Some interesting and timely extracts from Stud Terkel’s famous book Working where various people were interviewed in the early '70s on what they thought about their work.

Till today, being ethical in daily life seems difficult to ground into ‘reality’.

Nick Lindsay (Carpenter/Poet)

[page 520]

“…It seems like the vast comedy of things when a Yankee come and got us to build their H-bomb, part of the fine comedy that she should come and give us the first living wage since the War of Northern Aggression – for this.

In Bloomington, Indiana, I saw a lot of women make their living making bombs. They had a grand picnic when they built the millionth bomb. Bombs they’re dropping on people. And the students came to demonstrate against the bombs. Maybe these women see no sense in what they’re doing but they see their wages in what they’re doing…

…Work’s quite a territory. Real work and fake work. There’s fake work, which is the prostitution. There is the magic of payday, though. You’ll say, ‘Well, if you get paid for your work, is that prostitution?’ No indeed. But how are you gonna prove it’s not? A real struggle there. Real work, fake work, and prostitution. The magic of payday. The groceries now heaped on the table and the new-crop wine and store-bought shirts. That’s what it says, yes.”

Nora Watson (Editor)

[pages 523-24]

“A guy was in the office next to mine. He’s sixty-two and he’s done. He came to the Institution in the forties. He saw the scene and said: ‘Yes, I’ll play drone to you. I’ll do all the piddly things you want. I won’t upset the apple cart by suggesting anything else.’ With a change of regimes in our department, somebody came across him and said, ‘Gee, he hasn’t contributed anything here. His mind is set in old attitudes. So we’ll throw him out.’ They fired him unceremoniously, with no pension, no severance pay, no nothing. Just out on your ear, sixty-two. He gets back zero from having invested so many years playing the game.

The drone has his nose to the content of the job. The politicker has his nose to the style. And the politicker is what I think our society values. The politicker, when it’s apparent he’s a winner, is helped. Everyone who has a stake in being on the side of the winner gives him a boost. The minute, I finally realized the way to exist at the Institution – for the short time I’ll be here – was not to break my back but to use it for my own ends, I was a winner.

…When you ask most people who they are, they define themselves by their jobs. ‘I’m a doctor.’ ‘I’m a radio announcer.’ ‘I’m a carpenter.’ If somebody asks me, I say, ‘I’m Nora Watson.’ At certain points in time I do things for a living. Right now I’m working for the Institution. But not for long. I’d be lying to you if I told you I wasn’t scared.

I have few options. Given the market. I’m going to take the best job I can find. I really tried to play the game by the rules, and I think it’s a hundred percent unadulterated bullshit. So I’m not likely to go back downtown and say, ‘Here I am. I’m very good, hire me.’

You recognize yourself as a marginal person. As a person who can give only minimal assent to anything that is going on in this society: ‘I’m glad electricity works.’ That’s about it. What you have to find is your own niche that will allow you to keep feeding and clothing and sheltering yourself without getting downtown. (Laughs.) Because that’s death. That’s really where death is.”

Walter Lundquist (Industrial Designer)

[Pages 525-27]

“…I wanted to be at the drawing board, creative, doing something I believed in. But I became a pimp. I didn’t start drinking until I was thirty…I found I could out drink any of my clients. They got drunk I didn’t. What an absurd way to live! To make money because you could booze it up and cater to someone else’s frailty. His need for a boot licker’s comradeship, listening to his cheap jokes at some expensive bar. I got work alright, but it made me sick. I couldn’t stand it.

We had a client who was providing additives to meats and food preparations. My job was to make it into a trade publication ad. I'm sitting at these meetings with the president of the company and the sales manager. We’re out to provide a service to the meat packers so they can cheat government analysts who are going to inspect the sausages. They don’t see it as cheating. I say, ‘Why are we doing this ad for mustard?’ They say, ‘Mustard acts as a binder.’ It holds together the globules of fat the client is putting in. So we make a living selling mustard because the guy wants to put fat instead of meat protein in there. So the public's being cheated and these sons of bitches are out there playing golf…

…The turning point in my life was the death of my father. It was a funny thing. Here you’re watching a beautiful guy with white hair lying in his bed, dying of a heart attack. You hear him ramble and wander and talk about his life: ‘I was never anything. I didn’t do a job even in raising my children. I didn’t mean anything…’ You watch death. Then you say, ‘Wait a minute. What’s going on with him is going to hit me. What am I doing between now and my death? If you take actuarial tables of insurance companies, I’m running on borrowed time.’ You begin to assess yourself and that’s a shock. I didn’t come up smelling like a rose. ‘Am I going to go on forever being a goddamn pimp? What’s the alternative? Is there another way of earning a living?’

