I'm returning to thinking about this in response to some very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments by KGB999 on my post on Harboring and Friendship.  A very quick caveat.  I'm not trying to propose solutions here-I have a few ideas, but they're half-boiled at best, so I'll see if I can finish cooking them before I serve them up.  The questions reaised seem to relate to the role of immigration in this country, mostly present, but historical as well...the effect on jobs for Citizens and the effect on wages for jobs for citizens.

I'm going to ask a little indulgence from you so I can be excused from looking too deeply at the nineteenth century.  I can document this to a greater extent than I do here, but labor historians have generally agreed that nativism has been a political issue since at least the 1840s.  

Michael Hall writes

    In the nineteenth century, the term "nativism" referred to white, native-born, Protestant Americans' hostility to European immigrants. Since many of those immigrants prior to the Civil War were Roman Catholics, ethnic prejudice against immigrants was usually accompanied by visceral hatred of Catholics as well. Indeed, because Americans had overtly identified themselves as a Protestant, anti-Catholic nation since the seventeenth century and because prominent Protestant clergymen had warned since the early nineteenth century of a Papal plot to subvert American liberty and seize control of the United States politically through the use of slavish Catholic immigrant minions, waves of new European immigration which spawned outbursts of nativist sentiment also provoked anti-Catholicism. Immigration from England, Ireland, and Germany -- as well as Canada and other European nations -- was constant throughout the nineteenth century, but it especially swelled between 1845 and 1855 as immigrants fled famine, poverty, and political turmoil in Ireland and Germany.

There are some great campaign documents at the website behind the link.  What strikes me is how consistent the complaints have been.  America was hardly crowded when No Irish Need Apply was the war cry.  Philadelphia and Boston were hubs of anti-immigrant sentiment as was New York City in the Civil War Era. Immigrants were used to scare workers in the Homestead strike and the Pullman Strikes as well.  The Sacco and Vanzetti case was twentieth century example of a scare campaign fueled by anti-immigrant sentiments.  

But what I'd like to think about here-free form, I'm afraid--is not nativism but some other phenomena which relate to each other at least in similarity of effect:  Migration within the country and whether there is a difference between the idea of "no work" and the idea of "no work anyone wants to pay for".  My current conviction is that the second of these is the truer expression.  Again, I'm going to sketch to these ideas very generally, with an intent to come back to those which generate a little interest.

Out Migration and In Migration, and the Escalator to the Bottom.

How did the "Rust Belt" become rusty, anyhow?  Rust is a product of dis-use, not overuse.  I can recomment the histories of Howard Zinn, another gallant progressive fighter, for those who want to trace this in detail...but population shifts within this country have probably injured labor more than importing the excess population of countries from abroad.  The two first great period of this began with the cotton and leather industries in the nineteenth centures, when the moguls of those industries left the organized north for the "free labor" south-incidentally using race suspicion to keep black and white workers from unionizing together in their own economic self-interest.  Fear of the other then was as potent as fear of the other now.    Tom Watson confronted that fear in 1892:

     Why should the colored man always be taught that the white man of his neighborhood hates him, while a Northern man, who taxes every rag on his back, loves him? Why should not my tenant come to regard me as his friend rather than the manufacturer who plunders us both? Why should we perpetuate policy which drives the black man into the arms of the Northern politician?

    Let us draw the supposed teeth of this fabled dragon by founding our new policy upon justice - upon the simple but profound truth that, if the voice of passion can be hushed, the self-interest of both races will drive them to act in concert. There never was a day during the last twenty years when the South could not have flung the money power in the dust by patiently teaching the Negro that we could not be wretched under any system which not afflict him likewise; that we could not prosper under any law which would not also bring its blessings to him
.
    To the emasculated individual who cries "Negro supremacy!" there is little to be said. His cowardice shows him to a degeneration from the race which has never yet feared any other race. Existing under such as they now do in this country, there is no earthly chance for Negro domination, unless we are ready to admit that the colored man is our superior in will power, courage, and intellect
.
    Not being prepared to make any such admission in favor of any race the sun ever shone on, I have no words which can portray my contempt for the white men, Anglo-Saxons, who can knock their knees together, and through their chattering teeth and pale lips admit that they are afraid the Negroes will "dominate us."

Tom Watson Failed. 

Industry fled organized labor and elevated the economic condition of the old Confederacy until the owners of those factories discovered even chaper labor overseas.

