as they were paid. I was taught how to work as a 6 year old babysitting my siblings. At seven, my dad had my little sister and me...haul coal in a bushel basket with a broomstick through it. She on one end of the stick and me on the other to carry the coal to the back of where we lived and put it in the coal bin. It was dumped on the street in front of where we lived...and we had to go around the 5 home row and up a drive to put it into our coal bin, which was in the center of the 5 home row. It took us many days of work to put a couple tons of coal in the bin for the winter. My dad believed in keeping us busy. We had to polish his shoes weekly...and keep the place in order. We learned to paint the house, and use tools, such as screwdrivers and saws. There was no such thing as allowances. We had to earn our keep. I started getting paid for babysitting a neighbor's child at 8...and at 9 started doing light cleaning for a neighbor; and at 11, I earned $20 a day shoveling snow. I made money throughout my teens babysitting for 50 cents an hour. I was the oldest of 5...and my dad taught us all how to work. My three brothers, became hard working and responsible husbands.(Two of them had sizable families to support). Like kahlil Gibran said: "Work is love made visible!."
My father raised 12 of us and we were taught at an early age to work instead of everything handed to us. I believe it builds character and you appreciate it more when earning it yourself.
Learning to work as a child, teaches you to rely on yourself and know you can make the money you need. Children who aren't given this opportunity...will usually depend on their parents... and then others to support them.
Exactly! I have seen it in my lifetime young people that do not know how to live independently due to how they were raised.
The degree of exhaustion, illness, deprivation and sheer danger are hard to fathom. It would be hard to find 100 men willing to do the work today.
Happy Labor Day!
Not only should we at desk jobs remember, but this information, pictures, stories, and songs deserve a museum of their own in Washington D.C. Many groups have had their turn at being oppressed minorities.
A Labor Museum in DC which covers non union, at home unpaid, union, Indigenous pre desk jockies and corporate, crafts/arts,land based subsistence traditional skills, so called liw skilled and the unemployed times, labor rights movements etc The whole beautiful stew of American history of human efforts!! All the color in the hour a human spends occupied to get something done!
Uh, no, not the museum I had in mind. The Irish, my ancestors, have no color. They deserve attention for what they went through.
So much for the oft-repeated lie about how the country was built by slaves.
I’m f’ing half Irish as dad’s parents full Irish came on boat as youth met in America. The maternal half is documented double Mayflower Alden- Mullins. My bio son is college grad and enrolled in Alaska Native tribe as dad is full Koyukon Athabascan and traditional culture bearer as at 74 knows his labor duverse stuff. I went to Catholic School now 69 and raised on f’ing union and labor stories with dash of Irish independence history. Paternal grandfather would get beat up by company goons when he helped start the first Steamfitter Pipefitter Union in NYS/NJ area and later elected to big time union suited leadership positions during JFK era. I myself cleaned toilets for millionaires at the end. So I am of working class roots and I could go on. I cooked Wild Alaskan Cod caught in Bering Sea by Natives - dinner last Monday in Fairbanks for a departing gal, 22 off to Nevada Christian missionary service and her Born in Ireland age 74 still working big machine driver dad and our Inupiat Indigenous to Alaska neighbor. He still has accent since arriving age 18 to Bronx. Still can speak of 800 years of British colonialism in Ireland. Go research the f’ing origins of many of our founding principals and see how Indigenous work of building democratic principles and equality of women from Haudenosaune were incorporated. Labor on this land was red and brown before my own white kin helped mold our character!!! Maybe Hobby Lobby can fund your project. I’ll imagine the diverse mosaic in this country who did the labor funding a authentic museum - not just WEF, Trilateral, Bilderberg, MIC profiteers or pasty shallow versions of what constitutes a Laborer. My dad built Rockefeller Center as a welder supervisor for years driving four hours round trip daily -a building where today my former boss (3 upstate mansions) employs 400 private equity corporate hacks on an entire floor according to Wall Strre reporter articles. I, too, am America. ( Langston Hughes or Sojourner Truth anyone?!)
As Martin Luther King noted working people need to understand that we are all the same and must not allow the divisiveness created by the super wealthy. This divisiveness is created to keep the public at war with itself to the wealthy can maintain their power. Racism is a form of class warfare just as is sexism. But color divide has always been the core of this country which built wealth and power off the backs of working people
Thank you, Eileen - VERY INTERESTING writing. Best wishes.
When Men were men.
Tough people..got a lot of grit
Thanks, John Leake, for writing about some of the work that my Irish ancestors were willing to do here in America.
Fantastic hx info. Quite a good reminder when wanting to complain my backhoe tractor hydraulic pump needs seals replaced
Recall the story of Cincinnatus, who left his farm to assume control of the Roman republic, circa 458 BC, whose story inspired, I believe, George Washington. Sadly, modern government always tends to rule by elites who are unfamiliar with the discipline and dignity of manual labour. I recall my grandfather, here in Australia, a distinguished physician, who worked on his country property at weekends and later in retirement. His was perhaps our greatest generation: humble men, elevated to high positions through diligence and good character. He lived a simple life, and took pride in his practical skills. I remember him teaching me, as a child, the elements of plumbing (including, in those days, putting threads on galvanised pipes).
The "elites" ( self-described ) you speak about, if placed anywhere actually meaningful, would have no idea whatsoever about how to do the simplest things.
Nigel Farage is somewhat famous, inter alia, for having characterized the entire EU parliament as a collection of nonentities not one of whom had ever had a real job.
( He himself had spent years in the London Metal Exchange. )
Now he is starting to organize the re establishment of the nation once he becomes PM ( only a matter of time ) starting with the compulsory repatriation of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.
As a friend once said, "Anybody who wants to become a politician should be immediately disqualified from becoming one," which relates to what you said about Cincinnatus.
Farage of course, "never wanted to become one," he was forced into it by what he was seeing, as Britain was destroyed via its membership of the EU, and its increasingly dictatorial and destructive ways.
And thus the parallel with Cincinnatus.
I wish him luck.
What he needs is votes, not luck.
British people had their chance on 4th July last year, when there was a General Election - and they blew it.
I see that you are helping to dig a canal for the free flow of history.
Separating the real men from the wimps. My mother and father both immigrants to New York in 1945 after the war, taught me the meaning of hard labouring honest work from 10 years of age. Go earn money shovelling snow, raking leaves for the elderly. Volunteer at church as part of the community. What a great life lesson. Still working at 73, although not with the same fire. God Bless the hardworking people of USA. Thanks John Leake for your paying homage to those who built a country and communities. In God we trust.
Well, John, I got so sick of my office job behind a desk that, when I moved decades ago, I took jobs which were on the street (driving commercially) and far more difficult although offered more of the same office work. Today, after eight years of retirement, I suffer some ill physical effects from one of those jobs, but something in me had to experience these jobs--needed these jobs. I would never do so again, but I understand the downtrodden in this country extremely well...the small guys with their backs pressed up against the wall. I equally saw, on a personal basis, the inordinate abuse of power directly in front of my face. This is karma I'll carry forward.
I suspect the Irish workers who did the canal would still be saying, after looking at today's scene, "Low bridges, everybody down!"