Neither government nor municipal monopolies are novelties; they are antiques. . . . They are not indicative of evolution, but of retrogression.
Yves Guyot, Where and Why Public Ownership Has Failed (H. F. Baker, trans., 1914), p. 397.
Illustration is a detail from a caricature by the great French artist André Gill (1840-1885).
Responding to British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, on September 5, 1774. Virginian Peyton Randolph (pictured) was appointed as the first president of Congress. John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington were among the delegates.
Today is Labor Day. But it is worth remembering, “Labor Day” in most other countries is May 1 — also called “International Workers’ Day.”
One thing to be thankful for on our American Labor Day is that we can celebrate labor — perhaps, like me, you will celebrate it by working! — and not have it serve as a celebration of communism.
For yes, it was the socialists and communists who cooked up the original May Day labor celebration, in part to commemorate 1886’s workers’ protest gone horribly wrong, the Haymarket debacle. In the 19th century, much of the impetus for collectivism came from workers themselves, under the impression that they could do better if they rebelled and expropriated the capitalists’ holdings and “worked for themselves.”
For some reason these activists rarely struck out on their own, becoming entrepreneurs.
Nowadays, alas, many top-level entrepreneurs lean toward socialism, and it is the non-government working people who resist more government, and thereby the socialist program. Indeed, the most enthusiastic clade of socialists in America today seem to be in the ranks of the unemployed.*
Oregon was the first of these United States to make an early September celebration an official Labor holiday, in 1887. Seven years later, the federal government got on board. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law soon after the disastrous Pullman strike, to promote a more rule-of-law friendly celebration of workers, and avoid thinking about rioting and murder and police violence.
So, even folks like me, who labor in the vineyards of the people’s politics while still supporting private property and freedom of contract, can celebrate.
Or take a last summer nap.
Without any communists hiding under the hammock.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* In less than two centuries, socialism went from proletarian to Lumpenproletarian. Karl Marx? Rolling over in his grave.
“Who speaks for science? Or, to put it another way, on whom does the press rely to speak for science?”
Dixy Lee Ray, Trashing the Planet, 1990
Odoacer, a German “barbarian,” ousted Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, thus ending that empire on September 4, 476.
This weekend at Townhall, Paul fleshed out the most recent Voters’ Pamphlet mini-scandal, from Friday. Click on over, then come back here. You know, for more voters’ pamphleteering.
For all except the very few of extraordinary gifts, the spur of gain is not only powerful, it is indispensable.
Yves Guyot, stating what he called “the third incentive of human action,” in Where and why Public Ownership Has Failed (H. F. Baker, trans., 1914), p. 424.
Illustration is a detail from a caricature by artist André Gill (1840-1885).
On September 3, 1914, Dixy Lee Ray was born. Her stint as governor of the State of Washington was a controversial one, as she economized in startling ways, and proved largely unsympathetic to environmentalist politics. Indeed, she later wrote Trashing the Planet, which took on trendy “solutions” to environmental problems, based in no small part on her own experience and perspective as a scientist. She was an early critic of the developing “global warming” pseudo-“consensus.”
You may remember Andrew Heaton playing a character on Fox Business’s The Independents of a few years ago. Or for his EconPop podcasts. Or for stuff like this:
September 2 marks the 1839 birth of American economist and reformer Henry George. George is most famous for his 1879 treatise, Progress and Poverty, but made many other contributions, including advocacy of the secret ballot and his able economic policy polemic Protection or Free Trade (1886).