The Finest Products of Capitalism

Family of migrant fruit worker camped along railroad tracks.
Berrien County, Michigan. 1940
Photographer: John Vachon
Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Archive

A couple of stories on NPR this morning had some actual content.

As always, items are presented with no—or very narrow—context. Yet there are many dots that could be connected by a culture willing and able to do so.

Unemployed Iraq vet considers suicide after being wiped out by BP disaster...

The "we don't ask for help around here" mentality will never die, as it serves the owners so well.

Yet there was a time when we had a government that wanted the public to look around and see what needed to change.

From one moment in that time—July 1940—and from a single place in a landscape full of hurt: a few of Vachon's Berrien County photos—


Migrant child eating in front of tent home.


Father and son from Chicago picking strawberries...


Migrant woman from Arkansas in roadside camp...
















Migrant fruit worker from Tennessee...















Family of migratory workers from Texas.


Baby in back seat of migrant workers' automobile...

The right has used the same tactics throughout the years.

Today, it screams there is no poverty because people own TVs.

So I expect that the New Deal's opponents called that baby pampered, being born to parents who had a car with a plush seat.

But one thing has changed: in the 30s and 40s—or any time before Reagan—most people would have found it absurd to say that, because they had cars to camp in, the families John Vachon met were doing just fine.

Another difference: the Depression-era press was as Republican and slanted then as it is now, but before ownership concentration, there were commonly available alternatives.

Of the other story this morning, there's no cost to Republicans in causing Millions To Lose Unemployment Benefits.

Not when Fox has a large voting segment of the population cheering for the unemployed to be screwed.

The long-ago wisdom of St. Ronnie—that "Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders"—is on its way to being unquestioned.

Later this morning, Clever Sister forwarded a local link.

The social safety net is truly renewed this holiday season: donate a toy, and area businesses will give you a free tattoo or an oil change.

Excess humans in an economy without jobs.

Fathers thinking their families would be better off without them.

In another place, and a bit earlier than the WPA, an artist had some things to say about the social breakdown around him...


John Heartfield
The Finest Products of Capitalism, 1932