Bottoms Up to That by Jim Culleny Is wealth infinite? It may not be as bottomless as George Bush’s down-home medacity, but disparities of wealth can make it seem that way. For instance, since the mid 70s in the U.S. the fattest 1 percent of the population has managed to corner 70 percent of all earnings growth. Put another way: in the year 2000 our economic system was so tuned to the wave-lengths of business that American CEOs were able to funnel 531 times more loot into their wallets then, say, those seven miners who recently escaped their innundated, four-foot coal-hole by the skin of their teeth. But corporate executives deserve their advantage, don‘t they? As Billy Holiday crooned, "Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose..." and who are we to buck human nature? But bucking at least one of the excesses of human nature is what the observance of Labor Day is supposed to be about. Though it’s been reduced to an end-of-summer, backyard, beer-and-burger-blast, Labor Day began as something nobler and closer to the heart of the average American. It was something worth celebrating: the contribution to the common good of those who labor and sweat for a living. In 1880 Pullman, Illinois was a company town. It was founded by George Pullman, president of the railroad sleeping car company (before we chose to be railroaded by the auto and oil industries there was real money in railroading). The town was almost feudally, organized: row houses for workers; modest Victorians for managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman lived. Everybody in town worked for Pullman. Their checks were drawn on Pullman’s bank with rents already deducted. This was a very sweet deal until 1893 when, due to a nationwide economic depression, Pullman soon came to realize that he had less monetary pull, man! Not wanting to be financially inconvenienced himself, the bed-car baron layed-off hundreds of workers. Take-home pay plummeted for those who remained, but their rents remained the same. Seemed fair to Pullman. Just good business. What was he running, anyway, a welfare agency? Not surprisingly his employees were not happy with Pullman’s self-serving dog-eat-dog philosophy. Figuring they’d contributed to what he was, and not wanting to feel like stooges, they walked out demanding lower rent and higher pay, ...those ungrateful, whining, rail-car-building losers. But soon a young fellow named Eugene V. Debs (who happened to be a socialist --god help us!) stuck his nose into Pullman’s business. He convinced RR workers across the nation to boycott trains pulling Pullman cars. Riots and mob action ensued and Debs wound up in jail -- which is where all labor-loving Socialists cry-babies ought to be. To placate nervous railroad executives and restore corporate supremacy, President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a Federal crime, and sent in 12,000 troops to bust heads. It worked. Strike over. Which goes to show that, then as now, it never hurts to have the President hauling your water. But a movement for a national Labor Day had been growing around this time, and now protests against President Cleveland's ham-fisted methods led to the appeasement of the nation's workers. Legislation was unanimously rushed through Congress, and the bill arrived on the President's desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike. Since 1894 was an election year, President Cleveland, realistically impersonating a hypocrite, seized the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day was born. In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called Labor Day "the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed...that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it." Nice thought, but as it turns out today’s labor movement (due in part to it’s own excesses and capitulations) is a shadow of its former self, and (given loopholes just large enough for a rat to slip through) business still exploits workers. It may strike out into the third world to do it, but business always finds a way: poor women and children in sweatshops assembling shoes & shirts (yes that I-can’t-believe-this-price Wal-Mart clothing is actually very costly), greencardless immigrants looking for something better in the promise-land, loyal employees getting sucked into investing their sweat in the schemes of corrupt Enrons, WorldComs, Adelphias ...they‘re all part of corporate tradition. So what’s to protect the common individual from the common thief? Government? It depends on whether government is a collection of common individuals or common theives, ...nowadays you’ve got to wonder. But until we get that sorted out a resusitated national and global labor movement wouldn’t hurt. So while your enjoying your last summer fling take a second between burger bites and beer swigs to question whether you can count on people in high places to act for the benefit of you and yours --without the availability of a little leverage that is. And the next time a conservative tells you that tax breaks for the rich are really in your interest remember the words of that same Grover Cleveland mentioned above. In the midst of what must have been a momentary truth attack he warned, "He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich, so that they in turn may care for the laboring poor." Bottoms up to that, Mr. President. And pass the catsup.