Monday, September 5, 2011

sixteen tons

you load sixteen tons, what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt, St. Peter don't you call me, cause I can't go...I owe my soul to the company store...

then unionize bucko!! While the song is usually attributed to Merle Travis, to whom it is credited on his 1947 recording, George S. Davis, a folk singer and songwriter who had been a Kentucky coal miner, claimed on a 1966 recording for Folkways Records to have written the song as "Nine-to-ten tons" in the 1930s. Davis' recording of his version of the song appears on the albums George Davis: When Kentucky Had No Union Men and Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian.
According to Travis, the line from the chorus "another day older and deeper in debt" was a phrase often used by his father, a coal miner himself. This and the line "I owe my soul to the company store" is a reference to the truck system and to debt bondage. Under this scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers which could be exchanged for only goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.

Labor Day....it's not about trust funders..or wealthy divorcees..or drunks partying all the time..or potheads or slackers or slumlords who write the same editorial over and over again for the News-Press....or beauty pageants..or hacking into emails and invading privacy...it's not about corporate welfare...it's not about nonprofit charities stealing money from 9/11 victims....


it's about the men and women who tried to save victims of 9/11..the firefighters who have been blamed by rightwingers because they have pensions for the financial woes in America....it's not about the corporations who had to be bailed out by the taxpayers..or about Enron who screwed their own workers while trying to steal fom Californians....it's not about banks and insurance companies who forgot about their customers and focused on enriching the board members and CEOs....20 millions dollar severance packages...geez!!

it's about a work ethic..you get up and go to work sometimes when you don't want to...but you know you have to....it's the thing to do..to add something to the workforce..to keep the machines running, the stores open, the water flowing, the criminals in check..it's about people helping you do the job, not trying to get in your way...

it's about the right to unionize...and those fascists who want to stand in your way...the News-Press is a perfect example of a fascist dictatorship...Wendy demands loyalty and patriotism to her and big corporations... she advocates war to stimulate economies, and makes certain sectors of society into 'scapegoats' to divert blame from their own failed policies.....this explains Lanny Ebensteins anti-union/worker editorials...one on Aug 31, one on Sept 2 and one on Sept 4...all to divert blame for the failed free market/Wall Street economic policies that led to the global financial mess..private corporation fraud and greed....and stupidity....

like Lanny who is very concerned about Mike Self and Dale Francisco not being re-elected because the police union now favors Sharon Byrne...is Sharon the new breed of Republican? not a member of ass-kissing Team Wendy...if I satirized Sharon in the past, I hearby un-satirize her...she's HOT!!!

everytime Dale talks at a meeting he goes on these long rambling lectures like who the fuck gives a shit....solutions not lectures!!
and Mike Self just bobble-heads about bulb-outs all day...I simply have had it up to here with these two~~
back in the old days, corporations could mistreat workers and cut corners..not so today...even though America has its share of fascists, everytime they open their mouths, they expose themselves...good companies treat employees fairly and unions necessarily aren't needed...but beware of anyone who wants to take the right to unionize away..whether you're a private or public worker..


don't forget to balance work and play, like this surfer!!

locally, the fascist hierarchy is Wendy, the righteous leader with a secretive vanguard of zombies led by Don "Dipper" Katich...all trying to control the working class while they sit around watching FOX NEWS at work!!
this Labor Day, help stamp out fascism by fighting for the rights of the working class...the backbone of America...

1 comment:

Eugene V. Debs said...

Happy Labor Day from a happy laboring union member of AFT Local 1828 AFL-CIO.