…At this moment I have a job on the drawing board that’s pretty good. This one client has some degree of conscience. It’s an ecology poster for children, given away as a premium. It’s a beautiful thing to hang on the wall, acquainting a child with the cycle of life.

…I’m struggling to survive. I’m running out of funds. I may have to pimp again for survival’s sake. But I’ll not give up the sane work. I’m scurrying about. If it doesn’t work, I may do somewhat what young people do and drop out. I’ll stop existing in society. I’ll work on a road crew. I’ll cut lumber of whatever the hell it’ll be. But I’ll never again play the full-time lying dishonest role I’ve done most of my life.

Once you wake up the human animal you can’t put it back to sleep again.”

In the twenty first century, so far, not much has changed since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (read the uncensored original edition).

And now, for a little burst of freedom:

ONLY last week, Australia lost its Prime Minister -- Kevin Rudd -- to a corporate coup.

His removal by a corporate cabal within his Labour party was not a sign of democracy at work but a victory for big corporate interests.

Mr Rudd's removal and the installing of his deputy as his successor came about when he insisted on his promised 'super' mining tax on Australia's mining industry. As elections are due in Australia soon, the tax which raised a ruckus within the ranks of large corporate interests led to a claim within the Labour party that they may not do well in the forthcoming polls given the negative press being spread by the mining giants.

Then just as you thought you knew how to spell 'democracy', it hit you like a ton of collapsing stock indices that it should actually be spelt as 'corporatocracy'. Who would have guessed?

Whatever his manifest faults, Mr Rudd did the right thing in taking on the mining industry by imposing a 40 per cent “super profits” tax. But it is clear that billionaires finally influence who becomes Australia’s PM (in fact, almost anywhere else) as the first thing the new incumbent has done is to start panicked renegotiations with mining leviathans over the tax.

None of this has to do with the welfare of the Australian people but assuaging the forces of big business and their profit margins.

Much of the revenue from the mining tax could have gone to setting up cleaner alternative sources of energy and be of other use for the Australian people; but what has happened is that the government has cowered under threats by miners to cut off further investments which has been interpreted as lost job opportunities for Australians.

Yet it is mainly overseas markets that seem to benefit from Australian mining activities while citizens face inflationary pressure and a tighter labour market. It is a pity governments in democracies seem largely beholden not to their people but to billionaires, boards of directors and profit maximizing shareholders.

The events in Australia are another in a series of revelations that people in all democracies should take note: democratically elected representatives almost always have to mollycoddle and kowtow to corporate behemoths like BP and BHP rather than stand firmly for the interests of the people.

Probably every major democracy in the world has many of its politicians tucked away within the money filled pockets of big business.

We need to rent the veil of illusion from our eyes and see that what is termed democracy by major countries is essentially government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

The interview below was done by the inimitable Studs Terkel and was first published in 1970 as part of a collection of unforgettable conversations with those who had some experience or understanding of the Great Depression. The excerpt below is from an interview with Texas Congressman Wright Patman who when the interview was made was into his 21^st term, and was also Chariman of the House Banking and Currency Committee.

This extract is from pages 282-286, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, by Studs Terkel:

“IN THE LATE TWENTIES, the farmers were in distress because all the money went to Wall Street. They were using it up there, manipulating…Less than two hundred men are controlling everything – the fixing of interest, bonds, everything. Members of Congress just don’t step on the toes of these bankers.

That’s why in May, 1929, I introduced the first bill to pay three and half million World War I veterans cash money, direct from the United States Treasury. It took from then till 1936 for these veterans to be paid -- $1,015 each, on the average. They were in such distress, we had to agree on bond payments. They wanted to rob ‘em on interest rates.

…When the poor came to town, they were troublemakers…They step on the grass they are put into jail for stepping on the grass.

…The marchers were good, law-abiding citizens. They built these lodgings down here from waste paper and boxes and things…Those buildings were burnt down by the army, the military, under the direction of Mr. MacArthur and Mr. Eisenhower. Mr MacArthur was strutting down the street like it was a big parade.

The next morning, after driving them out, using tear gas, you’d see little babies and mothers on the side of the road…There was never such a horrible thing happen on earth as that. They killed some of the veterans. They all ought to have been charged with murder.

