What happened to small towns?

[belfastboy]

I miss blue laws. I grew up with them, and it was nice to have one day of the week when you didn't feel compelled to be doing something. When I'm dictator, they're coming back. And no Sunday baseball games that begin later than 2pm, either.

My father worked two jobs as he could not abide having a mortgage (debt was a terrible thing to him). He worked 6 days a week plus Friday nights. I am convinced he would have worked Sunday if he could. That Sunday, as a forced day off, worked well for us as we had at least the semblance of a family day although my memory of it as a kid is we had to be quiet that day as Dad was resting.

 

[belfastboy]

Of course, with those "lower prices" come the egregious labor abuses that make those "lower prices" possible. And the conditioning of the consumer to accept shoddy quality in exchange for those "lower prices" and the culture of disposability and waste those "lower prices" create. All part and parcel of the same package.

All those factors were considered and discussed widely with the rise of the consumers-rights movement in the 1930s. Consumers Union regularly published the labor ratings of various manufacturers right alongside its ratings of their merchandise.

In my recollection, the biggest advantage in dealing with a locally owned merchant was that you *knew* that merchant face to face. He or she was a part of your town and had to hold his or her head up in public. If any local merchant was a crook or a cheat, word got out fast. There was no "head office" to blame or hide behind if something went wrong -- the merchant had to answer directly to the community. That expressed community pressure at the cash register was a powerful force keeping the merchant on the straight and narrow.

I am big Costco fan.....quality merchandise at very good pricing, above average salaries, and a return it anytime policy places them at the top of my list of quality retailers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maine at the turn of the century was a long way from idyllic, although a lot of Historical Society types like to remember it that way. The limestone industry was a brutal business that worked men -- and boys, and children -- until they dropped, and women and girls were working just as hard in the textile mills and shoe factories. Fishing wasn't much better -- it was done in sailing ships and you never knew if you or your loved one was ever coming back every time they went out. The roads were muddy and poorly-maintained, and most of the buildings were flimsy wooden firetraps routinely set ablaze by sparks and ashes from nearby chimneys. Farm life was even worse, given the primitive fertilizers available and the rocky soil which wasn't exactly easy to plow with a mule or an ox. My grandfather and his brothers grew up in the 1900s and 1910s, and did not recall the period with any sort of nostalgia.

That said, it could be a nice place for the bourgeoisie summer-people types living the elegant life in Camden or in their cabins on the lakes, sitting under trees in starched white dresses reading poetry -- nothing by that awful Walt Whitman, though, Fawthaw says he's a degenerate.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I am big Costco fan.....quality merchandise at very good pricing, above average salaries, and a return it anytime policy places them at the top of my list of quality retailers.

My bigger concern about such places is where they get their cheap merchandise. Those inexpensive Bangladeshi slave-made clothes, for example. When Consumers Union was rating labor practices in the 1930s, they weren't just talking about retailers -- they traced the merchandise all the way thru the supply chain and named names every step of the way. It's interesting that they don't do this as a matter of course anymore -- whether because the distributors make it difficult to trace their tracks or their readers just don't seem to care, they no longer seem to make much of an issue of such things. Very unfortunate change of policy for an organization that once prided itself on its status as a serious watchdog not just for the end user of goods but for the workers who produced them.

 

[Fading Fast]

My father worked two jobs as he could not abide having a mortgage (debt was a terrible thing to him). He worked 6 days a week plus Friday nights. I am convinced he would have worked Sunday if he could. That Sunday, as a forced day off, worked well for us as we had at least the semblance of a family day although my memory of it as a kid is we had to be quiet that day as Dad was resting.

Your dad and mine shared a common attribute - no debt (actually two common attributes - hard work). He bought our house without a mortgage; albeit, he was 48 years old as it took him that long to save up, but he paid cash - and he was not a wealthy man. His family lost its house in the depression when he was a child and he swore to never have debt in his life - and he never did. Nor have I - living with that story pounded into my head growing up scared me too much. I bought the first home I ever owned three days before I turned 50.

 

[BlueTrain]

Oh, you should have seen a coal camp. Turns out they were literally camps; temporary villages. You'd never know there had been one in some places if you hadn't seen it.

I've mentioned the business on the main street in my hometown, most of them gone now. But we didn't live on the main street. We lived all of two blocks away from the main street. The interesting thing is, even though the former business district, all of about four or five blocks long, maybe more, depending, is not what it used to be and the few blocks down by the train station wasn't what it had been even then, things elsewhere are mostly the same. The neighborhoods where people live have changed very little. I mentioned there were new developments but not inside the city limits but only because there's no room left for anything like that.

