THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THE MINIMUM WAGE | 2010-09-17

Please let me know if what I am saying here bores you. It is not on our subject, but it is general history that will die with me.

Obama has raised the minimum wage. In the debate over this, no one mentions where it came from.

After the Civil War the Northerners who then owned all the railroads made agreements that kept industry up North, especially in New England. These agreements were a major part of legislative history no one hears about, and they kept the center of American industry slightly NORTH of the center of industrial production in CANADA!

As these railroad rates were slowly being equalized after the Republican defeat in 1932, industry began to move south. Nobody but me remembers that that was where the minimum wage got its majority vote.

Unions have no minimum wage workers, so people wonder why they are the biggest force in favor of it. Now it is to keep two minimum wage workers from replacing one union man. But in 1935 it had to do with the evening of railroad rates.

Unions were afraid that a huge part of their jobs would move to the low-wage South. So with the South having all the chairmanships ruling congress -- all the seniority from when most of the few Democrats in congress were Southern -- the unions demanded that the competition be limited by a minimum wage for Southern labor.

Mommy Professor teaches that it was Idealists and Intellectuals like him who gave thought to the working poor that caused the minimum wage.

Unlike Mommy Professor, I have KNOWN a lot of working people.

The most fanatical opponent of a minimum wage rise I ever met was a black man who worked on our brick plant. He didn't drink and he fired the kilns and supported a big family.

Normally the "fireman" had to stoke the kilns every half hour or every hour. So he just slept in between. He preferred being in the plant to his crowded home and his family could come see him at the plant nearby.

There wasn't a lot of entertainment in Pontiac, South Carolina.

So he was happy to put in a hundred hours a week when the minimum wage was a dollar an hour. He got $1.50 for the other sixty hours. That was $130 a week.

When the minimum wage went up to $1.25 we could not longer afford his overtime. He went down to 50 a week and had nothing to do the rest of the time.

The unions were right. Their area has been known as The Rust Belt for a long time. The minimum wage was passed to keep the flow of industry to the South down.

COMMENTS (9)

#1 backbaygrouch | 2010-09-17 07:47

During WWII a NYC paper or national magazine sent a reporter around the country to discover what the people thought of the war effort. In a Southern steel mill he got an unexpected opinion. Birmingham may well have been the nation's hardest hit industrial city during the depression. There the scribe encountered a late middle aged Negro who stoked coal in a steel plant. The man had struggled through FDR's decade but now had a good job and all the overtime he wanted, and then some. He understood who was buttering his bread. He was grateful. When asked about how he felt about the war he replied, "Oh, I thank God for Mr. Hitler every night."

#2 Dave | 2010-09-17 10:49

The Federal Government messed with something it should never messed with when it got the idea of making the South military base central on account of the cheap real estate in the run up to WWII.

It was then the Roosevelt administration busted the Jim Crow system which quite accurately calculated that black labor was worth about one-half white labor.

Roosevelt busted the system on national security grounds, and like all anti-white whites, thought colored people would be grateful. There is no end to the stupidity of white liberals. If you had worked all you life for one wage and suddenly were told that all those years of work you did were actually worth double the wage you were paid, how would you react?

And what did this do to your bargaining power? Now your job isn't even available because the government made it twice as expensive for the employer to hire you. After being put through that wringer, you would have felt discriminated against too.

The anti-white whites make no sense at all. Giuliani runs the colored street vendors off of 125th street in Harlem depriving them of their livelihood while carrying on about the great American tradition of third-world immigration. The view that anti-white whites have of nonwhites is strictly Oreo. That all these brown and blacked skinned people they invite into the country are tasked with earning a living never seems to be an issue with anti-white whites. It is just magic and fairy dust to them.

They think they can do anything and it doesn't matter. This attitude is the essence of tyranny. We have been living with this attitude for a very long time.

#3 seriouswon | 2010-09-17 13:31

This isn't boring at all! Our history, good or bad, is very important! Truth is always important. I want a big dose!

Just don't leave us for a while Grandpa Bob. We still need you!

#4 Dick_Whitman | 2010-09-17 13:34

To answer Bob's question: No, I am not bored with this type of history. It's still a lesson in BUGS thinking, and informative at the same time.

With that said, I've also been thinking about a certain illogicality regarding anti-White history.

