Re: [SLUG] Politics, ethics etc.

From: michael hast (evylrobot19@cox.net)
Date: Sat Nov 19 2005 - 23:04:25 EST


Robin 'Roblimo' Miller wrote:

>>One hundred years ago man was far more kinder to man. We left doors largely
>>unlocked and when we saw a stranger we greeted him. Offered him a chair and
>>food and drink.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Ummm.... my wife is black and might disagree with you about how
>wonderful things were 100 years ago.
>
>Also, 100 years ago in the U.S., there were no problems with illegal
>drugs because marijuana, cocaine, and opium derivatives (including
>Bayer's patented pain reliever, Heroin), were all readily available and
>were sold openly, either on their own or as ingredients in products such
>as Lydia Pinkham's tonic, Coca-Cola, and so on. In other words, people
>back then used drugs. Lots of drugs. The illegalization of what are now
>called "controlled substances" didn't begin until 1911.
>
>Public hangings were common -- and not just for blacks. People starved
>to death in this country. Routinely. Medical care was better than it had
>been in the 1800s, since the idea of sterilization had taken hold -- in
>large part because the women's auxiliary of the First Unitarian Church
>in Baltimore talked a wealthy church member named Johns Hopkins into
>putting up money for a "scientific" medical school in the mid-1800s, and
>the germ theory was taught there -- and spread. But still: no
>antibiotics, and few of the other life-saving drugs and surgical
>procedures we now take for granted were available.
>
>Your local public library -- likely funded by Andrew Carnegie -- was the
>closest thing you had to the Internet. (If you were white; non-whites
>suffered from a major "print divide" because they weren't allowed to use
>most public libraries.)
>
>Outside of major cities, almost everyone used outhouses. Indoor plumbing
>didn't become common in rural areas and small towns until the Rural
>Electrification Project in the 1930s. (The REA was the kind of
>government-funded do-gooder project we shun today.)
>
>http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ will tell you about the
>Triangle Factory fire. Public revulsion at the deaths it caused led to
>unionization and better working conditions. My maternal grandmother,
>Annie, had a cousin who died there. Jews were often treated little
>better than blacks back then. There were no workplace safety rules, no
>disability insurance policies, no social security. If you got hurt or
>died on the job, too bad. There were plenty of immigrants waiting in
>line to replace you.
>
>A big reason people left their doors unlocked back in the good 'ol days,
>100 years ago, was that someone was almost always home. Most people
>lived on farms. Children commonly got 4 - 8 years of schooling, then
>went to work in the fields or for local businesses. Grandparents stayed
>with their families. Those old, tiny cracker houses you see in Ybor City
>and the older Florida towns often had 10 - 12 people living in them --
>all sharing the same outhouse. Plus, there were a *lot* of crippled kids
>to sit on the porches and watch the place. Polio epidemics cropped up
>every few years until mass vaccination in the 1950s. And yeah, it was
>live vaccine and a few kids died or got crippled from taking it, but no
>one sued over what was considered the greatest medical miracle of the
>time. Vaccine developers, especially Doctors Salk and Sabin, were
>considered national heroes.
>
>Prostitution was normal. Indeed, for many young, unmarried women 100
>years ago, it was the best career available. Venereal disease and
>pregnancy were known risks, but if you go look at the Triangle Factory
>website, you can see the alternative. I grew up out west, where women
>commonly came as whores, eventually married customers -- and started
>movements to ban saloons and "dance parlors." Famous Ambrose Bierce
>quote about California politicians asking for your vote on the basis
>that they'd been born there (unlike most candidates, who had moved there
>from somewhere else): "The miners came in forty-nine, the whores in
>fifty-one. And when they got together, they made the native son."
>
>(If you don't know who Ambrose Bierce was, you're missing some of the
>funniest and most warped writing ever done on this continent. Go down to
>the Carnegie Library and check out "The Devil's Dictionary." You'll love
>it.)
>
>Anyway, I think life has gotten better over the last 100 years.
>
>If nothing else, tires last longer and cars need tuneups less often. And
>- WAIT - most of us have cars now, while hardly anyone did back then.
>
>- Robin
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
Yeah! Go Linux!

;-)
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