Pond hockey in the 1950s, when winter had good ice and many families were middle class, enjoying benefits from the reforms of the Progressive Era. Today, a hockey stick-shaped graph shows the wealth disparity between mid-century and now.
On summer evenings I often enjoy sitting out on the deck and reading. This past week, in the stifling heat reading The Jungle, that has occurred more with determination than relaxation. The hot weather we have been experiencing is nothing compared with the working conditions in the Chicago packing houses around 1900.
In The Jungle, after many misfortunes, Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, found work in the fertilizer plant, which processed all of the waste material: “Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis’ skin, and in five minutes he had a headache, and if fifteen was almost dazed…” Reading this made the humid, 90-degree air feel less onerous.
Working outdoors in the extreme heat remains unpleasant and even difficult, but at least today workers benefit from efforts to deal with harsh working conditions. Much of the improvement came about from early 20th century reform efforts and growth of labor unions. I spent many hours working on loading docks in hot weather, but we could take breaks in an air-conditioned lunchroom, thanks to the Teamsters Union. That would have been unheard of for Jurgis.
In his introduction to The Jungle in 2006, Ron Gottesman writes, “Efficiency, competitiveness, and materialism, Sinclair showed, were worshipped at great social cost. The Jungle revealed dramatically the consequences of the convergence of the rapid spread of technology, the flood of immigration, the urbanization of the population, the centralization of finance, and the domination of government by business.”
Those factors are still with us. In just a few decades the wealth and impact of digital technology have gone stratospheric. Without immigrants, much of health care, construction, and agricultural processing would stall. Digital billionaires run the economy, big banks control finance, and many politicians have become too susceptible to corporate lobbyists, and out-of-touch with their constituents.
Hockey stick economy
Little did I know, playing pond hockey in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that the hockey stick in my hand would become a metaphor for wealth distribution today. Although we didn’t know it at the time, wealth was a bit more evenly distributed in mid-century. A substantial portion of society could claim membership in the middle class.
What we are seeing today almost seems like a replay of the Gilded Age – late 19th and early 20th centuries – where a small portion of society held extreme wealth. Today we have tech and other corporate billionaires holding vast and increasing wealth, while many wage earners are struggling.
In the 1950s a corporate CEO earned about ten to twenty times more than the average hourly worker. Estimates today place the ratio around 300 to 1. Reasons for that include growth of large multinational corporations, growth in stock market valuations, and greater use of stock options in executive pay. This greatly outpaced hourly wage workers, who have seen no comparative increase over those decades.
In the metaphor, a graph would resemble a hockey stick. The tall handle of the hockey stick represents the wealth of a few, while the blade is the large majority of the population with little or no wealth. And as in the days of The Jungle, this disparity underlies a growing public sentiment that is more favorable to socialism platforms and candidates.
While many Americans recoil at the word, they forget that ideals and values of socialism brought us fair wages, decent working hours, worker’s compensation, workplace safety, Social Security, Medicare, labor unions and other benefits. How hourly workers today can follow a leader whose party is trying to trash those is beyond my understanding.
Roosevelt to the rescue
Fortunately for America in the Gilded Age, the tide turned when Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901. A progressive Republican, he drove reforms that curbed the corruption and power of the economic elite and improved the lives of workers, who for the most part today still benefit from those reforms, and we take them for granted.
Visting Mount Rushmore in the past, I sometimes wondered why Roosevelt’s face was there. Everyone knows about Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, and their place in our nation’s history. Learning more about Roosevelt, it becomes easier to understand why. By sheer effort, personality, and political skill he brought back America closer to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. That, and his time in the Dakotas, and his conservation efforts.
If we happen to be in the neighborhood again, high on the itinerary would be a visit to the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library at Medora, ND. Previously, we greatly enjoyed visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The natural scenery around Medora and the Badlands makes the long drive across North Dakota worth the effort. It was a factor in Roosevelt’s time there becoming a cowboy and helping to cope with the death of his first wife, Alice, 22, and his mother, who died on the same day in 1884.
As president, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service, five national parks, and placed about 230 million acres of land under public protection. An excellent documentary about Roosevelt by Lucasfilm is available on YouTube. His progressive legacy continued among many Republican politicians into the mid-century.
Today there is a progressive resurgence, fueled by the same inequities and injustices that plagued the Gilded Age. Let’s hope that the gilding occurring today is limited to the garish, gold décor now being inflicted on the White House – the peoples’ house. We look forward to the day when the next occupant will remove the gold trash and restore it to its previous elegance, and restore and strengthen the reforms initiated by an author and a president more than a century ago.
