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Welcome to a brand of
Mathematical
Services.
The height of resistance of the 'working' man seems to have
culminatedin Europe
around 1848 (half way through the rise of Bradford to it's zenith) when
revolutions broke out,
some violent and 'workers' were appeased more. In UK (Bradford) this
was the ascendancy of The Chartists,
whoose revolutionary ideals petered out as a damp squib - connsumate
with shooting yourself in the foot
in the first place. Then there were further attemps by the working and
middle (working but better paid?) classes
to improve things. There were various initiatives: The 2nd Reform Act
of 1867 gave many more (working) men the vote
- no doubt so they could have a say in their condition, centres of
learning for the working class
(Mechanics Institutes)- so they could learn about their condition, art
galleries - so they could escape into fantasy from their condition
etc. The helping middle were actually wary of helping - they didn't
like the violence of the ex-Chartists,
they thought they needed moral training, religion (the helpers were
often from a strong religious
background themselves). A little patronising in a way. The big issues:
food and housing problems,
dangerous work practices, significant education, sewerage, water
supply, rubbish removal they were slow to be addressed.
Structure basically comes later and slowly. The problem is those who
have
money and are well off giving it to others and hence risking
diminishing their condition or prospects. The tendancy
is for only the very wealthy to be able to do that - hence the bond.
The song sums it up.
I am not a communist or near one in any way, but those who the
communists look to seem
to have some insight. I stumbled across this quote in a letter from
Karl Marx to Engels:
"There is a schism among the unenfranchised - a schism which although
inarticulate, is beyond the hope of
immediate conciliation. The hewers of wood and drawers of water are
widely speperated in sentiment and interest
from the educated, intelligent and not infrequently refined fellow
labourer, who is
as certain of bettering his condition as the ignorant and the immoral
are for ever
flourishing in the mire, although men and gods decreed that they
shpould rise"
It seems to me that in America these two types are indistinduishable,
there's no accents much
and not much a concept of class.
Paul D. Foy:
On the 'hewers of wood', I want to an interesting talk the other day in
which an interesting subdivision of work at Proctor Brothers, Leeds, UK
mouse trap factory was mentioned. Only the men sawed the wood, whilst
the women manipulated the wire producing the spring deploying the trap.
No doubt they had the fingernails for this.
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