West Virginia had 125,699 miners in 1948 -- but only about 15,000 remain today, and decline of Appalachian Basin coal threatens still more job loss. The Kanawha Valley had 12,800 chemical workers in 1980, but plant automation cut the number to perhaps 1,000.
Work keeps changing as the high-tech "information age" evolves. The former smokestack era, with blue-collar armies, is succumbing to high-rise office towers, fax machines, email, fiber optics, cellphones, teleconferencing, computerized operations, digital data -- and college-educated workers. Mind labor is paramount today; muscle labor is being eliminated by ever-better machines.
The transition to individualized, thinking jobs has eroded labor unions. Under 10 percent of private sector workers are organized now. Union growth is limited mostly to government and hospital employees.
Still, the need to work and support a family never changes. It's inescapable for adults, no matter how the economy shifts. Therefore, Labor Day always has meaning. As usual, we reprint some thoughts for this weekend:
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"Men suffer terribly from the death of a loved one, the breakup of a marriage, or some other personal tragedy. But what brings them to the point of immobilization most often is the loss of their job." -- Myron Brenton, The American Male
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"Most people like hard work. Particularly when they are paying for it." -- Franklin P. Jones
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"To love what you do and feel that it matters -- how could anything be more fun?" -- <I>Washington Post<P> owner Katharine Graham, in Ms. magazine, October 1974
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"I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being." -- Theodore Roosevelt, speech, Chattanooga, Tenn., Sept. 8, 1902
***
"The sleep of a laboring man is sweet." -- Ecclesiastes 4:12
nn
West Virginia had 125,699 miners in 1948 -- but only about 15,000 remain today, and decline of Appalachian Basin coal threatens still more job loss. The Kanawha Valley had 12,800 chemical workers in 1980, but plant automation cut the number to perhaps 1,000.
Work keeps changing as the high-tech "information age" evolves. The former smokestack era, with blue-collar armies, is succumbing to high-rise office towers, fax machines, email, fiber optics, cellphones, teleconferencing, computerized operations, digital data -- and college-educated workers. Mind labor is paramount today; muscle labor is being eliminated by ever-better machines.
The transition to individualized, thinking jobs has eroded labor unions. Under 10 percent of private sector workers are organized now. Union growth is limited mostly to government and hospital employees.
Still, the need to work and support a family never changes. It's inescapable for adults, no matter how the economy shifts. Therefore, Labor Day always has meaning. As usual, we reprint some thoughts for this weekend:
***
"Men suffer terribly from the death of a loved one, the breakup of a marriage, or some other personal tragedy. But what brings them to the point of immobilization most often is the loss of their job." -- Myron Brenton, The American Male
***
"Most people like hard work. Particularly when they are paying for it." -- Franklin P. Jones
***
"To love what you do and feel that it matters -- how could anything be more fun?" -- <I>Washington Post<P> owner Katharine Graham, in Ms. magazine, October 1974
***
"I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being." -- Theodore Roosevelt, speech, Chattanooga, Tenn., Sept. 8, 1902
***
"The sleep of a laboring man is sweet." -- Ecclesiastes 4:12
nn"To own your life is hardly good / unless you own your livelihood. / To own your livelihood's as bad / if, in exchange, your life is had." -- James Agee, Workers, 1946
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"It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast -- easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident; it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all." -- psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
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"The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961
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"When God foreclosed on Eden, he condemned Adam and Eve to go to work. Work has never recovered from that humiliation." -- Lance Morrow, Fishing in the Tiber, 1988
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"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy -- and Jill a wealthy widow." -- Evan Esar
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"The only jobs for which no man is qualified are human incubator and wet nurse. Likewise, the only job for which no woman is or can be qualified for is sperm donor." -- Wilma Scott Heide, quoted in her NOW biography, 1971
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"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." -- Confucius
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