If you enjoyed this story you may also enjoy any of my books pictured above. For more information on any title click on cover of book on the right on this page. Thanks.

The Hobo Philosopher


Florida and the Minimum Wage

By Richard E. Noble

It wasn't until I arrived in sunny Florida that I was made aware that employers actually paid workers the dreaded Minimum Wage. I had worked for ten years in a meat packing house in order to learn the skill of butchering. I was earning $4.00 per hour when I left Lawrence, MA to settle in sunny Florida. Yet everywhere I applied in southern Florida they would only offer me the minimum. The minimum at that time in Florida was $1.80 per hour. I decided that if the butcher's trade was considered to be so worthless in Florida, I might just as well go out and learn something new and different.

I got a job as a porter in a restaurant. My first paycheck was a real disappointment. I received bigger checks when I was a stock boy at the First National grocery store on Broadway back in Lawrence. I felt very humiliated.
I found out from the manager that the only job in that restaurant chain that paid $4.00 per hour was the job he held as manager. I told him, jokingly, that I wanted his job. Believe it or not, a few months later, I got it.

In less than six months, I was the manager of a busy restaurant on Fort Lauderdale Beach earning considerably more than minimum wage and much more than the $4.00 per hour that I had hoped for.

Shortly after becoming manager I got my second Florida shock – the payroll checks for the staff arrived. I was checking everybody's hours to make sure the checks were accurate when I got to the waitress payroll checks. The hours listed on the waitress checks were accurate but the pay amounts were all wrong. All the waitresses had checks for amounts like $1.42 or $1.39. And that was for two weeks work. I didn't dare waltz out into the dinning room and hand these rather foolish paychecks to any of these hard working girls. I felt that they would lynch me. I figured that the accounting department had put the decimal point in the wrong place. Maybe the check should have been $142.00 or $139.00.

I decided to call my supervisor.

When I told him my problem he laughed. He told me that the waitresses' checks were all accurate and correct.

"Waitresses only receive half of the minimum wage," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because they get tips," he said.
"You mean because some generous hearted customers leave the waitress a tip, the house pays her the minimum and then takes half her hard earned minimum dollar?"
"That's right," he said.
"Is Florida a part of the United States of America?" I asked.
"It ain't Florida," he said. "It's the same rule all over the country for waitresses."
"You are kidding me?"
"No sir."

So I hung up and then I started figuring the checks once again. They were still wrong – even half the minimum wage amounted to more than the totals on these checks.

I called the supervisor again. "Hey pal, these checks are still all wrong. Even half the minimum wage amounts to more than the totals listed on these checks."

He chuckled once again, "You have got to take the taxes out."
"Well, my gosh, the tax on $1.49 don't amount to this much reduction. Am I on Candid Camera or what?"
"No, you're not on Candid Camera. They take out the taxes on the full amount of the minimum wage. They take taxes out as if the girls were being paid $1.80 per hour. You don't expect the government to lose money do you? How are they going to pay for all them jet planes and aircraft carriers? You've got to be more patriotic," he joked.
"Maybe they ought to name one of them aircraft carriers the Mary Joe or the Betty Sue instead of the Harry Truman or the Eisenhower? I have noticed though that many yachts parked on the Intercoastal have ladies’ names on them. The restaurant owners probably named them after all the waitress they have been screwing for all these centuries," I suggested.
“Well then, be nice to those girls because by your way of thinking they’re paying your salary too.”

The government had a problem all right but why did the restaurant owner get half of every minimum dollar that the poor girl earned?

I remember walking around that fancy dinning room handing the waitresses their paychecks. Some of them even said thank-you. I can't tell you what I felt like. I knew we lived in a jungle and this was a dog-eat-dog world but I had never been on the wolf's side before.

As I investigated the situation further, I found that the waitresses were also expected to give a portion of their tips to the bus boys and the bartenders. In some restaurants the waitresses paid for specialty items, like fresh shucked oysters and clams. They were often forced to pay as much as a buck a dozen. In many of this chain's restaurants the waitresses were also responsible for vacuuming the carpets before their shift, cleaning the bathrooms and even performing some kitchen duties.

It seemed quite evident to me that Florida restaurants were operating off the backs of their female, underpaid, exploited wait staff. The girls were paying everybody. This was a joke.

In talking to some of the older waitresses I found that many of them had to "buy" their jobs at these restaurants. A job at a good restaurant in Fort Lauderdale could cost them two or three hundred dollars. But this money didn’t always go to the owners. It went to the managers and sometimes to the head hostess or maitre d’. And then, if they were wise, they would slip the maitre d’ or the head hostess a little something before their shift started each evening if they wanted to get any of the known good tippers.

In recent years things really haven't gotten better for waitresses. I think with the new government demands, they have actually gotten worse. As I understand it, a certain percentage must be paid by the waitress on every credit card check she receives – whether she receives a tip from that costumer or not.

I ended up marrying one of these waitresses and she still drives me nuts every time we eat out. Whatever amount I put down for a tip isn't enough. She always makes me add to it.

You can always tell an old waitress, she buys something for two dollars and leaves four dollars as a tip. Waitresses take care of waitresses – and it's a good thing that they do because restaurant owners and the government sure don’t.

If you enjoyed reading this review you may find my two books pictured above interesting reading also. If so, click on appropriate book cover to the right on this page for more information. Thanks.







The Grand Design
By Stephen Hawking
and Leonard Mlodinow

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Stephen has got himself in trouble once again. Mr. Hawking has decided to join in the ancient argument about the existence or necessity of the gods.

Stephen didn’t actually say that there was no God. He merely stated in the manner of Laplace, another infamous mathematician, that he also “had no need for such a hypothesis.”

Stephen is of the opinion that the Universe is the result of a “Big Bang” and that this Big Bang was able to create itself ... from nothing.

Although Christians and many other organized religions also believe that the Universe was created from nothing they disagree with Stephen in their definition of the “nothing” that is somehow responsible for the Universe.

Christians and their counterparts believe that the nothing behind the Universe is God – a supernatural being portrayed in the image and likeness of Man. This God is also nothing because he is yet to be defined credibly. In fact, all attempts at a definition have led to paradox or irrational contradiction. So God remains an unconfirmed suspicion that is only visible to the faithful.

Stephen’s “nothing” is explainable scientific phenomenon which satisfies all his equations without a fallback position of God a la Isaac Newton. The notion of God, in effect, posits the impossible as an explanation for the highly improbable.

Stephen does not add God to his equations because he sees no point in solving a mystery with an even greater mystery nor does he find it necessary to do so. If we suggest that God created the Universe then one must ask who or what created God, states Stephen, philosophically.

This has sent the religious community into spasms of stuttering, stammering and hallucination over fundamentals. Stephen is able to do this because of his reputation as “the most intelligent man alive.”

Whoa, that is scary!

What surprises me is that no one seems all that upset over the fact that Stephen has also denied the concept of free will. Stephen said, rather flatly, that he believed not in free will but in “scientific determinism.”

The denial of free will is equally important to the religious community of theologians because without it how can non-believers and other undesirables be sent off to hell. And furthermore, without the notion of free will how can God be relieved of personal responsibility and become the source of all that is good, free from any evil related to his creation of man.

Stephen tries to back off on his denial of free will by making a qualifying statement. Stephen suggests that because of an infinity of choices man is sorta possessive of a free will … kind of. But to show where this copout leads, we find Stephen later in the book claiming that if a robot could be designed with the ability to make an incalculable number of choices it too could be considered, by Stephens’s definition, to be possessive of free will … kinda sorta.

I should think that the religious apologists would be jumping all over that one also.

And now we come to the Grand Design. The Grand Design has been the goal of the scientific community since Einstein and Heisenberg and the problems created by discoveries in quantum theories.

