Jim Castagnera: The Ghost of George “Divine Right” Baer Still Insults Workers
[Jim Castagnera, who hails from a small town in Pennsylvania’s anthracite region, is the Associate Provost and Associate Counsel at Rider University. His columns and fiction are available at www.lulu.com.]
In 1902 in the hard-coal counties of central-eastern Pennsylvania, the miners of John Mitchell’s UMW of A launched what is remembered as “The Great Strike.” As the strike, begun in May, dragged through the summer, President Theodore Roosevelt created an Anthracite Coal Commission to arbitrate the labor dispute. No less a lawyer than Clarence Darrow represented the United Mine Workers.
On the other side was George F. Baer, president of the Reading Railroad. In those days, 96 percent of the hard-coal fields were controlled by the eastern railroads. In August ’02 Baer wrote a letter to a local clergyman in which he claimed, “You are evidently biased in favor of the right of the workingman to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does…. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for --- not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men of property to whom God has given control of the property rights of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.”
The letter leaked and the national press excoriated Baer’s “Divine Right” policy. For instance, the New York Times noted, “A good many people think they superintend the earth, but not many have the egregious vanity to describe themselves as its managing directors.” The Chicago Tribune added, “It is impudent, it is insulting, it is audacious, of the coal presidents to speak of ‘lawlessness’ in the coal regions when they themselves are the greatest offenders of the law. They are the real anarchists, the real revolutionists, the real subverters of law and order.” Darrow referred to Baer as “George the Last.”
Well, of course, he was not the last. We have had our own King George for nigh on eight years now. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder sang of W in the 2002 tune “Bushleaguer,” “Born on third, thinks he got a triple.” Less pithy, but more enlightening, are the observations of Professor Michael T. Klare in his 2004 book “Blood and Oil,” concerning the report of the Cheney Energy Task Force in May 2001. The group, dominated by oil and mining interests (including the late and not-so-great Kenneth Lay of the late and not-so-great Enron), raised the alarm about America’s dependence upon petroleum from the unstable Middle East. The Nine-Eleven attacks, carried out by Arab terrorists, most of whom hailed from Saudi Arabia, added urgency to these concerns.
According to Dr. Klare, “In the face of these problems and dangers, the Bush-Cheney team could draw only one conclusion: that, on their own, the Persian Gulf countries had neither the will nor the capacity to increase their petroleum output and protect its outward flow. If the administration’s energy plan was to succeed, the United States would have to become the dominant power in the region, assuming responsibility for overseeing the politics, the security, and the oil output of the key producing countries.”
Like George Baer and his corporate colleagues, George Bush and his corporate cronies decided that they knew best, and that we ignorant citizens had neither the ability nor the right to evaluate the facts for ourselves. And, so, they fed us a bowl of hogwash: Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; he had ties to Al Qaeda; the good citizens of Baghdad will welcome us with little American flags, just like the Parisians in 1944. None of this was true and five years later we continue to swallow this bitter gruel.
Meanwhile Halliburton, where Cheney served as CEO for some five years, walking away with a $33.7 million retirement package, has amassed billions of dollars in government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. No doubt, Mr. Cheney believes that he and Halliburton both have a moral right to every penny they’ve been paid.
George “Divine Right” Baer would no doubt fully agree. Like Baer, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney not only believe they know what’s best. They also believe that what’s best for them is best for us. They clearly dismiss our ability to determine that for ourselves.
Discouragingly, on the other side, Barack Obama seems to feel much the same way. Reminiscent of Baer’s arrogance was Obama’s April ‘08 campaign comment about small-town Pennsylvanians: “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…. It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
A century after the Great Strike, many Americans are as severely strapped and challenged as their ancestors were in 1902. And our leaders, and wanna-be leaders. are every bit as arrogant and paternalistic as was George Baer.
In 1902 in the hard-coal counties of central-eastern Pennsylvania, the miners of John Mitchell’s UMW of A launched what is remembered as “The Great Strike.” As the strike, begun in May, dragged through the summer, President Theodore Roosevelt created an Anthracite Coal Commission to arbitrate the labor dispute. No less a lawyer than Clarence Darrow represented the United Mine Workers.
On the other side was George F. Baer, president of the Reading Railroad. In those days, 96 percent of the hard-coal fields were controlled by the eastern railroads. In August ’02 Baer wrote a letter to a local clergyman in which he claimed, “You are evidently biased in favor of the right of the workingman to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does…. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for --- not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men of property to whom God has given control of the property rights of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.”
The letter leaked and the national press excoriated Baer’s “Divine Right” policy. For instance, the New York Times noted, “A good many people think they superintend the earth, but not many have the egregious vanity to describe themselves as its managing directors.” The Chicago Tribune added, “It is impudent, it is insulting, it is audacious, of the coal presidents to speak of ‘lawlessness’ in the coal regions when they themselves are the greatest offenders of the law. They are the real anarchists, the real revolutionists, the real subverters of law and order.” Darrow referred to Baer as “George the Last.”
Well, of course, he was not the last. We have had our own King George for nigh on eight years now. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder sang of W in the 2002 tune “Bushleaguer,” “Born on third, thinks he got a triple.” Less pithy, but more enlightening, are the observations of Professor Michael T. Klare in his 2004 book “Blood and Oil,” concerning the report of the Cheney Energy Task Force in May 2001. The group, dominated by oil and mining interests (including the late and not-so-great Kenneth Lay of the late and not-so-great Enron), raised the alarm about America’s dependence upon petroleum from the unstable Middle East. The Nine-Eleven attacks, carried out by Arab terrorists, most of whom hailed from Saudi Arabia, added urgency to these concerns.
According to Dr. Klare, “In the face of these problems and dangers, the Bush-Cheney team could draw only one conclusion: that, on their own, the Persian Gulf countries had neither the will nor the capacity to increase their petroleum output and protect its outward flow. If the administration’s energy plan was to succeed, the United States would have to become the dominant power in the region, assuming responsibility for overseeing the politics, the security, and the oil output of the key producing countries.”
Like George Baer and his corporate colleagues, George Bush and his corporate cronies decided that they knew best, and that we ignorant citizens had neither the ability nor the right to evaluate the facts for ourselves. And, so, they fed us a bowl of hogwash: Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; he had ties to Al Qaeda; the good citizens of Baghdad will welcome us with little American flags, just like the Parisians in 1944. None of this was true and five years later we continue to swallow this bitter gruel.
Meanwhile Halliburton, where Cheney served as CEO for some five years, walking away with a $33.7 million retirement package, has amassed billions of dollars in government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. No doubt, Mr. Cheney believes that he and Halliburton both have a moral right to every penny they’ve been paid.
George “Divine Right” Baer would no doubt fully agree. Like Baer, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney not only believe they know what’s best. They also believe that what’s best for them is best for us. They clearly dismiss our ability to determine that for ourselves.
Discouragingly, on the other side, Barack Obama seems to feel much the same way. Reminiscent of Baer’s arrogance was Obama’s April ‘08 campaign comment about small-town Pennsylvanians: “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…. It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
A century after the Great Strike, many Americans are as severely strapped and challenged as their ancestors were in 1902. And our leaders, and wanna-be leaders. are every bit as arrogant and paternalistic as was George Baer.