September 01, 2019 Sunday
Bedtime Story
After a Century of Independence
It was this simple and almost benign
sounding Stamp Act of 1765 that infuriated the thirteen colonies and set the
stage for full scale war with and independence from Britain.
So eventually it was the perceived unfair
taxation and the feeling of exploitation that set this group of thirteen
colonies fighting for their independence and now same or similar feelings were
being generated in this new nation nearly century after it fought against
unfair and unjust wealth distribution.
Only this time it was the American masses
versus the few elite American plutocrats backed and bought by the government of
the United States.
You would recall that on the evening of
August 26th Monday I listed some of the millionaires of the Gilded
Age who were bestowed the title of the “Captains of Industry” by some
historians.
They have been credited with giving the
United States the start that was needed to make it an industrial power house at
the turn of the nineteenth and which after World War II would catapult it to
become a world power.
Yet at the same many or most of these men
including Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Leland Stanford,
Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould have been simultaneously labeled as ‘robber
barons’.
This derogatory name has been derived from
the German word ‘Raubritter’ which was originally reserved for the feudal
landowners during the times of the Holy Roman Empire (from 900 to 1800 AD) who
self-imposed and extorted high taxes and tolls from ships sailing on the River
Rhine or on the roads used my merchants and travelers for trade.
To call money obtained through such unlawful
means tax in today’s world would be preposterous.
Some other times these landlords would
resort to outright robbery and kidnapping for ransom.
The United States government of the Gilded
Age was a place where corruption thrived as rampantly as it does in the contemporary
Hindu India or the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.
These above listed powerful industrialists
spent considerable amount of money on the law makers, public servants and
law-enforcing officers to ensure that the government did not interfere or
legislate to control the activities of big businesses.
As a matter of fact the term “big business”
in the modern sense arose for the first time in the United States of this period
when these ‘robber barons’ scaled up their industrial projects to the levels
that were unheard of before.
Their control over the government and its
policies was very strong and they usually ended up in getting what they
desired.
Many historians agree that the government
of that age was behaving exactly like Karl Max had described the capitalistic
societies to be.
On the pretence of neutrality and equality
before the law, the government in truth was serving the cause of these barons
who were in great rush to turn into millionaires as soon as they could.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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