The Long Winter

by Doctor Science (who can't seem to log in the usual way via Blogger, goshdurnit)

The polar vortex many Usans are experiencing reminds me of one of my favorite, formative books, The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read the whole Little House series many times while I was growing up, and read it aloud twice, once for each Sprog, while *they* were growing up. I love the whole series, but The Long Winter was always my favorite.

In recent years, I've learned that the Little House books are considered libertarian manifestos, supposedly shaped by LIW's daughter Rose Wilder Lane to show the Ingalls family as icons of self-reliance. This boggles me, because when you actually read the Little House books carefully -- reading them aloud, for instance -- you can't help noticing that Laura's family was *never* self-reliant. They always depended on store-bought food, especially cornmeal, flour, and salt pork, and they got their land through the government's Homestead Act. One of their watchwords was "Free and Independent" -- but that was an aspiration (or a comforting platitude), not an accurate description of their lives.

The Long Winter, in particular, is about how individual self-reliance isn't enough. As a friend pointed out to me, it's essentially a post-apocalyptic story, about how people stay alive after the failure of a critical technology. In this case the technology is the railroad: when the train can't run, it cuts off the town of DeSmet, Dakota Territory, from its food supply -- because they were not self-reliant or independent.

Apocalyptic technology failure: train stuck in the snow, Minnesota, March 1881.

The Ingalls family is particularly poor, so they're reduced to burning marsh hay for fuel, and eating bread made from wheat they've ground themselves in the coffee mill. I use a mill like theirs for grinding spices, and always think about Laura and her family when I do. Meanwhile, other people in town are better off, and Almanzo Wilder (Laura's future husband) and his brother Royal are concerned to save their seed wheat from being eaten as the whole town heads toward starvation.

In February, when the town's food has almost run out, Almanzo and his friend Cap Garland make a risky trip to a distant farmer to buy his stock of 60 bushels of wheat. The money is fronted by Mr. Loftus, the grocer, and they end up paying $1.25/bushel. When they get the life-saving food back to town, everyone is overjoyed -- until they learn Loftus is asking $3/bushel for the wheat.

Loftus was not going to back to down. He banged his fist on the counter and told them, "That wheat's mine and I've got a right to charge any price I want to for it."

That's so, Loftus, you have, Mr. Ingalls [Laura's Pa] agreed with him. "This is a free country and every man's got a right to do as he pleases with his own property." He said to the crowd, "You know that's a fact, boys," and he went on, "Don't forget every one of us is free and independent, Loftus. This winter won't last forever and maybe you want to go on doing business after it's over."

Threatening me, are you? Mr. Loftus demanded.

We don't need to, Mr. Ingalls replied. "It's a plain fact. If you've got a right to do as you please, we've got a right to do as we please."
...
What do you call a fair profit? Mr. Loftus asked. "I buy as low as I can and sell as high as I can; that's good business."

That's not my idea, said Gerald Fuller. I say it's good business to treat people right."
...
Mr. Loftus looked from Cap to Almanzo and then around at the other faces. They all despised him.

In the end, Loftus sells the wheat at cost, making no profit at all -- and Mr. Ingalls works out a rationing system, where each family gets to buy only what they need, so that no-one starves.

This isn't a picture of libertarian independence. This is communitarianism, damn near socialism. Yes, they repeat the mantra "free and independent", but that's not how they *live* -- and that's not what keeps them alive.

As I re-read the books aloud to the little Sprogs, I also noticed that one way the Ingallses really were "free and independent" was nearly the death of them.

Every family in DeSmet is living in its own building for the winter, and none of them are very well insulated -- they're all built of imported wood and tar paper. As a result, there's a constant grinding effort to get enough fuel to keep them from freezing to death and to have enough left over for cooking.

What they *should* have been doing is imitating the earth lodges of the Mandan tribes they'd displaced. These solid buildings could hold up to 30 or 40 people each, warming the space so they needed only a single fire. Even without an earth lodge, the settlers could all have moved into the hotel together, sharing warmth and resources. That's how you stay alive in the High Plains when you're actually on your own, without access to the markets and industry further East.

The fascinating thing about re-reading the Little House books as an adult is how much you see the very ambivalent reality of the frontier through the screen of young Laura's not-always-reliable narration. Adult!Laura, who's telling the story, puts in things that contradict young!Laura's ideas, or the words that adults are saying -- as in the passage I quoted above, where Pa says they're all "free and independent" while arguing for a communitarian solution to their problem. The fact that many people apparently think the books *are* a libertarian manifesto makes me think they may be the most mis-read of American novels. I guess that's what happens when the hero is an unreliable narrator saying things Americans really *want* to believe.

Earth Lodge, Knife River Indian Villages Historic Site, North Dakota.

Comments

[cleek]

There is not, to my mind, any excuse for an organization which has the power to shut down public services as part of its "negotiating" efforts.

so, the House Of Representatives ?

