On page 197 of Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist, W.A.
Swanberg refers to Terre Haute, Indiana as Eugene "Debs's town and a
holy place to Socialists". I grew up close to Terre Haute, and I
visited the Debs museum twice. The first time was with one of my
relatives, who was an admirer of Debs. The second time was when I was a
tutor at a public library, and I took an English-as-a-Second-Language
student (from South Korea, I think) to the Debs museum. I was a little
taken aback to read Swanberg refer to Terre Haute as a holy
place----it's all right, I guess, but a holy place? But the Debs museum there is worth visiting.
Both
times that I visited the Debs Museum, I was rather conservative. The
first time, I didn't quite know how to handle visiting a museum that
honored a Socialist, but some of the old political cartoons at the Debs
museum intrigued me, particularly their anti-Establishment tone. The
second time that I visited it, a couple that was also visiting the
museum asked me if I was interested in the history of labor unions, and I
replied that I generally took the side of management. They were
slightly aghast! We started to talk about the closed shop, and I said
that I did not care for how labor unions spend members' dues on
Democratic candidates. They responded that corporations also contribute
money to candidates. I'm not sure how true that is,
technically-speaking, for I have read a couple of things that say that
corporate donations to political campaigns are against the law. But I
recognize that special interests, which includes corporate interests,
still have some way to contribute to candidates or causes, especially
after the Citizens United case.
Where do I stand on Eugene Debs
and labor unions now that I am more liberal? I still don't know a whole
lot about Debs, but my relative one time quoted Debs as saying that he
would rather the government be in charge of the railroads than for the
railroads to be in charge of the government. There are probably pluses
and minuses to both scenarios, but I feel that Debs' statement can be
applied to health insurance companies, especially since (in my opinion)
their influence on the government has hindered health care reform in the
past. I rather would have the government running or taking the place
of health insurance companies, than for health insurance companies to
exercise a profound influence over the government.
On labor
unions, I'm rather mixed. I don't like the way that unions are able to
bring services that companies provide to a complete standstill if they
don't get their own way. And yet, unlike my younger self, I don't
entirely trust management to consistently do the right thing in terms of
their workers. In my latest reading of Swanberg's book, Swanberg
refers to a young Socialist preacher who taught sharecroppers arithmetic
"so that they would know when the planters were defrauding them on the
contracts" (page 180). It's sad that there were planters in the 1930's
who would defraud their very own sharecroppers. Yet it's not
surprising, for, in a number of cases, management tries to maximize
profit at the expense of its workers----at least when it thinks that it
can. If management eagerly wants someone's talents and input, it will
most likely pay him or her a handsome salary. But, when it comes to
work that is more menial, when there is a lot of competition for jobs,
and when some of these jobs can be exported overseas, management often
feels that it's in more of a position to give workers the shaft.
I
think that unions played a role in the existence of a strong middle
class in the 1950's, which helped the economy. Another of my relatives
said, however, that she thought that unions tend to insist upon
themselves. She said that she preferred Socialism, in which workers
would actually own a share of the company. I don't know much about this
issue. One reason that I decided to read Thomas was to learn about how
Socialism differs from an economy in which unions are influential. In
what I have read, however, it seems that Socialists were rather
supportive of unions and strikes, even though many within unions did not
return that support!