I would peg the second period to the post 1960 era, though  the there may be more to this even earlier.  I'm referring to the "Second Civil War"-this one not sectional but economic.  States, Counties within States, and Cities within counties offering bribes (I think that's a fair term-some might disagree) to encourage corporations-national and international corporations-to locate in their communities.  Tax rebates, tax deferrals, special tax deals-some of them stretching further than the effective life of the factory in question-offered as incentives to relocate from elsewhere.  This practice decimated the tax base of the old community and placed the burden for corporate services on the citizens of the new communities-as workers (income taxes) and as consumers (sales taxes).  Big guys win, little guys lose...nothing too new about that story, is there?

I would argue that both the movement away from areas of labor strength and the movement toward areas of corporate tax weakness did more harm to the workers than immigrant labor ever did.  Which brings me to my rhetorical question:

Is there a difference between "not enough work" and "not enough work we want to pay for?'  I argue there is.  And here I'm going to go all Keynesian on you-Keynesian and Lockean, in a way.  I'm going to fly as fast as I can away from monetary theory, and just meditate.  Om, Om, Om.

Work...the dignity of labor, and the extraction from the commons.  Good old John Locke.  Stimulate the economy by injecting money into it to raise consumption, good old John Maynard Keynes.  Inject at the bottom, not the top, Good old Dean Baker.  Good old Paul Krugman (both younger than good old aMike).  Work And INFRASTRUCTURE.

I want to use infrastructure a little more broadly than it is usually used.  I want it to include any physical structure made by man which allows persons to live in community with each other.  In other words, I want to include houses and to lesser degree factories.  




I was directed to pictures of "Feral Houses" in Detroit by something I read on line.  If it was a blog here at TPM I owe the blogger an acknowledgment, but I've forgotten though the site is well bookmarked now.  The website I've bookmarked, Sweet Juniper, is filled with pictures as evocative as the one above.  

What do you see when you see a house like the one above?  I see the dignity of labor despoiled, among other things-something withdrawn from the commons, and then laid to waste. Locke said we were never to withdraw things from the common only to let them spoil, and while he may have referred to acorns and apples, I don't think he would accuse me of stretching his metaphor beyond reason.  When I see the labor, I also see the laborers...the carpenters, the masons, the plumbers-all pouring their lives into their work-likely the only testimony of their existence.  The laborers-the Irish, the Germans, The Poles, The Swedes, The Blacks, the Italians, the tribes of man entire.  

And I think what a colossal waste, what an insult to them and their skills, and I ask why on earth we allow this sort of thing to happen.  The property may have been private, but the presence of the property is public, and the presence remains part of the commons.   Why do we allow it to go to wrack and ruin?

No answers this time around: I excused myself from having to provide answers.  But here's a suggestion, massive population migrations like those leaving urban wastelands in Detroit or Cleveland while leaving Southern California on the edge of death by dehydration are in part by-products of this escalator to the bottom in the name of cheap labor and tax avoidance.  And in answer to the question whether there is a difference between lack of need of work and lack of willingness to pay for work.  I'd answer-just look at that house-and at this one.   



Over one hundred and forty years ago, the United States Passed The Homestead Act.  

    With the secession of Southern states from the Union and therefore removal of the slavery issue, finally, in 1862, the Homestead Act was passed and signed into law. The new law established a three-fold homestead acquisition process: filing an application, improving the land, and filing for deed of title. Any U.S. citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and lay claim to 160 acres of surveyed Government land. For the next 5 years, the homesteader had to live on the land and improve it by building a 12-by-14 dwelling and growing crops. After 5 years, the homesteader could file for his patent (or deed of title) by submitting proof of residency and the required improvements to a local land office.

There has been some advocacy for a new homestead act by such organizations as Utopia Springs.  The idea is interesting but the location and motivation is a bit wrong, my humble opinion.  Urban Homesteading is more like what I have in mind.   But this has an aura of granola which is perhaps a bit more than I'm advocating.  Why not just say that all abandoned property shall be considered returned to the commons, and available for homesteading under the conditions layed out in the homestead act...with the exception of the 160 acre plot requirement.  Any citizen or intended citizen willing to improve the land and rescue a feral house within five years shall have title to the house  and in the case of the undocumented, be on their way to citizenship.

Is there the will to pay for a program like this, granted the work is necessary and socially valuable.  Probably not.  Which is too bad, really.  Knitting the fabric of the community back together benefits the entire community.  And the work of our immigrant forebears would have a resurrection besides. The work, whether done by citizens, legal aliens, or undocumented workers, would give the place its presence back.

Some people have trouble viewing posts with embedded links, and while I'd love to embed this, I  would rather have them able to see what homestead possibilities are available in Detroit for themselves.  So Click here and prowl around a bit.  Similar areas can be found all over the United States.

I've been trying to create a usable link to a map of abandoned property in Detroit, and nothing so far seems very friendly.  Try This One   If that doesn't work.  Visit SmoovB's google map page and click on the top one.