One part of town used to flood but hasn't since the Soil Conservation Service did some work. That's where some business relocated. More development took place, including those dreadful big box stores, out to one side of town where the interstate intersects with a certain east-west highway. It's more of a crossroads not than it used to be, oddly enough. But you sure need a car.

There are still part of town that aren't so great. We shouldn't expect that to have changed. But once when we were there and going somewhere with my father to visit a relative, probably in the 1980s, we drove through one of those not so nice areas (not deserving the name "neighborhood") and my father commented that there had been a shantytown there at one time. The funny thing was, that's what it looked like to me then, so I wondered what a real shantytown looked like.

 

[Fading Fast]

My bigger concern about such places is where they get their cheap merchandise. Those inexpensive Bangladeshi slave-made clothes, for example. When Consumers Union was rating labor practices in the 1930s, they weren't just talking about retailers -- they traced the merchandise all the way thru the supply chain and named names every step of the way. It's interesting that they don't do this as a matter of course anymore -- whether because the distributors make it difficult to trace their tracks or their readers just don't seem to care, they no longer seem to make much of an issue of such things. Very unfortunate change of policy for an organization that once prided itself on its status as a serious consumer watchdog.

I want to be careful here as I am don't want to be too political. It seems that there is an absolute attempt by many companies to obscure this information today, but there is also an attempt by some companies to highlight how they do it right (or believe the do) and there are many groups besides CU trying to shine a light on it.

Point one - if horrible labor conditions are behind our cheap goods, that should be illegal and highlighted to the customer. But, point two, if we use our standards for labor, many countries that might moved from poverty to middle class won't make it because they can't compete if they have to have 40 hour work weeks, paid time off, vacations, benefits, etc. that we, for some (not all), have in this country. Cheap labor is an advantage that many countries - Japan and South Korea - for example have used to successful move from poor to middle class country.

I don't know the balance - slave labor, horrific conditions are wrong / but just blithely applying a developed country's standards can hamper the poor country's opportunity for development. Some balance must be struck. And please delete if this is too political.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All the economic betterment theory in the world doesn't help a Bangladeshi worker locked in a burning factory where he was making disposable fashions for Americans. Every time this happens there's always a rush of butt-covering press releases from blow-dried American flacks, and statements that "conditions are being improved." And yet the disasters just keep coming.

We still remember the Triangle Shirtwaist fire a hundred years later -- because the IWW made sure we did -- but these overseas disasters, because they happen to "those other people" just fly right over our heads. But sure, cheap goods for all, and we're lifting them out of poverty. In a body bag.

 

[Fading Fast]

All the economic betterment theory in the world doesn't help a Bangladeshi worker locked in a burning factory where he was making disposable fashions for Americans. Every time this happens there's always a rush of butt-covering press releases from blow-dried American flacks, and statements that "conditions are being improved." And yet the disasters just keep coming.

We still remember the Triangle Shirtwaist fire a hundred years later -- because the IWW made sure we did -- but these overseas disasters, because they happen to "those other people" just fly right over our heads. But sure, cheap goods for all, and we're lifting them out of poverty. In a body bag.

Yes, but some countries - like the ones noted - have dramatically improved the conditions for their workers as they moved up the economic scale. Every improving story isn't a lie, just as every one isn't the truth.

 

[BlueTrain]

A couple of things here. One, it is wrong that some or most people have to live wretched lives so that others can live the good life. But that's the way it's been for, well, forever. And how do you like that? I forgot the other thing I was going to say.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Your answer to that question will usually depend on how far up the pile you are. But the people at the bottom of the pile are hard to hear because of all the weight squashing down on them from the top.

Along those lines, it was -- and still is, really -- a problem in small towns that people with legitimate grievances are afraid to speak out about them. It's very hard to be a "voice in the crowd" in a small town, and when you get a reputation as the local rabble-rouser, it's not uncommon for pressure to be brought to bear against you, via your employer, to get you to shut up. Few people living paycheck-to-paycheck have the luxury of taking a stand on issues that might upset the status quo -- so the status quo is rarely challenged. I saw this first hand when I was working in the t-shirt factory -- there were abuses going on right and left, but few people were willing to stick their necks out and take a stand against them. Everyone else felt like they had no choice but to keep their noses to the grindstone and "not make trouble." "Hey, it stinks that you got mutilated by that machine they made you run with the guards off, but -- you know, I got a family to support, so I better not, um, you know...." You'll find that attitude still, in every small town today.

 

[belfastboy]

I want to be careful here as I am don't want to be too political. It seems that there is an absolute attempt by many companies to obscure this information today, but there is also an attempt by some companies to highlight how they do it right (or believe the do) and there are many groups besides CU trying to shine a light on it.

