The Loneliness of the Long Service Worker
Factory work or domestic service? The question of humanity seems obvious, yet it turns out to be less so than one may think. The anonymity and robotic quality of factory life is juxtaposed against the life of domestic servant with an ironic conclusion:
“Ladies wonder how their girls can complain of a loneliness in a house full of people, but oh! it is the worst kind of loneliness—their share is but the work of the house. They do not share in the pleasure and delights of a home."
Thomas Jefferson
One need not say more than simply the words Thomas Jefferson. He was a walking, talking ironic contradiction who embodies that element of America. The most ironic thing about Jefferson is that he seemed to be unacquainted with irony. For instance, he was actually being entirely sincere when he explained to indigenous tribes that the history of the white man was one in which “We take from no nation what belongs to it.”
Harry Truman
Upon the return home of Japanese-American soldiers who had fought overseas during the World War II, Pres. Harry Truman noted, “You fought for the free nations of the world…you fought not only the enemy, you fought prejudice—and you won.” Ironically, has these Japanese-American soldiers stayed in the U.S., they would have been victims of prejudice perpetrated not by America’s enemy, but by the American government who would have violated their civil rights by placing them against their will into internment camps.
Savages in the New World
Those indigenous people with skin colored a variant hue from the whiter complexion of European settlers were routinely dehumanized as savages. The irony is wide enough for every single African who was ever stolen from their homeland to be sold on the slave market to walk through lined up side by side.
The Peasant Revolt That Wasn’t
Unions and strikes helped to get factory workers better conditions and a living wage, but just barely. Unionizing and striking proved incredibly efficient ways to get what could not be gotten by mere appeal to the (non-existent) better nature of the ownership class. Ironically, however, the workers failed to completely revolutionize the economic system which could quite easily have been attained simply on the basis of volume because they allowed themselves to be divided and conquered over issues of racial and cultural differences perpetrated through exploitative strategy adopted by the owners who cared nothing at all about cultural distinctions.