Scientists have been searching for one theory or one equation that would unite all the four known forces in the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear forces and the weak nuclear forces. So far they haven’t been able to come up with one. But Stephen says he has it. He calls it M-theory.

M-theory is not “a” theory but a scientific series of overlapping theories (models) which take into consideration via a multitude of Richard Feynman “fudge factors” every possible theory conceivable.

To me M-theory is somewhat akin to stating, “I have the answer to existence and why we all exist.”

“And what is that answer?”

“The answer to existence and why we all exist is that there is no answer.”

M-theory is based on Stephen’s definition of reality. Stephen denies that there is such a thing as objective reality or absolute reality. Reality is in the eye of the beholder and if the beholder’s reality can be backed up by scientific experimentation to justify what he thinks he is seeing, one observer’s view of reality is as good as another’s.

We fall into the same trap with this definition of reality as we did with Stephen's definition of free will. Stephen even goes so far as to say that the Ptolemaic view of the solar system is as viable as the sun concentric view. The only difference being the ease of the equations or math involved.

As with his scientific determinism, I find his scientific reality also lacking.
Scientific reality is based on observation backed and substantiated by scientific experiment. Stephen gives an explanation of realism that is about the worst description that I have ever read. It is so bad that I question his motivations in this regard.

But moving right along, Stephen rejects any a priori knowledge or conclusions with regards to reality. To my understanding an object has a reality in and of itself independent of any observers or perception. In other words, if there were no one and nothing to observe any real thing in the universe that thing would remain what it really is. A tree would be a tree even if there was no one or nothing to observe it. The sun would still be the sun and the stars would still be whatever they are. Observers are not necessary to this understanding of reality.

But Stephen is a scientist and not a theorist or a philosopher [Stephen says that philosophy is dead] and he accepts only a reality spawned via observation and corroborating scientific experiment. Models concocted through a plethora of observers and compared and evaluated via scientific experiment and mathematical equations present the only reality possible. It doesn’t really matter if the concluded realities are true or false, since no picture of reality can be determined to be absolutely true. They only have to be computer, model soluble.

So once again Stephen comes to this strange conclusion that a fish in a fish bowl’s confirmed observations are as viable as a human’s scientifically confirmed observation of any particular object. This leaves us with no absolute reality and reduces reality to a matter of opinion … sorta.

From Stephen’s point of view, man’s view and understanding of the things around him become constrained and restricted to the laboratory and mathematical equations that can be diagrammed on his computer.

Stephen’s view of reality may be distorted in this way because of his physical condition. He sees a reality confined and restricted just as he is confined and restricted.

I see an objective absolute reality in a thing’s existence in and of itself with no perspective or point of view necessary. Of course, this absolute reality is indeterminable – but nevertheless it does exist. It is reality and we all know and understand it.

It is the goal of science to discover this absolute reality with its inadequate powers of observation and scientific experimentation.

The average of all the approximate realities of all the various scientific observers is an estimate of reality and not reality, per se.

Reality is not the sum total of all the various and inadequate points of view of the myriad of observers combined and mathematically formulated. It may be the best that man can do, scientifically, at present but these scientific estimations do not constitute a true reality – as of yet. I think the M-theory with all its machinations will come up short in the long run.

A tree is a tree, in and of itself, no matter how it may appear to you or anyone or anything else. A tree is not necessarily what any particular group of observers, no matter how large or scientifically inclined, estimate it to be.

If you like this type "pithy wit" you might try one of my selections above. Thanks. Click on the cover of the book on the right of this page for more info.


Dick Cheney and me

By Richard E. Noble

Dick Cheney appeared at a press conference a while back and he made a statement that stuck in my mind. One of the reporters made reference to his accumulated wealth and an implied lack of gratitude on his part. His response was that whatever he had, he had gotten on his own and certainly with no help from the government. He was a self-made man was the implication that I understood.

Many people in the audience applauded his statement. Of course, in Mr. Cheney’s case, I felt it was rather an obnoxious statement. Here was a man who worked for the government most of his career and when he wasn't, he was working for corporations who were tied to the government from their navel to their butt hole. If there was anybody who made their fortune off this government and not despite this government, it was him.

I felt that if Mr. Cheney wanted to meet a real self-made man he should meet me.

I realize that I may not be all that great of a self-made man in terms of total wealth – or any wealth for that matter – but certainly everything that I accumulated was without the help of the government. I might even go so far as saying that it was despite the government in many cases – and even the police department and the IRS in additional cases.

I started working when I was eight or nine years old and nobody gave me anything.

I collected returnable bottles in my old Lawrence neighborhood. I shoveled snow every winter and I set up duckpins at a local bowling alley – all before I was ten years old. That was pretty independent wasn't it?

But how independent is independent?

I mean, if I had no neighbors, I couldn't have collected pop bottles or shoveled out people's driveways in the winter when it snowed. If there was no English Social Club on Center Street with six or eight duckpin bowling alleys, I couldn't have made any money setting up pins. If there were no glassy-eyed, semi-intoxicated patrons who wanted to bowl, even the presence of the alleys wouldn't have done me much good.

When I was eleven I got a paper route. More of the above applies to that job – no neighbors who wanted to read, no newspaper company who wanted to print etc.

Then I went to work at the grocery store – more dependence on my Lawrence neighbors and shoppers and the First National up on Broadway.

On top of all that, before I could make any money at any of the above, I had to know how to count.

When I was just five years old my mother carted me down to the corner school. There were a bunch of "volunteers" there who us kids mocked and ridiculed. We called them penguins and other unflattering things.

They forced me to learn what I needed. And believe me they had to force it into me because from a very early age, I felt that I already knew more than I needed to know. Me and Henry Ford had a similar attitude when it came to book learning – who needed it! “History is a lot of bunk.” I’m with you Henry.

Now these volunteers weren't really trying to help me, as Christopher Hitchens has pointed out in many of his books. They were under the assumption that they were employed by God. They were really trying to save my soul … the poor, sad things.

And all the neighbors and the customers and patrons and the businesses and employers, they weren't trying to help me either. They needed somebody and I just happened to be standing there.

As independent and self-made as I think myself to be, I have never had any job or made a penny that was without the participation of others in my society – not one penny.

And neither has Dick Cheney. Neither of us were a Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. We didn't survive in a wilderness nor did we make our way in a void.

I don't care what terms you use but we have all gotten what little we have because there were others around us who needed our efforts. No, this doesn't actually constitute love, but it does dispel independence to a degree.

Me and Dick Cheney are about as self-made as R2D2. If the inadequate system that surrounds us shuts down – we shut down. Try living with no electricity and no water. Most of us can't even get by without a TV or cell phone.

Sometimes it is not such a great feeling to realize that we need others in order to survive, but it is a fact of life. We don't have to like this fact, but to deny it is to live in a delusion.

But Dick Cheney and me are not the only humans who are living in a delusion of independence. The world and America have an abundance of them. They are stumbling all over one another but don’t seem to notice.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

If you are interested in this subject, you may also be interested in my book "Mein Kampf - Analysis of Book One. Thanks.


The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

By William L. Shirer

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

With “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” Mr. Shirer achieved the dream of every writer. He wrote himself into immortality. This is one of those great books that will never die. As long as there are people, this book will be read.

I purposely postponed the reading of this work until I finished writing my book “Mein Kampf – Analysis of Book One” because I feared that my work would be unduly influenced by Mr. Shirer’s work. After reading “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by W.L. Shirer I feel I made the correct decision.

I was pleased to find that many of the quotes selected by Mr. Shirer from Adolf Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf” were also selected by me as being important and worthy of additional analysis.

