Catching Up, Slowly

WAL MART, INC., has settled a lawsuit involving the state of california, and the disposal of hazardous waste materials by the world's largest, or perhaps second largest, corporation. 
The HAZ-MAT consisted of pesticides, bleach, hair spray, fungicides, and rodentcides, and how damaged containers of these chemicals were being dealt with, which was in violation of the Clean Air Act. Wal Mart will end up paying about eighty two million in fines, will agree to sin no more, and will move on. The usual scenario.

How many times have we been told that the business of america is business, that the corporations are the engines of prosperity, and that government regulation is an unnecessary evil wiich stifles free enterprise, competition, and makes us all, all the poorer. Billions, maybe?

Robber barons like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller built america on the backs of vietual slave labor, importing cheap labor, abusing it, casting it aside without help or hesitation.. Finally, around the beginning of the twentieth century, people started noticing.

In 1905 Upton Sinclair wrote and published the seminal true novel "The Jungle", which opened the eyes of the public, and led to the passage in the same year of the Food and Drug Act, which brought government regulation to the meat packing industry, and began the process of forcing big business to operate, if not humanely, at least sanely.

"The Jungle" should be required reading, if there should be any such thing as requird reading. Usually excerpts are included in high school history books, usually the one about rats and rat poison being ground up, canned, and sold with the rest of the meat and animal by products. This famous passage isn't even the worst part, however.

The worst part is the horrendous deception, enslavement, exploitation and destruction of workers who came to america hoping to find streets paved with gold. WE still haven't quite gotten around to the gold streets, but finally, after decades of violent struggle and belated, teeth pulling action by the federal government, workers are treated with some shred of fairness in this country, and consumers are protected from the worst ravages of corporate greed and brutality.

The united states still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of civilization current in europe, in terms of  corporate regulation and treatment of workers, but we seem to be catching up, albeit slowey, at long last.