This was happening around the time I was born. Notice what the signs say: Voting Rights, Jobs and Decent Pay, Good Education; Equal Rights. Now fast forward to recent years:
Why are the same issues coming back to haunt us? Didn’t we solve all the problems back in 1964 and 1968? What is going on?
The march of progress is not a straight line moving ever upwards. It has fits and starts. It makes rapid progress, then falls again when those threatened by it react. It is blessed at times by the confluence of amazing people who in a single moment come together to move society to the greater good. Likewise, it suffers under the congregation of evil men who desire a new Gilded Age.
At the turn of the last century, one hundred years ago, my grandparents were born. One of them was named Theodore with no middle name. This was in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, who also had no middle name. My father was also named Theodore - no middle name - in his honor. Theodore Sr. and Theodore Jr. were both printers, and my father served his apprenticship at the newspaper where my grandfather worked. Both were members of the Typographical Union, and when I was four years old, we moved to Northern Virginia because my dad had landed a job as a linotype operator at the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) in Washington D.C.
I recall as a young teen in the late 1970s he took me to his work in a cavernous building at the Navy Yard in Washington. At one end stood 4 linotype machines. Using a keyboard, the operator could type in lines of text, which would be mechanically molded from hot lead into solid lines of type, which would then be framed into a galley to be used by a printing press. A gifted operator could do up to 35 words per minute on it. There were a number of other machines, including a massive hydraulic chopper used to cut reams of paper into smaller pages. At the time, his primary responsibility was to create library cards for the Library of Congress. He also printed pamplets, and other things that were special ordered by Congress. I remember his work area - as huge as it was - was relatively empty with only a few others working there. Maybe it was during the holidays? I can’t recall the date. This was at the height of the size of the GPO which had 8000 employees in the 1970s-80s. This wasn’t to last as demand for published material grew, and delivery methods changed.
In 1981 my parents presented me with my first computer for Christmas: a Texas Instruments TI-99 4A, which had a whopping 16 Kbytes of RAM - shared with the video processing system. To put that in context, 16K is the size of a very short, short story of 2000 words. It was also a whopping $525 ($1,760 in 2023 dollars), something I didn’t appreciate at the time. I was in the first computer programming class offered at my high school, and the computers we had to use were Apple][‘s and NCR machines in the classroom, along with two VDTs (video display terminal), and a dot matrix printer-terminal connected to a larger minicomputer hidden at some undisclosed location, that could task switch between all the terminals in the lab area, and which we could print out our assignments on the printer, that had a keyboard and also doubled as a terminal. I learned Basic and Fortran languages, and the basics of how computers worked, and were programmed.
The next year my father was nearly laid off, as the GPO decided to go all in on digital computer typesetting, and the linotype was relegated to the trash heap after nearly 100 years as state of the art in publishing. Instead, they made him a manager over one of the groups using the new digital consoles that replaced systems and processes in operation since the 1890s. He learned the new systems, and I recall him talking about using his type setting ruler on the systems, and me thinking, why don’t they just program that into it so they don’t have to worry about a separate measuring instrument for the page? But, as I was to learn later in life, progress isn’t a continual vast jump ahead to a perfect end state. Most times it is about incremental changes as people learn what new systems are capable, and incapable, of doing - and for good reason.
In 2006 I was working for a subsidiary of AT&T as a systems architect and developer in the operations team; I built tools for other operations groups (like advanced technical support) to help them do their jobs, and I also built systems to capture data for our engineering group, so they could manage growth and performance of the systems. We worked with our mobile phone subsidiary - Cingular - on integrating the Apple iPhone 1 into our systems. The iPhone was amazing because the touch screen user interface on the phone was a quantum leap ahead. It was far more intuitive than any phone before, while placing the computing power of a personal computer including 4 GB of storage (4000 novels worth of text), access to the internet and the telephone network integrated together in the palm of your hand.
The most brilliant part was the software ecosystem that Apple provided for third parties - never seen before in the highly regulated telephony marketplace. I knew it was a turning point. What I didn’t realize is how these devices and the networks they connected would not only become crucial tools for activists, and regular people who didn’t have the economic ability to buy a computer, the world over. They would also become ubiquitous tools for companies, governments, and other nefarious actors on a level of sophistication that boggles the mind.
In 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law by then president Trump. It was sold as good for workers, but mainly benefited Corporations by lowering the corporate tax rate from up to 39% on a scale, to a flat rate of 21%. This increased the incomes of corporations and rich individuals, and had little if any impact on the working class. It also increased the national debt. Case in point, rather than staving off continuing layoffs at AT&T, it only seemed to accellerate them year over year. Nothing trickled down. In 2019 after laying off 1/3 of my team, I was laid off and was not successful as my father had been moving into the ‘new’ technology within the corporation. There was no analog of a clear and incremental pathway; the path was gone, and I was falling through the sky at 55.
This is when I started to really understand the system. It was not built for you or I. It was built for the rich and these artifices called ‘corporations’ which have more rights than real people have and absolutely no loyalty to you. It was designed to transfer wealth on a continuing basis from the poor to the rich. Growth is demanded, even when growth isn’t possible or needed. The working class are just factors in that machine. The extent of my life span has been a regression in the advances made at the beginning of the last century which built up the middle class and established unions and the power of the people. We are slipping backwards.
This returns me to my original question: didn’t we solve these problems in the 1960s? Yes, and no. On the one hand, we did indeed put in place all the things that should have been done instead of the Compromise of 1877, which prematurely stopped Reconstruction that should have been seen all the way through. At that time, we allowed traitors and business interests to get off the hook, and the Jim Crow South followed. But, just like in 1877 we did not follow through, and make sure everyone who would rebel for personal or financial interests was sidelined from participating. They regrouped, and spent the last 50 years packing the courts, making inroads inside the GOP, and overturning or neutering many of the New Deal policies and Civil Rights Acts that preceded. And this leads us to today.
Today we find ourselves on the brink of a second Trump presidency. Much like Rutherford B. Hays in 1877, Trump does not have solid mandate. Hays election was considered fraudulent by the Democrats, who in the South, ironically benefitted from the Compromise of 1877 that put him in office. Trump’s election was the result of failure to prosecute him for treason and sedition, and hold him accountable - in addition to gerrymandering and other manipulations of the voting rights act.
My message to you this season: while the Gilded Age could be said to start with Rutherford B. Hays’ administration, it was also the starting place of the recognition of inequality, and all the work that lead to the changes of the Progressive Era exemplified by the work of Theodore Roosevelt and his shift from republican to progressivism. Do not lose hope. This time is a time of good works to pave the way for change when society is ready, and has matured enough to move forward again. And while we slid back a step or two, we are still living in a world far more equitable than it was 50 years ago, so don’t despair.
If we are to win again and be a leader in the world, we have to be an example to the world. We need to rise up and hold ourselves and all Americans to a higher standard of behavior. We must never compromise with evil. We must grow up, and take responsibility, instead of acting like greedy children. This starts at home - in our own homes - and spreads out to be fair and righteous to everyone. Take responsibility. I firmly believe that is the key to making the world a better place.
I’m writing and publishing this story online, and directly using a computer and a connection to the internet. Democratizing concepts and systems unheard of and unimagined when my father and grandfather started their careers. The technology they relied upon for almost 100 years no longer exists except in museums. The new technology is both helpful, and a danger, if it is allowed to be misused to drag humanity backward, rather than moving it forward. Let’s move forward together into the new year!
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes to You and Yours!