Mr. Shirer’s book is exactly what the title states it to be. It is a detailed and well documented study of the rise and then the fall of the Third Reich.

This book is over 1100 pages long. To write a thorough review would be impossible. So let me simply highlight a few of the things that I learned or found interesting.
One thing that has always been a curiosity to me was why Germany (Adolf Hitler) declared war on the United States after the bombing of Peal Harbor on December 7, 1941. If he had kept his mouth shut he would have had the U.S. occupied in the Pacific while he could have concentrated on his war in Europe. From my reading of the times, it would have been difficult for Roosevelt to win the American people over to an attack on Hitler’s Germany in Europe when we had Japan who just attacked us in the Pacific.

I was told that this was mandatory because Germany and Japan had an alliance.
This was true; Germany and Japan did have an alliance. But this agreement was only called into play if either Germany or Japan were attacked by another nation. The alliance did not come into effect if Germany or Japan were the aggressor and attacked another nation.

This is why Japan did not come to Germany’s aid in its struggle with Russia. Germany requested Japan’s support in this cause several times but to no avail. Germany had attacked Russia. Russia did not attack Germany. Therefore Japan had no mandate to come to Germany’s aid. And Japan never did assist Germany in this effort.

Japan then attacked the United States. Germany had no treaty obligation to declare war against the U.S. but nevertheless it did. Why?

If Germany had not declared war against the U.S. it would then have been up to Roosevelt to declare war against Germany after we had just been attacked by Japan.

I think with all the pro-German sentiment in the U.S. at that time, such a declaration would have been difficult for President Roosevelt to get past the legislature. In which case the U.S. would have been distracted from its efforts in Europe and forced to concentrate in the Pacific on Japan.

Once again it seems that Hitler had gravely underestimated the capacity and spirit of his enemies. It seems that Adolf felt the U.S. to be a paper lion and not ready or capable to form any great war effort. He made the same mistake with the British and then again with the Russians. I suppose it could be said that he overestimated Germany’s abilities rather than underestimated his enemies but either way, he was gravely mistaken in his projections.

Mr. Shirer’s book also corroborates my notion that one of Adolf’s greatest attributes was his ability to dull the compassionate instincts of an entire nation of people.

Unfortunately we have a similar circumstance happening at this time in our own country.

Hitler used patriotism, national pride, the German flag, military prowess and strong appeals to individualism and selfishness to immunize the German people. One can only hope that these tactics which are being pushed relentlessly here and now in our own country by right wing extremists will not be as effective here in the U.S. as they were in Nazi Germany.

I also feel supported by Mr. Shirer in my bias that the Nuremberg Trials were not the great success that they have been portrayed to be, historically. Even Alfried Krupp was let off the hook. As I now know, from other reading, many American businesses who aided, supported, and profited from dealing with Nazi Germany during the war were able to skirt prosecution and investigation via the attention and publicity provided by this event.

Mr. Shirer also puts to rest for me the notion or excuse that “people” were not aware of the slaughterhouses and extermination camps. Somehow Hitler was able to keep it all a secret from everybody, we are so often told.

Well it seems to have been far from any secret. People who lived around the extermination camps were constantly complaining to the local authorities about the “burning flesh smell” emanating from the camps. The public bids from construction companies, with their detailed drawings and explicit instructions and suggestions on clever, new machinery and methods on how to kill the most people and remove any “waste material” and dead bodies at the cheapest cost are ridiculously blatant.

These detailed bids should also be put on display in all nations around the world and specifically to any “free market” capitalists who are presently advocating the moral integrity and the notion of “self-policing” by banks, insurance companies, the stock market and the so called free market system in general.

I also thought it interesting to note in this era of “body art” that tattooed skin was a first priority for those purchasing or collecting “human skin” furniture and lampshades for their homes and apartments.

I could go on and on, chapter by chapter, making comments and pointing out interesting references but better to suggest that if this subject interests you, your time will not be wasted here. This is one of those monumental works that should be and I am sure will be read for years and years by students, historians and all those interested in what we can only hope will be our last ever World War.

Trading with the Enemy

By Charles Higham

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Do you want to read a book that will really rock your boat? Then pick up “Trading with the Enemy” The Nazi-American Money plot 1933-1949.

Since I have taken up as a research project for myself, the investigation of World War II, from the philosophical perspective of ‘The Just War’ notion or concept, I find myself being led down many a strange alley.

After reading much of the conventional literature on the rise of Adolf Hitler, the obvious question occurred to me; Where did Adolf get his money? Nobody gains political power, EVER, ANYWHERE, without money. Anybody who thinks that even our soft spoken, country gentleman Jimmy Carter jumped out of a peanut patch, or Harry Truman out of a Haberdashery store in Missouri, or Abe Lincoln out of a log cabin, or Sun Yat-Sen out of a rice paddy, or even Fidel Castro out of a sugarcane field, is very naive to say the least. Without money, nobody goes nowhere in politics - anywhere in the world - nor throughout the annals of History. It just doesn’t happen - ever.

So as an adjunct to discovering the moral righteousness or immoral iniquity of World War II, I have been led to investigating also, the financing of the Third Reich, and the personal backing for Adolf and his buddies. This is without any doubt a story yet to be written, of unbelievable proportions.

The first name that stands out in this investigation is Henry Morgenthau, who seems to be, very rapidly, turning into a real American hero. You will find his name written all over older American paper money. He has over a thousand volumes of his files stored at the F.D.R. library. This should be some interesting reading. (If you read, sometime in the near future, of the sudden disappearance of the Margenthau files, remember you read it here first.) He had a plan for the demobilization of Germany - forever. Germany was to be stripped of all industry and manufacturing and the entire nation reduced to farmland, raising grapes, sauerkraut or schnitzel.
Morgenthau was also in charge of compiling files on American business and individuals suspected of aiding and abetting the enemy in time of War - treason. The British have similar files and after the war there was a movement accusing the entire upper crust of England of treason. Winston Churchill in his “The Gathering Storm” out-right accuses the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, of acting insensibly and certainly against the proper interests of his Country. I have no doubt that in this book, Winston challenged future historians to an investigation of the true motivations of the Prime Minister Nevelle Chamberlain. I have yet to see anything on the subject in print. And I am told that Neville had refused all offers and resisted all endeavors by biographers.

In “Trading with the Enemy” you will find the names of many well known manufacturers, Industrialist, and bankers suspected, if not known, to have been “trading with the enemy” not before and up until the bombing at Pearl Harbor, but through the entire war. Mister Higham’s accusations are point blank, no pulling punches in this book. I am still shocked and disappointingly amazed.

Cat Point and Them Dang Oyster People

B o o k s 4 T o m o r r o w: QUICK REVIEW: "Cat Point and Them Dang Oyster Peop...: “ CAT POINT AND THEM DANG OYSTER PEOPLE ” by Richard Edward Noble REVIEWED BY : David Fritz OVERVIEW In 1976 my wife and ...

If you are interested in Mr. Watson's book "Mills, Migrants, and the American Dream," you may also find my book, "America on Strike" of equal interest. Thanks.


Bruce Watson

Mills, Migrants, and the American Dream

Bread and Roses - 1912

By Richard E. Noble

My discovery of the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts has provided me with an extremely interesting source of intellectual and personal insight.

Although I was born in Baltimore, Maryland my life from a few months old to age 27 was spent in Lawrence, Mass. My father and my mother were ex-mill workers - as were their fathers and mothers. My father was from the established English heritage and my mother descended from the later Eastern European migration. She was Polish.
I only worked briefly as did my older brother in a reconstituted worked-over enterprise that rented old mill space after the mills were abandoned by their textile owners. But even though I never worked in a textile mill, those mills played an ominous and hauntingly important part in my life.

