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[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Vintage photos of:
Using some of the photos posted on Shorpy, reader Dale Caruso put together this touching audio slide show on child workers at the turn of the century. Thanks for sharing Dale.
The video is put together well....somehow ...why do I feel some idiot needs to find a way to blame George Bush for the Great Depression? Some nitwit will find a way.
If I may impose another .. and if ken feels the quality is of shorpy standards .. please feel free to post or embed it here..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CRfGpvG-Ys
The thing about this was that to me it showed that these people, the...1,000 and and 1,000 made homeless and pennyless by the dust and drought ... did what they needed to to to survive and feed their families and resettle and start again ... something that we or at least the vast majority of us - today - would totally fail at, because we EXPECT that someone will do it for us. as you look at their photo... you see them down...but look into their eyes ... there is still pride and self-respect ...
Last year had chance to attend a conference and meet Freeman Dyson, who is a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. Something that he said keeps coming back to me ... says that "the United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?"
we are... to be blunt...no longer an industrial giant ... we ARE no more than a consumer nation... not a nation of leaders of civilization, rather, simply the customer. I think when we puruse the photos here ... and compare to what we see around us today ... it rather serves to prove his point.
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