"So come back Emma Goldman, Rise up old Joe Hill."

When life used to get me down, I always took odd delight in reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.  It seemed no matter how rough things were in my life,  it could never be as bad as the poor, Jurgis Rudkus and his quest for the American Dream..  This guy had it rough and was the perpetual victim of the forces that be: industrialist, robber barons, political corruption, wealth disparity, a man-made lake off his front porch etc, etc.  

And I suppose I took some sense of comfort that as bad as it was for Jurgis,our society had improved..  The Jungle  prompted a reluctant Teddy Roosevelt, no fan of Sinclair,  to introduce food safety reglutation, which led to the creation of the  Food and Drug administration.  TR understood that industry and capitalism left uncheck resulted in societal woes, and hence the Progressive Era ensued.  Labor law, health codes, market regulations were created as a counterweight to rampant industry and capitalism.  America, as it so often does installed a system of checks and balances  The 20 years leading up to this point relied on society itself to solve these problems, but that experiment failed.  And while there are similarities between  the turn of 20th century and the first decade of this century,I always felt that as bad as things are now, at least they are not as bad as they were then. 

 

 So I was particularly concerned this week when I read the New York Times Op Ed by Timothy Egan, Title A Big Idea.  In this missive Egan invokes the memory of the great TR and his crusade against "monopoly capitalists", but continues with "at a time when the gap between the rich and everyone else was as almost as great as it is today."  What??  “Almost as great”??? Can that be right?  You mean we have greater disparities in wealth now than when Sinclair was on a literary tear.  And then I got to thinking.  Are we comparitively a better society today, then we were when poor Jurgis was trying to scrape together a living?
We must be better than a time that evokes images food lines, The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire¸ Robber Barons and sawdust flavored sausages.  A time when poor Jurgis fell victim to predatory lending in the hope of owning a home,  and ended up being swindled of his meager savings in a dilapidated property that he had no hopes of paying off. (Okay, that similarity is just plain scary).   But that was a time when people were dying of food contaminated with Turburculosis.  Though now that I think of it, didn't the Senate just pass a bill to combat ecoli in food.  (That might be a bad example as well.)  But surely the American experience now cannot be on par with what it was 100 years ago.  We've evolved, progressed...right? 
Most recent figures available indicate that in the US, the top wealth quintile owns 84% of the wealth.    There are no accurate figures of wealth disparity from 1906 (or at least none that I could find).  So Mr. Egan might be right on wealth.  What alarms me if that if I picked up  The Jungle  it might read as a bluepirnt to these times and not the comforting cautionar tale.   I am sadly resigned to think that we are closer to the maladies of 1906 than we ever have been in the last 100 years.  It is clear that many of the accomplishments of the Progressive Era (Labor Unions, Financial Reform, Housing, and political reform) have been gradually eroded.  Some of this is the result of corruption and lack of hubris on behalf of the Progressive champions themselves.  Others were concerted efforts by moneyed interest and Capitol Hill  (just within in the last 20 years).- Reminds me of the saying “Don’t take fence down, unless you know why it was put up in the first place.”  "Those that are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it" comes to mind to. At least in that scenario you could claim, "we'll they were ignorant of history."  What do we do then, if people have learned from history, but repeat the doom anyway?  That just seem evil.
The Progressive Era was a reaction to avarice left unchecked.  New immigrants from Italy, Poland, Germany and Ireland weren't afforded basic human dignities.  While some were able to perserve and find the American dream.  Many did not.  Now the 3rd and 4th generations of those immigrants are seeing some of the same conditions (and oddly now directing anger at new immigrants trying to find the American dream).  Progressivism provide a valve release to the growing class tension between the labor class and the entitled class.  What are we going to do to address that tension now?  Teddy Roosevelt is  not to be found.  I could god around saying "Dee-light-ful", but that might not be enough.

In the spirit of "only Nixon could go to China", I believe that anyone but a liberal or democrat could address these woes.  Perhaps New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg can walk softly and carry a big stick.  But something's gotta give, or else  Karl Marx is going to become trendy again.   

We should not take Tim Egan’s aside without sober reflection.  If disparities are greater today than in the time of Jurgis, JD Rockefeller,  JP Morgan, etc…..that's a call to action.