The original mills were the reason for being for the city of Lawrence. First God built the mills and then he sent the people to work them. The mills came first and the people came second - and that is the history of the mills of Lawrence - and maybe mill towns all over America. And it is always interesting to me that when it was all over what was left was row upon row of empty red brick pyramids and mile after mile of drained sapped people and landscape. It was like a war zone where the weapon of choice was not explosives but a psychological sort of Neutron bomb.
Fighting for the jobs and positions at the mills basically determined the social status of the populous. From the 1840s to the 1950s the mills were the heart and soul and supplied the bread and the few roses that might have been scattered here and there throughout the city.

From approximately the time of my birth forward the mills were on a steady decline and by the end of World War II the mills had for the most part abandoned Lawrence. Unemployment through the late forties and onward through the fifties rose to over forty percent. That was a number that I had been seeking for quite some time. The 1929 Depression was only 30% unemployment. I knew the situation was serious because my dad was one of that 40%, but as is always the case - even with 40% unemployed, 60%still had a job. That 60% living at the time knew only too well how lucky they were, but their descendants have long since forgotten – or were never even made aware of the hardship of their neighbors. I found that 40% figure in this book by Mr. Watson.
Another question that had perplexed me is why I had never heard of this strike; why I had never seen any monuments in the city parks; why my parents and relatives never spoke of it; why the Nuns in grade school never mentioned such an event even in passing; why the Brothers didn’t teach it in high school; and the bigger question why the history books ignored the American labor movement almost entirely.

I first got interested in this subject matter by discovering, quite by accident, the Bread and Roses Strike. Researching this strike then led me to the labor movement in the U.S. and then in the world.

For me making this discovery was like finding the missing link or the lost piece of the puzzle. I truly feel now that understanding labor history or the history of the labor movement is the Rosetta Stone for interpreting our modern civilization. This is where our modern history begins - and this period in man’s evolution has not come to an end yet. It is the latest episode in a long continuous battle for freedom, dignity and equality.

Mr. Watson explains in his Epilogue that the history of the Lawrence Bread and Roses Strike was suppressed in the area because it had been a brand of shame for the city as a whole throughout the entire U.S. and throughout the world. Lawrence became a poster child for how not to handle a mill strike and how not to treat new immigrants, working women and children in America. The City (establishment) of Lawrence had been disgraced and shamed and they then proceeded to propagandize a “cover” story or a rationalization to hide and cover over what they had done and what had actually happened. And it worked because all that remained for the rest of the century was their version of the event. It is only until recently that the whole truth of the matter has been seeping out.

It seems to me that this is basically the same story with regards to the American Labor Movement. And the truth about it is also beginning to seep out.
Just as the Germans have been the last to admit the horror of the holocaust and the Japanese the last to accept the Rape of Nanking and their other World War II atrocities, America will be the last to admit its persecution of the working class and the working poor. America hates poverty - and it hates to accept or admit the fact of it even more.

America is filled with poverty, slums and industrial blight and it seems that it always has been - but yet most Americans will deny its very existence - and so it goes on and on and on.

Reading this book was more than a history lesson for me. Since I was raised in the area, every street name brought back an old memory; all the family names brought back friends and neighbors; and the stories brought back reason and insight into many personal mysteries.

I really enjoyed this book and I’m happy Mr. Watson wrote it. I will add it to my collection of Lawrence memorabilia and labor union history.

I am left with the desire to read more about Lawrence and I know from other reading that there is a lot more to read. Every open door leads to another door yet to be opened.

Very surprising to me is the discovery that at Cornell University there is actually a school of Industrial and Labor Relations that offers a four year degree in labor studies. It was started in 1945 and is the only college in the United States offering such a degree. I intend to do a good deal of reading and learning at their web site. It should be fun.

Bread and Roses by Bruce Watson is a great read for anyone interested in history in general, and the Labor Movement in particular. This book should be required reading in every high school in the Greater Lawrence area - but I have no doubt that it is not and will not be in the future.

If you like Mr. Grieder's book, "Who will Tell the People" you might also enjoy "America on Strike" or "Mein Kampf - An Analysis of Book One" both books are written by Richard Edward Noble. Thanks.


Who Will Tell the People?

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

I have been educating myself for over forty years now. I have chosen many great professors to help me along my path to understanding, but I won’t get into that at this moment, other than to tell you about my most recent selection as professor of Civics.

In high school I had a course called Civics. I never figured out exactly what the word “Civics” meant, but I interpret the word as encompassing an explanation of the society and world currently happening around me – politically, socially, economically.

In my high school Civics class we read the daily newspapers, random magazines, and kept up on the local government issues, among other things.

In trying to understanding the modern day world –governments, societies, and general direction of the civilization – I found myself very confused. I wanted to find a professor who could get me up to speed on what is really going on in the world around me. As you know one must choose selectively because there are “so many books and so little time.” Consequently I have chosen William Greider as my “Civics” professor.

I have finished my third book by William Greider this morning, “Who Will Tell the People.” I thought that to be a wonderful title for a book. I have been asking myself that same questions on many different subjects for many years. If you have also been wondering “Who Will Tell the People,” I think I can tell you quite sincerely that one of the people who will tell the people is certainly William Greider.

It is so rewarding when you find an honest, straightforward voice in this world of obfuscation and – for lack of a better word – pure bullshit.

On Mr. Greider’s web site he calls himself an old journalistic type – but Mr. Greider is much more than a Journalist. He is an educator; he is a teacher, an instructor; he is a professor. He has his Doctorate in personal experience in the affairs of the world – that becomes obvious as you follow along behind him.
In Who Will Tell the People we learn, among many other things, how our Democracy works ... or doesn’t work.

Mr. Greider tells us how the Democracy we think we have, lines up to the Democracy we really have.

He tells us about how the laws are made and then un-made. He tells us about the lobbyists, and the lawyers and the Democrats and the Republicans and the Repubocrats – and who owns each of them.

He tells us about the money, the big businesses, the banks, the international conglomerates.

He tells us about the environment; about the military and the pentagon; about who’s in, and who’s out, and why.

At various points in reading Mr. Greider I say to myself – This guy is giving me more than I really want to know. I mean the more I know, the worse it gets. But then he throws in a suggestion, an idea, a possible solution and once again I’m thinking positively.

I am basically a skeptic and I think of the “Power of Positive Thinking” as a prescription for dilution. But you have got to have some kind of hope, even if it is farfetched, distant and on the borders of impossibility. There must be something!
Mr. Greider brings us to the brink, then pushes us off.

Then half-way down, falling into the abyss of eternal despair, we find there is a bungee cord wrapped around our waist. It isn’t much, and the discovery is a little late and maybe not totally reassuring, but it helps.

This book was published in 1992, when we were beginning to talk of “peace dividends” and cutting back on the Military Industrial Complex. Listen to what Mr. Greider was saying way back then:

“The Defense Department was planning a modest five year reduction in the Cold War mobilization ... If the U.S. defense budget were cut in half, it would still be four or five times larger than that of the next strongest nation ... The next round of demobilization would be for real: bringing home troops that had been stationed abroad since the 1950s, closing scores of domestic military bases, shutting more factories ... A few liberals introduced “conversion” bills that did little more than encourage communities and industries to plan for their post-Cold War future. Conservative thinkers concentrated meanwhile, on trying to devise substitute “threats” – Third World terrorism or nuclear proliferation – that might justify continuing the nation’s permanent war footing.”

Chapter 15 of this book is entitled “Citizen GE.” This chapter alone is worth the entire price of the book.

My tendency is to tell you myself what Mr. Greider has to say, but I couldn’t tell the tale as well or with any greater poignancy. I can only tell you to get the book and read it for yourself.

