Comments Elsewhere

Chris, thanks for posting this.

Mez: The owners and operators of the Triangle Shirtwaist manufactory, btw, were not successfully brought to book, although some regulations were changed and the example was used during the decades before WWII to promote the need for unions and for reining in galloping “free enterprise”.

Just to be clear, The problem wasn’t free enterprise; free enterprise didn’t exist in the garment industry in the early 20th century. Under free enterprise workers can form whatever voluntary associations they want, can walk out on jobs that they don’t want to do, can air grievances against unscrupulous employers, etc. without the threat of violent repression. But under the corporatist regime in the early 20th century, the bosses’ hired goons and uniformed goons from the government repeatedly attacked ILGWU picketers and used legal intervention and physical violence to suppress union organizing as far as they could get away with it.

That’s not free enterprise; it’s just state intervention on behalf of predatory bosses.