[bobbyp]

Russell: Yes...the Loomis series has been a great read.

thompson: Please re-read your actual comment mine refers to. You present no such qualifiers there. Thanks.

cleek: great point. Perhaps we need to find a 'practical' way to shut down the Republican Party...just as long as it doesn't violate their freedom of association. The proprietaries must be observed.

[Scott P.]

"Congress, for example, can't vote to take all of my money and give it to Bob. Even if everybody in the nation hates me and really likes Bob. Or vice versa."

Sure they can. What's to stop them? Only respect for the norms and rules of society. Which is to say, the rule of law. Which is completely independent of the question of state power.

[thompson]

bobbyp:

Please re-read my comment, and the comment by wj I was referring to.

Context, its important.

[wj]

Nailed it, cleek! There is no excuse for the current House of Representatives.

[bobbyp]

Context, its important.
1. You do not like unions much, and you really don't like public employee unions because of some assumed ability to strike and disrupt public services, as opposed to private sector unions who may also strike vital industries (HS Truman and steel mills which see).
2. If there were a 'practical way' to deny public employees this bargaining power without taking away their right of free association, you'd be in favor of it.

Now freedom of association is the very essence of organized labor. This attribute has been the heart of all your various comments on this topic. Thus the snide remark. You truly are on the horns of a dilemma. That you would appear to be willing sacrifice this central tenet for some "practical" way to squash public sector strikes strikes me as a willingness to sacrifice high fallutin' principles on the altar of expediency.

But let us look, for once, at reality. There are many practical ways to surmount this issue. Let us start with one salient fact: Only about 1/3 of public employees are organized. So there is that.

As to means and methods, we could....
1. Pay the employees what they asked for. We pretty much do this already with bankers and CEO's. Why not others? Why do you support a lop-sided workplace arrangement in the public sphere with management having all the cards?
2. Invoke the dispute resolution machinery in the contract. The right to strike is just about universally not allowed in the public sector. Instead, contracts generally include provisions for mediation or arbitration.
3. Public sector strikes tend to be relatively rare and of quite short duration.-i.e., the overwhelming number of public sector employee unions obey the law...a much higher percentage I'd wager than bankers or CEO's do.

Because of their contentious nature of the issues and the fall out that could arise from a public sector strike for BOTH sides, all incentives are already in place for the parties to bargain to finality.

And this is pretty much what we observe.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

Sure they can. What's to stop them? Only respect for the norms and rules of society. Which is to say, the rule of law.

Actually, no. What's to stop them is the Constitutional prohibition on bills of attainder. So while it is a rule-of-law issue, it's one involving balance of power between parts of government rather than simple decency and respect for tradition on the part of Congress. Thankfully.

[thompson]

bobbyp:

"1. You do not like unions much, and you really don't like public employee unions because of some assumed ability to strike and disrupt public services, as opposed to private sector unions who may also strike vital industries (HS Truman and steel mills which see)."

I never said private sector unions couldn't disrupt vital industries. Indeed, they can. In large industries the unions can wield power far outside their negotiation with their employer. This is one of the problems with unions (although not one that comes up very much...so I can't say I think its a big problem).

However, like I said, I'm not for stripping them of their rights, and there is no other practical way of limiting the disruption a powerful union (public or private) could cause.

So its just one of those things we live with.

"2. If there were a 'practical way' to deny public employees this bargaining power without taking away their right of free association, you'd be in favor of it."

If there was a practical way to limit the disruption of a large strike in an important sector, without limiting the freedom of people to unionize, I'd be all for it. I really can't think of one.

I'm thinking you're trying to have an argument with someone else. I am all for the rights of unions.

I also think union leadership doesn't always work for the good of the worker and can have excessive lobbying influence politically (not limited to unions).

This is unfortunate, but in my mind, the only practical way to prevent this would be to inhibit the freedom of association of union members.

Which, I've stated in various forms, is not acceptable.

Living in a free society means that you don't get to dictate how other people use their freedoms. There is a distinction between disagreeing with a specific exercise of a right and the right as a whole.

[Scott P.]

"I wouldn't join a boycott of a store if they didn't share my religion. But I wouldn't vote for the government to have the power to break a boycott if it was for the wrong reasons. Even if I hold nothing but contempt for those reasons."

But are you ok with government-sponsored boycotts, as in the novel (in a democracy, I consider a popular assembly like this as equivalent to the state)? Anyone who patronizes an Irish store will be beat up? Presumably not. But that's how most collective activities work. You seem to model this situation as each member of the town individually weighing the pros and cons of patronizing Loftus' store, but that's not what is going on at all. What we're actually talking about is a community deciding to exile one of its members, and anyone going against that decision is implicitly faced with the possibility of exile themselves. (Moreover, as those above have noted, exile here carries with it the possibility of serious harm or death). You seem to be willing to tolerate this because it's all done at arm's length, even though Loftus would probably come out better off if somebody just punched him and ran off with the wheat while he was on the ground. I have a distaste for violence also, but I don't see other forms of societal coercion as being substantially different.