It is not that GE is any worse or better than any of the others; it is more shocking to understand that they are just one of a bunch of like-acting and similar thinking Mega-mights.

If I wanted to continue quoting from this book, this review would be one hundred pages long.

My advice is to buy Mr. Greider’s books and study them. That’s what I’m doing. I’ve only read three thus far, but I know that I am already a world ahead of where I was less than a year ago. Mr. Greider is more than “a read.” He is an education. I feel so lucky to have found such a treasure.

Collision Course

Collision Course


Ronald Reagan
The Traffic Controllers
And the strike that Changed America

By Joseph A. McCartin
Book Review


By Richard Edward Noble

I would guess that this is the most definitive history of the Traffic Controllers’ Strike yet to be written. Knowing what I know of American Labor History, it will probably be the only History of the Traffic Controllers’ Strike of 1981 that will ever be written.

I commend Mr. Joseph A. McCartin for performing this thankless and laborious task. Since I have become somewhat of a Labor history buff in recent years, this book will be added to my reference library along side the many others that I have been collecting for the last several years.

The history of American Labor problems in America is extremely limited and information difficult to find. The Reagan administration’s discontinuance of government statistical strike data will guarantee the difficulty of that task in future years.

I wrote my own book on the subject. It is entitled “America on Strike” and it is a survey of many prominent Labor strikes throughout American History. It begins in the Colonial period and ends with Ronald Reagan and the Traffic Controllers’ Strike. I ended my book with the Traffic Controllers’ Strike because like this author I figured it to be a big historical confrontation and devastating to the American Labor Movement.

My synopsis of the strike is a mere five pages long. I couldn’t find very much information on the Controllers’ Strike when I was putting my book together so when I saw this book, I jumped on it.

The author covers the formation of the PATCO union or association from its start in 1968 until it disintegration in 1981.

The book is thorough and informative. It is written from an inside the union perspective as opposed to an inside the Reagan administration perspective.

I couldn’t have asked for a more in depth analysis.

The history of the union and its leaders is covered intimately while all the while a focus is kept on the big confrontation with Ronald Reagan and his radical rightwing cohorts.

I will restrain myself from criticizing or picking arguments with the author other than to say, I feel he was a bit too kind and overly understanding of President Reagan and his administration.

That the president was hypocritical in his position against PATCO I consider a given.

That the goal of his administration was union busting is also a given. It is the confirmed historical position of the Republican Party and it cannot be denied in my opinion.

That the union was justified in all of its early positions is and has been substantiated.

The fact that the scabs who replaced the 15,000 fired workers no sooner got settled in than they formed their own union and petitioned the government with the exact same complaints the leaders of the PATCO union had presented, says it all.

Like his hero, Calvin Coolidge, the Reagan administration acted politically and not for the interest of his country. Coolidge and Reagan both benefited from their immoral political shenanigans quite favorably while the country suffered immensely – especially so with the Reagan fiasco.

Reagan used taxpayer dollars to fight tax paying workers in this flagrant union busting action. This cost the American people not just millions … but billions.

His use of replacement scab labor revived a horror from the past that if pursued by the Controllers in the traditional labor management format could have resulted in the loss of many lives.

An historical “gentleman’s” agreement had been set in place with regards to this issue. Reagan, in defying this understanding proved himself to be no gentleman and opened a kettle of worms that could and may ignite still glowing embers of acute bitterness in the historical oven of a seriously violent past. Be forewarned, this could mean the start of something BAD.

The Boston Police strike and President Coolidge’s stand remain a national historical disgrace.

Reagan and his posturing will be added to that historical disgrace, I have no doubt.

So other than the author somewhat leaning over backward in his analysis of the Reagan administration, I enjoyed the book immensely.

Mr. McCartin’s analysis on what could have been done by the union to possibly guarantee a successful outcome is thought provoking, thorough and should be read by all union activists and organizers still pursuing that difficult and heroic task today.

This is a very well written and extremely informative Labor history book. I highly recommend it.

If you enjoyed this essay, you may also enjoy "Mein Kampf - An Analysis" and "America On Strike" also written by Richard Edward Noble.

Click on the book covers to the right on this page for more information. Thanks.


Private Property


My zone, your zone, our zone and the ozone.

by Richard E. Noble

The “History of the Great American Fortunes” by Gustavus Myers was used in this essay – a very interesting Radical analysis of this accepted American Right.



We hold sacred the Right to Private Property here in the United States. But this Right has not been without controversy. This notion once included the right to buy and sell other human beings and their children. It was also used by industrialist and Robber Barons alike to shoot their disgruntled workers and to deny them the right to organize and to bargain collectively for better working conditions and higher wages.

At one point in our history it applied to women and children. A man once owned his wife and children.

This Right to Private Property has also conflicted with the State and the Federal Government – Public Domain, Eminent Domain, National and State parks, National and State forests – roads, highways, interstate, damns, reservoirs etc.

On the international level, Private Ownership has been the divisive issue of the last two centuries. We define our current political systems by it:

Capitalism = Democracy + Private ownership
Socialism = Democracy + Public Ownership
Fascism = Dictatorship + Private Ownership
Communism = Dictatorship + Public Ownership

Conflicts with regards to public and private ownership are all around us today because of zoning laws and building codes and, of course, taxes. I’ve often wondered at what dollar amount a property tax turns into a rent. And considering the above definitions, when and if a property tax becomes so large that it is considered a rent; does Capitalism then evolve into Socialism? But even more interesting than that is the question of the basis and foundation of Private Property.

Private Property is based on a principle that, I think, no American would accept as fair, just, or even reasonable today.

Property has always been gained, from the beginnings of mankind’s times, through power, force and military might. The borders of countries have, for the most part, always been determined by conquests, invasions and war. Kings and power lords conquered and doled out property to their favorites. If there were people living on the property, they went with it. If you owned the property, you owned the people who lived on it also.

In the establishment of the American Colonies, we had what were called Patroons. The Patroons owned vast estates that were given to them by charters or grants or purchased from the Crown or others or that they finagled by deceit or fraud. It wasn’t until 1839 in New York that this manorial system was seriously challenged by the tenants who lived on and farmed the land. The land barons were forced by the revolt of the people and the New York Legislature in 1846 to sell off their estates in small farms to the people who lived and worked them. Of course, they sold off these vast estates at exorbitant prices, but nevertheless the tradition of small, individual, property ownership was enhanced.

Then the big money moved to the city. It was here that men like John Jacob Astor and industrialists like William “Billy” Wood and Andrew Carnegie, Pullman and bankers, like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller Jr., turned the development of cities into their personal gold mines. Tenement housing, an apparent monetary triviality, turned into multi-million and billion dollar opportunities for their investment capital.

While Astor, and those of his unscrupulous agents and middlemen, got richer and richer, they turned the tenement factory worker communities into death traps for the poor and hard working. Diseases like typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera and others spread rapidly throughout the tenement communities. But the millions of dollars rolled in over the bodies of the poor until once again, as the rural tenant farmers had exploded in 1839; rebellion rankled in the streets and the tenement neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The disgruntled and downtrodden, brought to the end of their faith in tolerance and acceptance, were finally motivated to risk their lives in the streets and back alleys. Somehow their protests were finally able to rouse the politicians, and laws began to evolve to protect the health and well being of the families living in these pits of American industrial revolutional squalor.

Astor and his super-wealthy friends then decided that it was time to give or dump the tenements onto the masses. The investment brokers would liquefy their assets. They sold their uncared for, unhealthy, vermin and rat invested, tenement disease incubators, before laws could be promoted requiring the landlords to spend some of their acquired millions to clean them up. It was a good business move. But once again, through a dark backdoor, the cause of individual ownership and private property was extended.

