day THIRTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY FOUR

The Way

In the ongoing war

between capital and labor

that surely started in the caves

if not sooner,

labor almost always lost,

except for a brief time

in 1940s America,

when unions exerted

temporary strength

that compelled concurrence

from begrudging bosses.

Then capital developed

international mobility

and no longer needed

American workers

who gave their best

on the assembly lines,

but cost too much

and made too many demands

to be treated with care.

So the lords of profit

closed their factories,

abandoned the workers

who made them rich

and built in third world countries

where labor was cheap

and not empowered.

The decline of the blue collar class

eroded the foundation of the nation

built on sweat and muscle,

now replaced by hi-tech

service jobs for the underclass,

unadaptable

to the Information Age.

So the Land of Promise,
the hope of the mass of humanity,

now resembles other lands

where the rich rule,

their servants prosper

while the rest of us

struggle to survive.

--Gary Beck