Workingman's Blues #2

As we start the new nine weeks, start by re-examining your goal and considering how close you came to achieving it (or halfway if you set a full semester goal).  Revise your goal if you need to. Share how many pages/minutes you've read this week to pursue your goal.  The second part of your blog should still be a response to your book with text references from multiple sections of the book (spaced by at least 20 pgs.), and you should end with a connection that links back to your book.  Also, I'll be scoring for maturity of writing style this 9 weeks.  Blogs are a great place to try varying sentence structure and playing around with word choice. Your NEW challenge is to find a way to make your book response and your connection have a central focus that relates to the title of your blog. In other words, the connection shouldn't be added randomly at the end; it should relate in some way to the main idea of your blog and your book. Here's my example:

Last nine weeks, I planned to read two books every two weeks (one at home and one at school).  I fell short of that goal for two reasons. First, I read The Goldfinch, which at 771 pages took me longer than I expected. Second, I took more time grading papers than I usually do.  I'm not sure why...maybe I had the "workingman's blues" (or woman's...or person's?).  Either way, I'm a little disappointed, but I'm keeping that goal and hoping to make it happen this 9 weeks.  So far, I'm off to a great start.  I finished Euphoria this week (288 pgs.), historical fiction based on the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, and I've read 158 pgs. of Death in the Haymarket, a nonfiction book that Mr. Zuber loaned me about the first labor movement, which happens to have taken place in Chicago, home of soon-to-be World Series champions, the Chicago Cubs. (It could happen.)  But I digress.

Though some people think history is about a long-gone past, present-day debates echo that past. Death in the Haymarket addresses many concerns that have been prevalent throughout this presidential campaign. For example, distrust of immigrants ran deep in Chicago in the 1870s, where growing industry invited a huge influx of workers from Europe.  But while industry needed those workers, citizens "suspected that immigrant parades on the Fourth of July were intended less to inspire loyalty to the United States than to re-create the joyful sociability common to the Old World" (Green 63). Notice,"sociability" is suddenly a threat IF it doesn't look like sociability we're familiar with.  As Chicago's "total population increased by 118 percent," native-born Chicagoans feared that the city "now contained 'more Germans than Anglo-Saxons'"( 93-94).  Seems that the distrust of foreign workers has been around for centuries in America, even if the particular places of origin have changed. Most of the immigrants in Chicago took jobs working in factories or slaughterhouses for low wages. Nonetheless, many immigrants considered their fields a craft, something learned through apprenticeships and careful practice, but gradually, they found their wages dropping and their jobs replaced by machines.  While owners of businesses saw mechanization as an "obvious choice" due to its potential to maximize profits, workers asked, "Would machines...destroy a way of life that gave skilled workers a sense of pride in what they produced...Is that was progress meant?" (106). Because wealthy capitalists could maximize profits by reducing workers' wages and replacing men with machines, they earned "their income by the millions each month while their employees survived on $1.50 a day" (112). That imbalance fostered anger and rebellion in the working class. People who had left their homelands to make a contribution in America felt cheated by a system that lined the pockets of a few and left the workers impoverished and desperate. Naturally, a protest movement arose.  Does this phenomenon bear resemblance to the arguments happening on both sides of the political spectrum?  From the Democratic side, we have calls for raising the minimum wage to make it a "living wage." From the current Republican candidate, we have speeches deriding trade deals as the demise of "good jobs" for Americans.  From the fear of immigrants to the anger of the working class, the lessons of history spill into today, but we still struggle with the solution.

Bob Dylan, who recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, addresses the concerns of the "workingman" in a song from 2006.  (His Nobel Prize probably stems more from his protest songs in the 60s, but he's still churning out timely lyrics.) He laments, "They say low wages are a reality/ If we want to compete abroad," and he sings about "trying to keep the hunger from/ Creeping its way into my gut." Though Dylan protests less loudly and dramatically than he used to, he is still questioning our system and forcing us to ask difficult questions.  Do we accept that people who work for a living go hungry? Does global trade mean that we ignore the needs of people who work hard here in America?  As the election has grown divisive and angry, do we ask these questions to find answers, or only to find fault?  I'm working hard to be apolitical and to NOT take a stance because I know I'm not supposed to. I just wonder if the "Workingman's Blues" will ever go away.

Green, James. Death in the Haymarket. New York: Random House, 2006.

Dylan, Bob. "Workingman's Blues #2." Modern Times. Columbia Records, 2006.