The prices of the tenements were high and exploitative, but somehow many hard working laboring families were able to become property owners – participants in the prized evolution of the propertied class.

Adolf Hitler dealt with the historical right to national territory and property rights – by way of Power and Might – extensively in his autobiography, Mein Kampf.
Adolf could not accept that a great nation, like his own, could be, cramped in such a tiny space in central Europe, while a much inferior nation like Russia had such a vast expanse of land to the west. He used the history of mankind to make his claim that the borders of any country are determined by the will of their peoples. Those with the will and the power, take; and those without the will and power are destroyed. To Adolf this was the fundamental principle of Civilization and an undeniable law of Nature – the survival of the fittest.

Russia and a good many other nations of the world disagreed. A catchy phrase of the period was – Might does not make Right. As far as I know, nobody wrote a book explaining why Might did not make Right but many people felt that the notion had merit – even if they didn’t know why. Adolf went ahead and tried to prove his point, but failed. At least he failed to prove that his people and his nation had the will and the power to establish their Might as Right. Whether or not Might actually does make Right still remains questionable, but, by no means, absolutely without foundation.

During a period called the Enlightenment, the world seemed to go through a sort of introspection and soul searching. Philosophers, social thinkers, economists, political reformers and the like all began to question the right of Private Property along with a good many other long established notions. William Godwin wrote a book, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793, and in the Colonies a controversial pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, wrote a piece that he entitled Agrarian Justice. Godwin questioned the whole idea of Private Property and Paine, accepting that Private
Property was a basic injustice, went on to devise an accommodation for property-less individuals.

An economist, Richard Ricardo, challenged property owners and the negative influence of their rents on the economy and wrote a book, Principles of Political Economy, challenging their moral and economic right to do so. He threw his support behind the new moneyed industrialist, entrepreneur and business community – he was a stockbroker by trade – and against the old, established class of property owner. He fought against the protective Corn Laws that were making land owners wealthy, claiming that these laws only served to increase wages, raise prices and create what is now called inflation. Ricardo, unintentionally, plants the first seeds of the class warfare which followed in later generations.

John S. Mill in his Political Economy – accepting Paine’s notion of the injustice of the un-propertied – tried to devise another solution. Paine had suggested that a tax should be placed on the propertied and that at the age of maturity every man without property would receive a cash inheritance as compensation. Mill suggested that the state would buy back from individuals all property and from then on, property would be rented or leased by the State. Henry George later expanded this idea into his Single Tax notion – but with no buy-back from the present property holders.

Then came Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who espoused an evolutionary theory of property that brought things back to Godwin. Their original idea was that private property would simply dissolve into an egalitarian utopia due to the inevitable collapse of Capitalism which would be prompted by the evolutionary destruction of monopolization. Lenin and others believed that this utopia was truly evolutional and inevitable, but evolution was just too slow. Lenin, and those who believed similarly, decided that the historical evolution of a classless, egalitarian economy needed the prodding of a benevolent dictator. True believing followers, like Joseph Stalin felt that benevolence was over-rated.

We no longer discuss the rights of the un-propertied or the moral justice of inheriting property, or people having too much property. We seem to have come to the notion that as long as a majority of individuals have the opportunity to work, save money, and buy their own piece of the planet – this is fair and just enough. The negative historical roots have all been put to the side, as beyond reclamation and practical justification.

Nevertheless, in recent years a return to introspection and moral and Agrarian Justice and soul searching has been revived. The exploitation and pollution of property and the planet has been suggested as morally unjust. There is now an argument between the property owner and the long term interests of random mankind.

Teddy Roosevelt had his preservation and set-aside notions which have given us our National Parks, forests and monuments. Today, we are now considering morally, environmentally and economically the use of an individual’s or developer’s property in relation to his neighbors – his community, his state, his country, the world – to future generations. It is the tree huggers against the libertarians.

Some go so far as to call this a revolution. The Green Revolution it is called. Peace and goodwill to man via clean water, clean air and socially correct balanced growth. The libertarians say these tree lovers are fanatics who care more about woodpeckers and brown-speckled, sap-sucking, bank climbing beetles than they do people. These people (tree huggers) hold Walt Disney as a god and fantasyland and Disney World in Orlando as a real possibility for the future of mankind and community development – these Libertarians say. And sometimes it is difficult to see if these Green revolutionaries are trying to make the world safer for people or fire ants.

On the other hand, if the libertarian has his way there may not be any more fire ants or people. We could revert back to cesspools of congested living, and rivers, lakes and oceans filled with green dyes, mercury, toxic chemicals, OIL, and non-edible, deformed, dying and disappearing sea creatures – not to mention, people (including Americans).

The Plot to Seize the White House

If General Smedly Darlington Butler's understanding of War interests you, you may be interested in reading "Mein Kampf - An Analysis of Book One" by Richard Edward Noble.


General Smedley Darlington Butler

“The Plot to Seize the White House”

Written by Jules Archer

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

This book is basically a biography of General Smedley D. Butler. Once again I must admit my ignorance in stating that I had never heard of this General or this plot against Franklin Roosevelt or of the author Jules Archer.

General Butler as it turns out was quite well known in his day, the plot to seize the White house was investigated in Congress and Mr. Archer has written many successful books.

Smedley Butler was a Marine and quite a Marine he was. He is another great General from a Quaker background. His dad was a judge and served in the congress for 32 years.

Smedley fought in Cuba, in the Philippines, in Mexico, in Nicaragua, in Honduras, in Granada, in Haiti, in China, and in Europe during World War I. He served in the Marine Corps for 33 years and on August 21, 1931 in a speech before the American Legion convention in Connecticut he summed up his career with the following:

“I spent 33 years ... being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer for capitalism ... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
“In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested ... I had ... a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions ... I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents.”

And he went on.

As you can imagine he created quite a stir. But his marines loved him. They lined up everywhere to hear him speak and to shake his hand. He was under fire over 120 times in his career, wounded numerous times and had a chest full of medals – he was presented with the prestigious Medal of Honor twice. On the first presentation he sent it back saying that he didn’t deserve it. The Marine Corps sent it back to him and ordered him to wear it. So he did.

At his retirement at Quantico he gave his farewell speech to his beloved Leathernecks and said; “It has been a privilege to scrap for you just as you have scrapped for me ... When I leave I mean to give every one of you a map showing you exactly where I live. I want you to come around and see me, especially if you ever get into trouble and I will help you if I can. I can give you a square meal and a place to sleep even if I can not guarantee you a political job.”

He actually gave out maps and it is said that he lived up to all his promises.
He supported the 1932 Bonus Army and their march on Washington and the Hover government. The same group of World War I vets who were routed out of their cardboard shacks and tents by MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton brandishing their sabers and doing their duty to defend America against America’s past heroes.
General Butler supported Franklin Roosevelt and he had this to say in one of his speeches:

“Today, with all our wealth, a deathly gloom hangs over us. Today we appear to be divided. There has developed, through the past few years, a new Tory class, a group that believes that the nation, its resources and its manpower was provided by the Almighty for its own special use and profit ... on the other side is the great mass of American people who still believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
“This Tory group, through its wealth, its power and its influence, has obtained a firm grip on our government to the detriment of our people and the well being of our nation. We will prove to the world that we meant what we said a century and a half ago – that this government was instituted not only to secure to our people the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but the right to eat and to all our willing millions the right to work.”

He developed a really unique military strategy. He shook the press and all the big wigs up when he said that he would never again carry a gun on foreign soil. He went on to propose two Constitutional amendments. In the first he suggested that only those who were physically able to fight be allowed to vote on any war. In the second he suggested that our planes and ships guard our coastline exclusively. He wanted it to be an end to U.S. imperialism and foreign wars. He was even opposed to our entry into World War II.

