Sunday, October 14, 2012

Wrapping Up Jack London

Jack London lived an extraordinary life. Tried all kinds of things including living life as a hard working low wage earner.
On one of his attempts at every day living he decided to become an electrician. So he went to a local power plant of an Oakland street-railway. He was willing to start at the bottom and he told that to the superintendent he met with. The job he was given was to shovel coal to the firemen who shoveled it into a furnace which created steam which was in turn used to create electricity.
The terms of his employment were "a ten hour day, every day in the month including Sundays and holidays, with one day off each month, with a salary of thirty dollars a month."

The organization I work for - the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission - apparently is in agreement that this approach to treating employees is a blueprint for success.
They have recently re-written their payroll rules to deny part timers time and a half or any increase at all for working on Sundays and holidays.
Currently, part timers can choose not to work on Sundays and holidays. However, the NHSLC is trying to re-classify part timers into some other sub-human category that will allow the commission to force part timers to work on Sundays and holidays. For straight pay.
I'm tempted to say nothing ever changes. But what bothers me is that unions were created to protect workers and to improve working conditions and pay rates and to see that workers are treated fairly.
This was a great thing while it lasted but unions now are under attack and workers are once again vulnerable.
In a climate like this, unscrupulous employers like the NHSLC will take everything they can away from employees and dare them to fight back. In the year 2012.
It is immoral, unconscionable, vile and disgusting.

After busting his hump for a while, London got to talking to the firemen he was shovelling coal to. Guys that looked at him with an all knowing smirk. They finally opened up to him and told him the job used to be done by two men, one on the day shift, one on the night shift, each earning forty dollars a month.
The superintendent had fired them and replaced them with London, saving the company fifty dollars a month. And the super warned all the other employees not to tell London the truth. As a result, London ended up working a twelve to thirteen hour day and was not paid overtime.
It's hard to believe this type of employer mentality could be embraced in the 21st century but the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission does it every day. Openly and defiantly.

John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoir is London's attempt to prove the evils of alcohol. Although he lustily indulged for a major portion of his life, he ended up believing it was detrimental to men. He voted for womens' right to vote because he believed if they got that right they would force Prohibition.
He theorizes throughout the book that most drinkers are not physically addicted but they are psychologically addicted. They called alcoholics "dipsomaniacs" in the 19th century. I love that term. I want to bring it back into common usage.
Dipsomaniacs were considered vile people in those days; the lowest of the low. London contends that there are very few dipsomaniacs; that it's all in the head.
He maintains over and over again that he had no physical craving for alcohol, that it was social situations, social norms and rituals that led him and most people to over indulge.
Sounds like an alcoholic's justification to me but he states it eloquently so I will let it be.

After becoming a successful author, he travelled in different circles. He blames another one of his bouts with drinking on the people he socialized with.

"And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I was merely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened too often to the same songs, the same jokes. I knew too much about the box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the machinery behind the scenes so well, that the posing on the stage and the laughter and the song, could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind."
This is a variation of Hemingway's "I drink to make other people more interesting."
There is much logic in that point of view.

It is an interesting book. I think it boils down to a tough guy's perspective, eloquently expressed, defending his weakness for booze from an intellectual perspective.
Like many drinkers attempt to do.

There was a cool quote from a poem by Richard Hovey near the end of the book:

"Abstain not. Life and Love, like night and day,offer themselves to us on their own terms, not ours. Accept their bounty while ye may, before we be accepted by the worms."

Dig it, baby.

I'm done with Jack London.

On to Gregg Allman.


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