ATT +1.5…….IBM -2.35………FORD +2.00…….BLACK SLAVES +2.0…….
I have just finished reading a wonderful book. What Hath God Wrougt? The Transformation of America 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe.
It’s a history of The United States as it became the nation we know today, just prior to the Civil War.
What amazed me though, was the introduction of the telegraph by Samuel FB Morse in 1844.
The telegraph changed just about everything in America and in the world. It was a way to communicated information, much of it financial market related, instantly over vast distances.
Today, we are all too familiar with the telegraph and it’s progeny: telephone, television, radio and the web.
But for those who were living in 1844, the telegraph must have seen a most miraculous invention.
It was, as Howe points out, a shift in the way human history had functioned. The telegraph represented the first important human invention based on the application of advanced science, as opposed to skilled mechanics. Prior to the telegraph science had been a sort of abstraction, bound more closely to alchemy or astology than manufacture. With the telegraph, all that changes forever.
It is also the birth of a world with which we are intimately familiar. The idea of telegraphing live the results of the nomination of Henry Clay as the Presidential candidate for the Whig Party does not seem so alien to us.
What struck me as so shocking was what was happening concurrently in the US.
At the very same time that telegraph poles and lines began to sprout across the country, uniting both markets and disparate cities, and information began to flow, John Knox Polk, newly elected President of the United States was busy buying slaves:
As President, James bought nineteen slaves for this plantation…..The people he bought were teenagers whom his acqusition separated from their parents
It is a bit incomprehensible, a bit shocking, that in an era in which stock prices were being telegraphed from Chicago to New York, that human beings could still be bought and sold as chattels; and by no less than the President of the Unites States.
Technology generally leads culture. It takes culture a while to catch up.
The advent of the web, of social networks, of wifi, of Google have come with shocking rapidity. With a rapidity that dropped them in our laps in an instant.
Perhaps, a hundred years from now, our progeny will be as astonished to read that in the early years of the web, people still went to places like Iraq to kill one another with guns.
God willing.
1 Comment
James Monet April 29, 2010
If this planet were a whale, slavery in America would amount to the size of a freckle on it’s belly. Slavery is only thing this world has ever known since the days of The Lucifer Rebellion, some three hundred thousand years ago. You can study this rebellion against God in ‘The Urantia Book.’ Today, slavery is so ‘completely practiced,’ and is such a ‘fact of life’ on this entire planet, that ordinary folks like you have almost no way of realizing it. It’s just this simple, “When you work ‘for’ someone, you are a Slave. When you work for someone because of the old saying “If you do not work, you will not eat.” You are slaving under the ‘threat of death,’ and are the victim of ‘forced labor.’ Raise your hands if you are a(So-called)free American, who gets up every morning, having to do this kind of labor, almost everyday. I see you’ve all raised your hands. Welcome to hell. This entire planet is a ‘slave camp’ under the legacy of Lucifer. You say, “But I get paid to work, so it’s not Slavery!” That’s the same reasoning behind the idea that it’s legal to smoke pot as long as you got paid to do it, and/or paid a good price for it. If you get paid to perform under slavery (Like you do everyday of your lives without realizing it), you are also a ‘Prostitute.’ Good morning folks! You are guilty of contributing to two situations of activity that are ‘Illegal In This Country, SLAVERY and PROSTITUTION.'(Most of it anyway), Now you can understand why the Black folks in this country still feel like common slaves (Even though they may be richer than the Queen of England in more cases than you may want to admit). It’s because they ‘still are’ slaves, and guess what!, so are you. Money is the basis of slavery. The money system is what drives the whole thing. God did not offer this world such an ungodly system. HE wants you to work for him as your Heavenly Father, NOT for your brothers. HE want’s you to work WITH your brothers under the direction of you Heavenly Father GOD. NO MAN SHALL STAND BETWEEN GOD AND HIS OFFSPRING TO ACT AS GOD OVER HIS BROTHERS, CLAIMING THAT GOD HAS NO EXISTENCE, AND DOES NOT WANT TO SUSTAIN HIS CHILDREN!! HOW DARE YOU LUCIFER, CREATE A SYSTEM TO REPLACE GOD, AND THE FREEDOM HE ETERNALLY UPHOLDS AND PROVIDES!! GET DOWN YOU BASTARD, FROM OFF THE BACKS OF GODS CHILDREN!! So says The Lord God, “I am your Eternal Creator, SUSTAINER and Loving Father. You will never toil under any circumstance in order to live, for I provide you eternal life FREELY AND FOREVER!! AND ‘GOD DAMN’ THOSE WHO SAY OTHERWISE!!!” See now how stipid things are on your little, ignorant, backward, and up-side-down planet? James Monet, A White Person