This book then goes on to tell of a plot on the part of the disgruntled rich and wealthy in America to seize the U.S. Government via an organization of soldiers and World War I veterans and establish a Fascist Government, as had been done in Italy and Germany. Butler exposed the plot and named names – the Du Ponts, J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Pew, Mellon, Al Smith, John J. Raskob and others of the rich and prominent were all brought under the spotlight.

An investigation in Congress took place and, of course, all the charges were denied. No one was ever indicted or prosecuted, but all of Butler claims were verified and corroborated by the investigators. The plot was foiled by its exposure and the American people and its government was alerted to the danger.

If you are interested in this subject and the "Jewish Problem," you might find my analysis of Book One of Mein Kampf interesting.

Click on cover of book to the right on this page for more information. Thanks.


Palestine

Peace not Apartheid

By Jimmy Carter

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble


This book is a synopsis or outline of President Jimmy Carter’s many years of attempting to solve the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

It is organized, simple, straightforward and to the point.

The Israeli Government was very upset with the ex-President’s analysis of the problem. I think this is because Mr. Carter views the Palestinians as justified, legal cohabiters in the right to ownership of the territory involved in this dispute rather than from the Israeli perspective that the Palestinians are terrorists and anarchists who are unfortunately living within the borders of Israeli lands whose goals include fomenting insurrection for the purposes of destroying and undermining the Israeli homeland and government. This is an obviously large gap in perspectives.

Jimmy starts the book with a brief analysis of all the countries involved. In a few short pages he describes each country and the stability and direction of their political systems. This was very enlightening to me. It was surely an oversimplification of each country, maybe even considered a caricature by experts, but perfect for the purposes of those of us who are not educated in the modern history of the various countries involved and only know what we “read in the papers”and hear on the nightly news.

The book contains an appendix with all the various resolutions and compromises that have been suggested and sometimes agreed to over the years.
Mr. Carter’s analysis is cold and blunt. If the President has a defect it is probably his inability to temper what he considers the truth.

The book is not filled with belly laughs but I did get an occasional smile. Like when he spoke to a group of Israelis at a political forum in Israel and mentioned to his audience that he was surprised that the questions from the Israeli audience received considerably more applause than his answers. And after you have read the book the reason will be clear.

The Book closes with The President’s …

Bottom Line: “Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of the majority of its own citizens – and honor its own commitments – by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The
United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

"It will be a tragedy – for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world – if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”

After reading this book and several others on the subject I have a personal and much more cynical bottom line.

I think that peace will come to that area when either the Palestinians or the Israelis vacate the area and find another home.

The Israelis are not leaving and they never will. Israel is the Jewish last stand. They will do whatever they feel is necessary to survive ... whatever!

The Palestinians receive token and guilt money from their Arab brothers but no Arab country wants the Palestinians in their territory. They have been chased out of every country in the area that has been strong enough to do so. Even their Arab brothers wish that they would disappear.

The Palestinians should cut their losses, take as much land as they can negotiate and petition the Israelis and the governments of the world for as much money as they can get in the name of world peace.

I feel the world and even Israel and the U.S. would be willing to commit substantial amounts.

With that land and money they should build themselves a country of their own where all Palestinians are welcome.

Whether they have been treated justly or not is no longer of any concern.

If you enjoy this economic essay on minimum wage and its perils to society and the wealthy, you may enjoy "Hobo-ing America" by Richard Edward Noble.

Click on cover to the right of this page for more information on "Hobo-ing America" and living on minimum wage ... for real.





What’s Wrong with Minimum Wages?

Why Don’t We Just Leave the Well-off Alone?

By Richard E. Noble

I have worked for minimum wage or below for the majority of my employment career - which started when I was about ten years old. I have always known that it is because of me that the world, at large, and the U.S. in particular, has been going to hell in a handbag. My bosses have explained this to me over and over.

You see, it is because of my demanding this exorbitant minimum wage that we have inflation, constantly escalating prices, unemployment, teenagers idling on street corners and a vanishing industrial and manufacturing base.

Strangely enough, people who make exorbitant paychecks and profits as owners of businesses and CEOs and CFOs, and Doctors, Lawyers, Dentists, Stock brokers, people receiving dividends from their stock portfolios and Indian chiefs who own gambling casinos in Miami have just the opposite effect on the economy. Their pay increases do not cause inflation or increase prices; instead their extra money acts as a stimulus to the economy, promotes investment at home and abroad, creates jobs everywhere and, in general, makes the world a better place for everybody to live.

It goes like this: if you give Michael Jordan or some such wealthy person another billion dollars a week, as opposed to giving another dollar a week to each employee at the Nike factory in Slumbovia, or Bumslavia, or Weallstarvingistan - nothing negative, economically, occurs. Prices do not go up because Michael Jordan or another among the minority of the rich has more money. They already have everything they ever wanted. They don’t need to buy anything. How many Hummers, BMWs, yachts, and diamond rings can one person have? Besides if the price of a quarter mile long yacht goes from 147 million to 150 million who would notice. This increase wouldn’t even make it into the pages of Money Magazine.

You can give all the money you want to rich people and nothing in the economic world will change. This is an economic fact that was proven in the laboratory of real life economic science in 1929 by that great American monetary savant, Herbert Hoover. And in recent times this miracle was duplicated by G.W. Bush – another economic genius.
On the other hand, an extra dollar in the pockets of a bunch of poor people automatically throws any economy into a tailspin. Right off, the price of M-D 20-20 skyrockets along with bread, peanut butter, and Chevrolet automobiles. This hits the commodity and retail markets immediately. The price of grain and legumes all over the world goes nuts. Farmers instantly begin double cropping, planting in-between the rows, and doubling up on fertilizers and polluting pesticides; government subsidies go through the roof, while profits to the farmers go down and the price of a tomato at the IGA in Wisconsin goes to a buck-fifty apiece. General Motors has to increase production, but the cost of labor in the U.S. is bankrupting them; so their new plant in China gets the contract while the DuPont family sells off all of their shares in Aunt Jemima Pancakes. It’s chaos.

If I, and those of my ilk, were willing to work for half or one third of minimum wage, my boss then could hire two or three more morons like me and, of course, the unemployment problem would vanish. This would also, more than likely, solve the illegal immigrant problem besides.

You see, if I were willing to pick tomatoes and sleep in an abandon building or old slave cottage or a farmer’s barn or root cellar while defecating in the woods or orchards or behind the hedges of better-off people in the San Bernardino mountains like illegal immigrants do, then the farmers would not have to encourage Coyotes to smuggle poor Mexicans and Central Americans across the Rio Grande and into Miami, Seattle, New York, New Jersey and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Nor would they have to continue to falsify their labor and Social Security reports.

But because I, and others like me, are unwilling to do this, these poor farmers and packing house owners, and cottage-garment industry sweat-shop owners, and restaurant and construction company owners and landscapers, and concrete company and gas station owners, and grocery stores, and chicken and beef processing houses, and home cleaning and domestic services, and large chain department stores etc., all have to do all of these illegal, immoral things.

We minimum wage earners are like the pornographic video and bookstores in Holyoake, Missouri – we are the evil temptresses that lure the Jimmy Swaggarts and Tammy Faye Bakers into the snake pit of moral depravity; we are the Chunky Cheeses to the video game addict; we are the irresistible impulse luring the unsuspecting all over the world – we are the ones who are ruining the economic world. It is us, with our benign satisfaction with mediocrity, or unwillingness to achieve, and our ignorant and obstinate choice to remain unsuccessful.

