-----Original Message----- From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com DH: Don't forget:
>That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the
>present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal
>classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we
>denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and
>demand the further restriction of undesirable immigration.
I've never said populism, whatever it is exactly, is a Bad Thing. I've said it's a very mixed bag, contradictory and all over the place - reflecting the material interests of petty producers, who often hate the big guys, but are not notable for the sympathy of the "pauper and criminal classes" below them.
mbs: the 'pauper' thing might be viewed in context of other rhetoric to the effect that the nation was being divided into "tramps and millionaires." But in general this is well-taken. Many agriculturalists were so poor there wasn't much beneath them, in terms of standard of living, only in terms of those who tried to work and those who didn't.
DH: By the way, many web versions of the preamble contain this:
>We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government
>while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for
>the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the
>civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew
>out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are
>in name, one united brotherhood of free [men].
Why the bracketed [men]? Is something being elided, or was the word missing? Doug
mbs: don't know. remind me Monday and I'll check directly w/the sacred texts in my office.