The Price of Patriotism: Why Congress Ignores Its Own Workers
The Everett Labor Journal skewers federal lawmakers for posturing over international crises while blocking life-saving safety legislation for American laborers.
The story, cleaned up
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Every so often, Congress turns black in the face, so to speak, about the solemn duty one owes to its subjects. Our flag is gathered by patriotic bards and flung over some American citizen abroad who may have been offended by a foreign despot, and the American eagle screams aloud its indignation. But it is rather droll to see Congress work itself into a perfect frenzy of patriotism when some citizen is hurt abroad and remain blind as a bat to injustices perpetrated at home. Some of these statesmen who are sticking out their tongues at Russia have been persistent in their opposition to any and all measures looking to the proper safeguarding of life and limb of American workmen engaged in industrial pursuits. The United States is behind every other civilized nation on earth, save Turkey, in the matter of federal legislation for the protection of injured workmen. If some modest little thing like the steel trust or the beef trust wants to do business at the expense of the lives and limbs of its working men and women, what right has Congress to 'throttle industry?' The trusts rather like this patriotic outburst once in a while. It doesn't hurt them and it tends to deaden the pain felt by the general public while it is being sandbagged and its pockets turned inside out.
“The United States is behind every other civilized nation on earth, save Turkey, in the matter of federal legislation for the protection of injured workmen.”
This 1911 critique of corporate lobbying and selective congressional outrage mirrors modern frustrations with policy stagnation. The argument—that lawmakers prioritize abstract global projection over the concrete safety and economic security of their own workers—remains a core tension in American civic life.
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