…Andrew Mellon [Treasury Secretary from 1921-32] was opposed to any payment. He said it would unbalance the budget. They always talked that way…That’s what led me to go after him. I’m against a few people taking advantage of privilege, using it for their own selfishness and punishing other folks.

…January 6, 1932, I rose to impeach Andrew W. Mellon for high crimes and misdemeanors. The Republicans were so shocked and confused, they didn’t stop me…I spoke of conflict of interests. He owned banks, stocks and everything else, and here he was heading the Treasury. It was made a violation a hundred years ago for a Secretary of the Treasury to even own a Government bond.

They voted to refer the proposition to the Judiciary Committee. I sat on one side of the long table by myself and Mr. Mellon and his twelve lawyers sat on the opposite side. The most high-priced lawyers in the United States, the best money could buy. I had a rough time for a couple of weeks.

…At the end of the two weeks, it was Mr. Mellon’s turn to be on the witness stand. The committee recessed until one thirty that afternoon. Well, about twelve-thirty, the papers came out with huge headlines: “Mellon Resigns, Appointed To The Court of St. James” [made ambassador to Britain]. Some members of the committee wanted to impeach him anyway…But the argument was made: Why take up time? He’s not only out of office, he’s out of the country. So they just let it go. They destroyed all the papers.

…Stolen from my office. They robbed my office time and time again…I tried to get the officers around here to do something about it, couldn’t get them to do it.

The security officers around Washington. The Treasury has some. Also the White House and the FBI type people…

…About every three or four elections, they’d lower the boom on me. They could see I was givin’ ‘em trouble on their city-slicking deals. I pictured them as money changers and was after them with sharp sticks...The big business fellas didn’t need me. They got their own paid people around here. They threw plenty of money around and begin to get very popular.

We have two governments in Washington: one run by the elected people – which is a minor part – and one run by the moneyed interests, which control everything.

…It was the big ones closing in on the little ones for the kill. At one time, they thought they’d get a dictatorship here. General Smedley Butler was picked out to be the leader. He was gonna be their man on the white horse. They were gonna close in and take this country over. And they came darn near doing it. They just picked the wrong man*. They’ll get this country in that position again if they can.

…A dictatorship could spring up here over night, if this country got so bad. If another Depression came, we’d have a revolution. People wouldn’t take it any more. They have more knowledge. The big ones, they’d be looking for somebody that’d have the power to just kill people, if they didn’t agree. When John Doe begins to get up, they’d just go down and shoot him…

[Terkel asks: What were your relations with Roosevelt during the Depression?]

I liked him very much. There was an air of optimism. When he got in – getting the fat cats out, getting the money changers out…

[Terkel asks: Do you have the feeling that you’ve been pretty well kept out of the news these past thirty years or so….?]

Why, certainly. I should have been chairman of this committee twenty-five years ago. But they kept me off on account of that fight for the veterans. They knew I knew too much of the money business. They didn’t want a man like that.

Oh, I made news when I authored the Full Employment Bill. They called me a Communist, a Socialist and everything else. But we got the bill through. They all now recognize it as a good bill.

When I get kind of low, I’d think about a verse I learned at one time, when everybody was fighting me. It went something like this:

He has no enemies, you say,

My friend, the boast is poor.

He who hath mingled in the fray

Of duty that the brave endure

Must have foes.

If he has none,

Small is the work he has done.

He has hit no traitor on the hip,

Has cast no cup from perjured lip,

Has never turned the wrong to right,

He’s been a coward in the fight.

I’d often repeat that, you know. (Laughs)

POSTSCRIPT: “I live near the Water Gate Inn, but I’m not in that fat cat area (Laughs). They pay a half million dollars for condominiums down there. Of course, they have to pay ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year just to keep the corridors clean. From my apartment, I can see where the Cabinet lives. (Laughs)”

*In his autobiography, John L. Spivak, a journalist, recounts his investigation of the matter. During his visit to Butler’s home, the General…“an extraordinary man, described ‘what was tantamount to a plot to seize the Government, by force, if necessary.’ ” In 1935, “Butler, on a national radio hookup, denounced the Congressional Committee for suppressing parts of his testimony, involving the names of important men.

Roger Baldwin, who did not look with friendly eyes on communists because they denied free speech and free press, issued a statement as Director of the American Civil Liberties Union: “The Congressional Committee investigating un-American activities has just reported that the fascist plot to seize the government…was proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Communists!”

“Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence, even to the seizure of government, is excusable on the part of those whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system…” From A Man In His Time, by John L. Spivak, pp. 329-30.