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"Sixteen Tons" — as recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955:
In case anyone's wondering what this song's about: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the lack of transportation technology, it wasn't plausible for workers at industries in isolated areas like mines or mills to get up and get to work from home on time and back every day. This issue was solved by the creation of company towns, little villages built around such industries where the workers could live, complete with stores selling living necessities. However, many of them paid workers in scrip, which was only good at the company town stores, so the workers had to buy goods from these stores, which could gouge prices as much as they wanted. At some of the worst, buying the bare necessities costed more than a man could earn, leaving the workers there perpetually and ever-increasingly in debt to the companies.
There's a lot to unpack in that brief explanation. That aside, I grew up hearing Ernie Ford in my house, even west. My mom loved him. What a great voice. And a great song of his.
ReplyDeleteI'll say it, Dave. This is the argument for unions, or at least some government regulation.
DeleteHow do we keep the rich from exploiting the poor? It's an eternal question.
My whole family were hard working miners, tenant farmers and factory workers. All Democrats. I never heard any of them bitch about the rich, being exploited, etc.
DeleteI worked with my grandpa alot, clearing brush, chopping up fallen treetops and chopping down trees, selling firewood, mowing, farm work, etc, and his general sentiment was to not badmouth those rich farmers, but go do good work for them and they will pay you good. I generally found that to be true.
My Dad was a carpenter and a small hog farmer raising 8 kids and my Granddad was a self sufficient farmer of 69 acres. All democrats and no one I recall whining about the rich man.
DeleteI learned to build a house from the ground up to castrate a pig to slaughter and butcher one to the freezer and raise and harvest tobacco to the market, as well as bale an untold amount of hay in the spare time. And in my younger adult years, I did all.
One thing I learned for sure was that the small farmer would pay and feed you better than the big farmer and that bigger home contractors would pay less than the smaller. Their general justification was that they could provide more work.
We didn’t complain about them, even when we selectively worked for them. But then, we generally had a choice.
I heard this song a lot growing up, too. There was a day when the ordinary worker was celebrated in the culture. Now its' all puff, fru-fru, and teenage romance. *shakes head*
ReplyDeleteI suppose that there's not much of a stage anymore for working men in a society of spectacles.
DeleteSpectacles we come to the internet blogs every day to cheer for... and/or boo and egg on. :(
DeleteWe work hard for our panem, but then are too exhausted for anything but the et circenses which our masters pay for, and which we enjoy as crumbs.
Delete...as an interactive form of interpassivity.
DeleteBetter to "pause" the spectacle and "un-Pause" the worker's narrative, for his is the more "meaningful story". Live life. Talk to the spouse. Hug the grandkids. Take them to the park. Or better, tell them the stories of your life, as you work with them to build new and "better" ones of their own.
Delete...for the spectacle exists to implant/ instill/ incept desires into the audience. And the thoughts/ desires that the "bosses" want you to have may not be the same as those your grandkids would freely choose for themselves... for wouldn't they, possibly, rather be bosses than workers? Or maybe even "work only for themselves and their families"?
Delete...and make "minor" spectacles for both themselves and their own.
Delete...and avoid owing their souls, as we owe ours, to the company store.
DeleteGreat song. Written by good ol' Merle Travis. I grew up literally sitting on my grandpappy's knee listening to country oldies like this one.
ReplyDeleteFor a Tennessee Ernie Ford bonus, I love this clip of his young son stealing the show...
https://youtu.be/lRwImrZvlao
Sixteen Tons was written about KY Muhlenberg County coal mines (about 40ish miles from where I grew up and live). A few years later, John Prine was singing "daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County" which unfortunately, Mr. Peabody's coal trains had hauled away or, so the song said.
ReplyDeleteVery profound historical example of how monopolized industries, trickle economics, and deregulations never work for anyone other than the most wealthy.
Solution? I don't know, maybe banning such music?
Free markets work. They have for millennia all across the globe and across all societies.
DeleteStill, we have also always had exploitation of the poor, even in communist and socialist "paradises."
This is not a simple topic, and there are no simple solutions.
https://mises.org/wire/many-ways-governments-create-monopolies
Travis's Sixteen Tons and knowing the history of Muhlenberg Co is paramount in the reality of government intervention in the industrial world.
DeleteBelieve it or not, I'm all for capitalism. But at some point, I believe the gov should tell coal mines et al that they cannot enjoy the perks the country provides (police protection, fire trucks, roads, so on and so on and so) yet enslave workers with a "company store".
This is where we get into the arguments of minimum wage, the right to organize, OSHA, and so on. Can the gov come in and say "you have 200 employees and had 47 fingers cut off last month and we're here to put a stop to it"?
Interesting thing about those pesky gov "regulations". Our state Sen Rand Paul wants to do away with them. Get rid of them all. He wants to get rid of minimum wage. He says the free markets will correct itself and the savings will create higher wages.
Muhlenberg Co is living proof that doesn't work. Gov enforced MW and regulations brought us out of the "Company Stores" and created the middle class. And those coal mines and factories were still buzzing along just fine.
Consider those big shovels Prime sung of that hauled the county away. I recall the era when coal mines could strip the land and move on, leaving it an eternal wasteland. Well that pesky gov came in and imposed job crushing regulations that the coal co had to reclaim the land when they were done. Well, you'd think the profitable coal mine owners would acknowledge their wrongdoing and do the right thing. But instead, they simply went bankrupt only later to apply for stripping permits under a new name. And so, here comes intrusive Big Brother job killing gov with new regulations requiring cash in advance or being bonded in order to obtain a permit. And again, these companies still enjoyed high profits.
Somewhere along the line, having a discussion about limited government, OSHA, EPA, wage protections, worker's rights, and so on has become a partisan "either with us or against us" problem.
It really shouldn't be.
I have never been an anarcho-libertarian. I think Hayek got it about right. He recognized the tragedy of the commons and acknowledged there are some things only government can do. For that, the Mises libertarians and the hard cores (I cited a link to them above) don't like him.
DeleteAlso, Adam Smith of Invisible Hand fame was very clear that free markets must be guided by morals, or they would be no better than a wild jungle.
So, I've generally been for government regulating with the lightest touch possible that still gets the job done.
Doesn't "selling you soul to the company store" really describe the economic calculation problem that refutes communism?
Delete"A Southern farm is beau idea of Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slaves consume more than the master, of the coarse products, and is far happier, because although the concern may fail; he is always sure of a support." - George Fitzhugh, socialist / advocate of chattel slavery / same thing
DeleteJust have to raise the price of oil high enough to get the boss a yacht big enough for two helicopters. ;)
DeleteWell momma got sick and daddy got down
DeleteThe county got the farm and they moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet
Yes he did, yes he did, yes he did, yes he did, yes he did.
Other than that, I enjoyed the tune. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Loved his deep booming voice. That's it from the Bunker.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your musical interlude. Loved his voice and I remember my parents playing this song a lot when I was really little.
ReplyDelete