Why is it that we continually choose to work at JR stores, and wash dishes in greasy-spoon type restaurants who provide no health insurance? Why do we continually take up residence in crime ridden ghettos? Why the heck don’t we just move? Why don’t we make application to better universities? Why do we accept advice and principles from parents who are even dumber than we are?

All of our kind hearted, generous employers are, of course, very good people; they are not criminals. They are as responsible and as civic minded as any banker, for god’s sake! It’s us; it’s me. And, you know, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t know why I act like this. I have tried to get help for this problem but I have been unable to find any psychiatrists who are willing to work for minimum wage. They feel that if they work for any less than one hundred dollars a minute, research in mental health will be abandoned and more nutty folks, like myself, will be put out onto the sidewalks and alleyways of the American inner cities. This, of course, will increase the perv quotient, promote crime, juvenile delinquency and the threat of terrorism everywhere.

It was because of people like me, way back when, demanding their pays to be raised to a minimum that forced the textile mills to leave New England. It was the same type of ugly Americans in the Midwest and eventually in the South that forced these poor, patriotic hard working mill owners to go to South America, India and Asia where now, unfortunately, they are forced to deal with the same type ungrateful breed over there. We minimum wage earners keep breeding like flies – there seems to be no end to our kind.

What is the matter with us minimum wage workers? When will we ever learn?
If we continually ask for more money, this just makes the prices of things rise; and after the prices go up, we still don’t have any more money than we used to have. So what is the sense to it? What will it take for us to learn that we must figure out how to live on whatever it is that the boss is willing to pay us?

We certainly can’t ask the bosses to take less money. Why just look around, they are barely getting by on what they have now. And besides, there are so few of them and so many of us. I mean, if we took all the money from the 10% who own and control everything – all the rich people in the world – and divided it up among all the poor in the world, the price of peanut butter and jelly in the U.S. would be a thousand dollars a jar. M-D 20-20 would only be served at fine restaurants. Golf courses would disappear and America would become one huge bowling alley. Yes, every other cardboard house that the poor have built in the garbage dumps of the world might get a new tin roof – big deal.

Poor people just don’t seem to understand, if God wanted poor people to be better off, He wouldn’t have created Conservatives.

If you find this book interesting, you may also find my two books "America on Strike" and "Mein Kampf - Analysis of Book One" to be of equal interest. Thanks.

Click on book covers to the right on this page for more information.

Declaration of a Heretic

By Jeremy Rifkin

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

I’ve taken a recent interest in books by Jeremy Rifkin. He has written several. “Declaration of a Heretic” is my second. My first was “The End of Work.” I have already posted that review.

In this book Mr. Rifkin presents his case against science – a difficult challenge to say the least.

He concentrates his attack on the two most significant breakthroughs of the 20th century: the splitting of the atom which ushered in the Atomic Age and the discovery of the double helix that brought the dawning of the Genetics Age.

“To cast these discoveries aside. To let languish the concepts that gave rise to them. To abandon the line of intellectual thought that led up to them. To say no to the human motivation that inspired them. For the true believers, the staunch upholders of the existing orthodoxy, such thought qualify as heresy.”

And so the challenge begins.

The author brings us all the way back to the Bible to trace the beginnings of this dilemma and the human penchant for learning and science. He reminds us that Adam and Eve bit of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. Knowledge and learning were the human curse plaguing mankind according to our Christian theological roots.

Now expelled from the Garden of Eden man would be forever condemned to live in constant fear of death and as a consequence of this angst he would be driven to seek security and perpetual life here on earth. Knowledge would lead to power and power would provide security and eventually life ever lasting.

Now science comes to the foreground.

“The Apostles of truth are no longer Peter, Paul, John, Mark and Luke. They are Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke and Darwin.”

We then dabble into Greek Mythology by touching onto Epimetheus and Prometheus.

“Prometheus noticed that Epimetheus had already distributed all the qualities at his disposal to the rest of the plants and animals. Not wanting to leave human beings totally unprotected, Prometheus stole the mechanical arts and fire from the gods and gave them to man and women.”

To the above scientific mix we add Adam Smith. We then proceed from Bacon to Descartes to Newton, to Smith to Darwin.

Bacon gave us the scientific method with his monumental work “Novum Organum.”
Descartes turned humans into machines and the universe into a mathematically predictable set of numbers and equations. “Give me extension and motion and I will construct the universe.”

Newton with his forces and gravity further reduced the universe to a matter of formulated laws of matter and motion.

“Locke concluded that each individual was like an isolated bit of matter in the universe with no goal than to perpetuate itself.”

Locke contended that “the negation of nature is the way towards happiness.”
Adam Smith then came and put the whammy on everything by claming that “it is only by each individual attempting his own material advantage that the common good of society is advanced.”

“Smith claimed to have discovered a natural law, the invisible hand, which he said automatically regulated the supply and demand of scarce resources among all the members of society.”

This type thinking brought us to the mandate of today’s modern civilization … efficiency.

If we will to be secure we must be efficient at all costs. Knowledge = power = control = security, which leads us all to cower beneath the dictates of efficiency and the efficiency gurus who now rule the world.

This book moves along asking all the biggest questions. Are we better off today because of the splitting of the atom or the discovery of the double helix? Has science truly been the benefactor of mankind or its nemesis? Or is it like most other things a blessing and a curse simultaneously?

If science does indeed have its negative and detrimental sides should we not be looking at it with a more reflective eye towards the damage it has done and to what can prevent further damage to man’s future on this tentative planet?

What is more important, efficiency, production and unlimited profits or human involvement, live sustaining jobs and the quality of our environment and human existence?

We now have the power via science and the splitting of the atom to explode the human race and this planet to extinction.

By way of our new scientific discoveries in biology, chemistry and genetic engineering we now have the capacity to reconstruct agriculture and human nature. Like Mrs. Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein from the annals of science fiction, we evolve to a real world in which the species barrier is not even a problem.

Today via genetic engineering we can construct crops and barnyard animals that have never existed previously. We already have a combination goat and sheep concoction and a mouse that has been injected with human hormone that the geneticists have named Mighty Mouse. It sounds rather funny but it is much more frightening than it is humorous.

We not only have the potential to do this, it is being done right now in the world around us. And it is being supervised, regulated and controlled by nobody. It has all been turned over to the so called free market. Which means it is entirely in the hands of the for-profit business community.

The oil companies have a bacteria they have spliced together in the lab that will eat oil slick. They are afraid to use it. They don’t really know what it can do.
Could it eat up all the oil reserves in the world and then present us with uncontrollable bacteria with totally unpredictable genetic possibilities? Could it combine with other natural things and produce other possibilities with no antidote.

If this were not bad enough the geneticists are now capable of cutting and pasting a new human being. A total prefabricating of human nature may be in the future. Man is attempting to scientifically take over the process of creation. A new horror along the eugenics line, may well be in our not too distant future.

When scientists first learned that it was possible to split the atom many of them standing at the testing grounds wondered if they were not in the process of totally destroying the planet. They were all not positive that the developing chain reaction that they were about to release could be stopped. They stood trembling for all mankind, but yet went forward with the test.

We were lucky that time. Will our luck continue with these new areas of discovery? Do we want to take such chances today? Wouldn’t it be wiser to put some rules and control into place?

But who will make these rules, Governments or capitalists?
The choices are on top of us. What do we do? What should we do?

The author is an optimist and a utopian of sorts. He gives us his cure for this mounting catastrophe.

This is another more than thought provoking work by Mr. Jeremy Rifkin. I would suggest everyone read it.

To say that this little book provides “much food for thought” would be grossly understating its importance.

Find out for yourself.

Get a copy of “Declaration of a Heretic.” Read it. Think about it.

It is up to us to decide if and how we and our planet will survive.

The future is here and it is scary.