Anti-Whites claim it was "hateful" to keep blacks off the front lines during WWII. They then claim that blacks were forced into "front-line duty" during Vietnam because the hateful system saw blacks as expendable.

So using anti-White logic:

Not serving on front-lines = hate (during WWII)

but at the same time

Serving on front-line = hate (during Vietnam)

Conclusion:

Anti-Whites = illogical

#5 Dick_Whitman | 2010-09-17 13:48

"Just don't leave us for a while Grandpa Bob. We still need you!" (seriouswon)

You're obviously trying to be kind and respectful with this statement, but honestly, this is the last thing Bob wants to hear.

When a good leader/teacher/coach hears something like this he/she feels like a failure. Bob's purpose is to make it so that we don't need him.

We all want Bob to remain on this earth, but this isn't because we "need him." We want him to be around so he can witness his most important victory; the smashing of the program of genocide against Whites.

Of course we can always learn more from Bob's teachings, but this isn't the same as "needing him."

Again, I realize you're just being kind. But I thought you should be aware of this very important point.

#6 OldBlighty | 2010-09-17 18:14

Dave:

>They think they can do anything and it doesn't matter. This attitude is the essence of tyranny. We have been living with this attitude for a very long time.

This is the number one issue I have with Democracy: No one is responsible for anything they do.

If Democracy were to be improved, I would include a system where people were forced to live according to the way they vote.

If they vote to let non-Whites into our countries, then they must live in non-White neighborhoods. If they vote for higher govt spending, then they must fund it with higher personal taxes. If people vote for never ending wars, then they must fund those wars, or better yet serve in them.

In my opinion, if people had to live with the consequences of their actions, then we would see the rapid return of common sense.

#7 fscott | 2010-09-17 22:18

I can give a younger mans perspective on this. I worked in a factory when the last min. wage hike happened, not the nice kind of factory with clean floors and fat guys with clipboards- the kind with skinny guys and tattood fellons. The pay was low 1.05 over minimum wage and the work was hard but the people and hours were good. When they had to raise the wage, because in our temp contract (the newest form of White slavery) we HAD to make 1.05 over min. about half of us lost our jobs- including me. Raising wages are like tax-cuts for the poor. Its pandering pure and simple. Its sounds nice and doesnt mean anything at all. And like so much pointed out in this blog, nobody notices what right in front of their face.

#8 BGLass | 2010-09-18 09:51

"...[Blacks] Not serving on front-lines = hate (during WWII)

but at the same time

Serving on front-line = hate (during Vietnam)

Conclusion:

Anti-Whites = illogical

That's what makes growing up in pc so strange. One must hate whites (as in white skin) and love "communists" (whatever that really is--- or at least post-sixties Communist-think-tanking ideology from all that came out of the Frankfurt school) in order to make anything really make sense.

OTOH, WWII is the super-good war (where Hitler from t.v. is smashed)--- and therefore to be on the front lines would have been "good." But Vietnam = bad war that should never have been fought against sweet communists, and therefore being forced to fight it = bad.

Anti-nationalist are only anti-nationalists outside "their own" racial domains. Like, nationalism is great everywhere in the world except white countries. (African nationalism --really racialism-- is prized, t.v. has shows about it, the customs of the people are prized--everything from straw-mat-making to beading to hunting with spears, where Euro art in the Met is trashed and said to be inferior due to the hideous morality of the people, the movie Ghandi is played again and again bc he is great (even as his flesh-and-blood relatives have been forced to leave the foundation made in his name due to anti-semitism, the Chinese are shown en masse having a great time together without being racist, etc.)

The only solution, so far, seems massive distribution of anti-depressants to deal with the cognitive dissonance until whites are gone and things will "make sense."

#9 BGLass | 2010-09-18 09:57

Also:

Paradoxically, by virtue of their position, (the very position given to them, socially, by non-whites), Whites are MORE, not less, able to see from various points-of-view (and hone empathy). Only they stand accused and are charged repeatedly with "never walking in another's shoes" (so they endlessly attempt it), and otherwise are given various "sensitivity trainings."

Others never have that life experience. And they, in fact, has less opportunity of evolving the skills that arise from being treated that way--- especially in terms of perceiving from multiple angles, which used to be called "diplomacy."