As
Douglass said, “Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.”
The doing with the Negro was the worst, and still is, but the doing with the
worker has come a close second. First the worker had to be exempted from the law against combinations,
then protected from the exploitation of long work days. Then the worker had to
be protected from want with government social insurance instead of his own
mutual-aid society. The result was inevitable. The working class came to expect
that the ruling class would look after it with good jobs and good wages
forever.
But
the labor unions exempted from laws against combination turned into parasites
that killed their host manufacturing corporations and their good jobs at good
wages, and government social insurance is not social and not insurance, but a
way for the ruling class to pay off its supporters.
Then
the ruling class tired of its working class supporters, decided they were
racists and sexists, and went back to its old game of playing mischief with the
Negro.