Point one - if horrible labor conditions are behind our cheap goods, that should be illegal and highlighted to the customer. But, point two, if we use our standards for labor, many countries that might moved from poverty to middle class won't make it because they can't compete if they have to have 40 hour work weeks, paid time off, vacations, benefits, etc. that we, for some (not all), have in this country. Cheap labor is an advantage that many countries - Japan and South Korea - for example have used to successful move from poor to middle class country.

I don't know the balance - slave labor, horrific conditions are wrong / but just blithely applying a developed country's standards can hamper the poor country's opportunity for development. Some balance must be struck. And please delete if this is too political.

Yes, do you know that South Korea and Ghana had a similar standard of living in the 1960's and Ghana has by far much richer natural resources. At one point SK was a low wage, low cost producer for Japan......look at them now!

 

[ChiTownScion]

We don't allow the sale or serving alcohol here before 9am Sunday, which is a relatively recent slackening of the old 11am law. Methodists wouldn't even drink grape juice before 11am.

9 am? I doubt if most of the major league booze hounds that I've encountered are out of the sack by nine.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lobstermen work early in the morning, and they're often ashore by 9 and heading straight for the beer cooler. Nothing gets between a sternman and his suitcase of Bud.

 

[BlueTrain]

Small towns don't seem as nice today as the did yesterday, do they? The comment about bending the rules and ignoring worker abuses is not so much a characteristic of small towns as it is of industry in general and some industries are either downright unhealthy or dangerous or both.

As for the small towns themselves, they change; nothing stays the same. They either grow or they decay. Reasons good and bad abound. If a place is more or less prosperous, it will grow and eventually it will outgrow the old "downtown," at least in some ways. The growth might be planned for and managed to some extent but it is difficult to make happen, no matter what the chamber of commerce tries to tell you. But it used to be that growth was mostly something believed to be good; the opposite never was, of course. It's hard to make sense of it all but make sure the water supply is being looked after properly.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Lobstermen work early in the morning, and they're often ashore by 9 and heading straight for the beer cooler. Nothing gets between a sternman and his suitcase of Bud.

It's the same way around here for refinery and chemical plant workers who work night shifts. They get off work at 6:00am, and they're ready for some cold suds. There are icehouse all along the roads leading out of that area and they're packed at 07:30. Weekdays of course. In Texas, you can't sell alcohol before noon on Sunday's unless you're a restaurant with 50% or more of your sales in food. Then you can serve at 10:00. But you can't buy alcohol at a retailer before noon and you can't buy hard liquor on Sundays, only beer and wine. This is state law. Some local laws are even more restrictive and som counties are completely dry.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think there was a sense of solidarity that isn't really there anymore. "Hurt one of us and you hurt us all, befriend one of us and you befriend us all."

With "growth," so called, has come competing agendas that tend to appeal to narrow interests rather than the well-being of the community as a whole. Maybe it's just a New England thing, but going back to colonial times community solidarity wasn't just a nice thing, it was absolutely necessary to the community's survival. Your neighbor's well-being was inextricably tied to your own -- nowadays that no longer seems to be the case. Then too, when people have no roots in a town -- when it's just a place they're passing thru, either to get away from, as a stop on the way up the ladder, or as a place to "summer" in, they aren't going to have that sense of having something at stake that goes beyond property values.

The town I grew up in was overwhelmingly made up of people who'd lived there for generations. A while back I went thru the entire 1940 census for the town, and most of the people who were living there then were people I knew personally when I was growing up there thirty years later -- and if they'd passed away, I knew their kids or grandkids. That town today is no longer like that -- in the neighborhood where my mother still lives, there's only two households that were there before 1990, let alone since 1940 (my ma was listed in that census, on that very same street, and she's the last one standing.) And as a result of those changes, the solidarity that used to exist in that neighborhood, and in that town, is no longer there. People come and go too quick for it to develop.

It went beyond "niceness" to something more fundamental. These were our *people.* It wasn't just a place to live. It was our blood.

 

[HudsonHawk]

...Then too, when people have no roots in a town -- when it's just a place they're passing thru, either to get away from, as a stop on the way up the ladder, or as a place to "summer" in, they aren't going to have that sense of having something at stake that goes beyond property values...

Something that ticks me off...people who use "summer" as a verb. Right up there with people who don't know how to use adverbs and say things like "drive safe".

 

[LizzieMaine]

Verbing nouns is a sin.

 

[Paisley]

I hope this isn't too political, but some economic growth theory involves enforcing contracts, property rights, protection of other rights, and access to banking--basics most of us take for granted. (See Hernando de Soto.) Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.