History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Sure Does Rhyme

I don’t have to tell you that something is deeply wrong in America. You can feel it. We all can.

The rich get richer. The powerful get more powerful. The people who actually build this country - who farm the land, stock the shelves, drive the trucks, and teach the kids - are the ones barely scraping by.

We’ve been here before.

They called it the Gilded Age, a term coined by fellow Missourian Mark Twain to describe an America that looked like it was thriving - shiny, golden, prosperous - but was rotten to its core. Workers lived in slums. Child labor kept profits high. The railroads, the oil fields, the steel mills - everything was owned by a handful of men who bought politicians like cattle at auction.

Fast forward a hundred years, and the names have changed - Carnegie and Rockefeller replaced by Musk and Bezos  - but the story remains the same. Staggering inequality. Corporate greed. A political system bent to the will of billionaires.

And just like back then, the people doing the hardest work - the ones who actually keep this country running - are the ones getting screwed.

But history isn’t just a story of corruption. History is also a story of resistance. A story of people who refused to accept injustice. A story of workers who bled, fought, and even gave their lives to win the rights we take for granted today.

And if we’re going to break this new Gilded Age, we need to remember their fight.

The Rise of Oligarchy - Then and Now

The late 1800s belonged to the Robber Barons - Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Morgan. They didn’t just run industries. They owned them. Crushed competition. Bought out smaller businesses. Manipulated laws. Controlled politicians.

Today, we’ve got tech moguls, hedge fund billionaires, and corporate overlords playing the same game.

• The ten richest Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country combined.

• Cartels and monopolies dominate nearly every major industry - Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil.

• Corporate money floods elections, drowning out the voices of real people.

The economy is booming - for them.

For the rest of us? Wages are stagnant. Housing is unaffordable. Healthcare is a luxury and when tragedy strikes bankruptcy looms.

And when people push back, when workers try to organize, the response is the same as it was in 1890: Crush them. Fire them. Silence them.

The Brutality of the Gilded Age and the Birth of Organized Labor

If you were a worker in 1890, your life was a nightmare. Twelve-hour shifts. No weekends. No overtime. No safety laws. If you got injured on the job? You were fired and replaced. Lost a limb? No compensation, no assistance - you're fired.

Consider this - even in the 9th century, the Saxons in England had laws (the Weregild) to award compensation for injuries from the fault of another. Injuries, including lost limbs, were compensated according to a set scale - the more essential the body part, the higher the payment. These laws protected everyone from the King to the commoner.

This barbarity of the Gilded Age legal and economic systems, so heavily stacked in favor of the powerful, doesn't only seem outrageous today - it would have been seen as outrageous throughout much of the history of Western culture. (With the obvious exception of pre-revolution France, and we all know how that turned out.)

And when workers finally had enough? When they organized, when they marched, when they demanded better? They were met with clubs - with guns - with punishment - with death.

The Ludlow Massacre - The Price of Dignity

If you want to understand what it took courageous American families to win basic worker protections, remember Ludlow, Colorado, 1914.

Thousands of miners - many of them immigrants - worked for John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. They lived in company-owned shacks. They were paid in company script, which they could only use to shop at company stores. Their wages were barely enough to survive.

They went on strike for better pay, for the right to organize, for the right to live with dignity.

Rockefeller’s response? He hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a private army of corporate thugs, to evict them from their homes and force them into tent camps.

On April 20, 1914, the National Guard - sent in at Rockefeller’s request - attacked the largest tent colony in Ludlow. They set fire to the tents, burning women and children alive.

At least 21 people died that day, including 11 children.

And Ludlow wasn’t the only battle.

From the Haymarket Affair of 1886, where striking workers in Chicago were bombed and shot, to the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, where coal miners in West Virginia were bombed by planes, the fight for basic worker protections has always been met with brutality.

These workers weren’t just fighting for better wages.

They were fighting for dignity. For the right to be treated like human beings, not machines.

And many of them paid for it with their lives.

What They Fought For - And What We Are Losing

The labor movement won. Not all at once. Not easily. But through relentless struggle, workers secured the rights we take for granted today:

• The 8-hour workday
• The minimum wage

• The right to unionize

• Child labor bans

• Workplace safety laws

• Social Security

• Overtime pay

• Health benefits

Every protection was fought for - not handed down by benevolent politicians, but wrestled from the greedy grabbing hands of corporate overlords.

And today?

Those victories are under attack.

• Union membership is at its lowest in nearly a century.

• Gig workers are classified as “independent contractors” to deny them benefits.

• Right-to-work laws are gutting collective bargaining power.

• Wages are stagnant while CEO pay soars to record heights.

• Companies fire organizers, bust unions, and replace full-time workers with temps.

The old tricks of the Gilded Age are making a comeback.

And once again, working people are being told to sit down, shut up, and accept whatever crumbs are tossed their way.

Why This Fight Still Matters

The battle of Ludlow. The strikes of the steelworkers, the coal miners, the textile workers. The marches. The picket lines. The factory occupations.

These aren’t just moments in history.

They are warnings.

Because here’s the hard truth:

If we don’t fight for our rights, we will lose them.

The billionaires of today aren’t any different from Rockefeller or Carnegie.

But just like in the first Gilded Age, resistance is growing.

• The union wave sweeping Starbucks, Amazon, and UPS.

• The break-up-big-tech movement gaining traction.

• The anti-billionaire backlash pushing for fair taxes and wealth redistribution.

• The rise of progressive populists like Bernie Sanders and AOC who reject corporate PAC money and fight for the working class.

The past tells us something powerful: when working people organize, they win.

And if we want to break the cycle of endless corporate dominance - if we want to build an economy that values people over profit - then we have only one choice.

We fight like hell.

Because history has made one thing clear:

Oligarchs don’t give up power. People take it back.

The first Gilded Age ended because workers, journalists, and everyday Americans refused to accept a system rigged against them.

The question now is - will we do the same?

If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

#RemeberLudlow