I always get pretty depressed when I see old union cartoons from the late 19th century that are still super relevant to today, like this one 
This specific cartoon was inspired by the situation with the serfdom tycoon George Pullman built outside Chicago, which led to the Pullman Strike of 1894 paleofuture.gizmodo.com/blood-on-the-t…
If you read the article on Pullman's worker community, you'll notice a lot of similarities between him and modern tycoons like Jeff Bezos, especially with how he convinced people the community he was building would help laborers and be a technological and social marvel.
This quote about Pullman could really apply to any number of current billionaires:
"He wanted to create a company town where everybody would be in conditions that would allow them to be content with their place in the capitalist system."
"He wanted to create a company town where everybody would be in conditions that would allow them to be content with their place in the capitalist system."
Obviously, Pullman's plan ultimately failed, mostly because the workers soon realized they were trapped and Pullman was eradicating their rights. They weren't able to own the homes they lived in, they had to submit to a caste system and anyone who tried to deviate was punished.
Pullman monetized things that were otherwise normally free social services, like the library, where workers had to pay what would be $100 today for access. He also had employees monitoring everything the laborers said and did. They were under constant surveillance.
Anyway, Pullman's community really destabilized once the Crash of 1893 happened and Pullman drastically lowered wages without lowering rent and refused to help his laborers in any way, even though his company was still extremely well off financially.
The frustration over this was the straw that broke the camel's back not just for the community, but for the situation with railroad laborers across the US. It opened the door for Eugene V. Debs and the ARU to mount a national railroad strike.
Pullman had ruined the lives of his employees to such a degree they didn't budge an inch when Pullman brought in violent strikebreakers. They eventually shut down 2/3 of the US railroad system and stopped the mail service almost entirely.
You don't really hear about this era of American history very much in school but the era immediately after the Crash of 1893 was more or less constant revolt. Businesses and tycoons were attacked constantly, they paid for their greed with their lives in some cases.
Everyone talks about the '60s as the most effectively turbulent time for American protest but this is absurd. The 1890s were the dawn of an era where laborers brought the country to a literal standstill and made the wealthy elite terrified.
And in nearly every situation like the Pullman Strike, the spark was a tycoon who thought he could perpetually exploit people while he amassed a near infinite supply of money and face no repercussions.
Since the 1890s & the eventual recognition of the union system, our government has consistently worked to create laws and structures to keep a similar labor climate from ever happening again. But unions were outright illegal for the most part in the 1890s & that stopped nothing
We need to start listening to the same anger that drove the laborers of the 1890s to overthrow oppressors behaving the same way our current business leaders are behaving and stop believing we have no power.
Because it is absurd that more than 100 years and so many successful strikes later, we are right back where we were then in so many ways.
