Santa Barbara, California mission built by indigenous people as part of spanish settlement of the west coast of the United States. Photo by Keith C. Milne (c) May 1998
By Keith C. Milne
My ancestors came to America hoping to cash in on what they perceived to be a better opportunity for personal and financial freedom than they could ever have hoped to enjoy in Europe. None of my ancestors were wealthy business barons or rich land owners while living in Europe, they were just simple, honest, working class people who were feeling limited in Europe where commercial scale culture was already dominant. They perceived America as a very large country that held plenty of opportunities for people with dreams about having a better life than they had known in Europe.
On my mother’s side, Mercedes and Rogelio came from Spain hoping for a better life during the late 1800’s. They came through Ellis Island and quickly decided that life would be better in southern California after learning about Santa Barbara’s Mediterranean climate. This type of climate was very much like they were used to in Spain. Moving to Santa Barbara allowed them to be near the Spanish speaking population, and to be near people with a similar cultural background. Unfortunately, beyond this, most of my family’s history on this side wasn’t passed down or shared. Most of my relatives, on this side of my family, moved elsewhere in an attempt to find better jobs and lost touch with each other over the years.
This is sad to me. It partially illustrates how easily the profit motive of large companies can create fierce competition for jobs that fragment families. It is, in my opinion, one method of coercion in getting workers to submit to unfair labor practices, weakening their will to fight for fairness through a “divide and conquer” strategy.
Maintaining ties with family was also very important to my relatives on my father’s side. My great, great, grandparents on my father’s side, Jorgen and Kristiana valued, and wanted to have an extended family, maintaining close ties with other people who shared a similar language and cultural background. It was a method of survival that they had successfully used in Europe, and they brought this value with them when they came to America from Denmark in 1883.
They originally homesteaded in Wisconsin, but in 1908, they pulled up all of their stakes, moving their 7 children and all of their belongings to Dagmar, Montana because they had learned about a Danish community that had begun to form there. Once they arrived in Montana, Jorgen and Kristiana met Niels and Patrina, who were already in Dagmar after a similar migration from Denmark.
Eventually, their son, Christian married my great grandmother Karen. Together they staked out some land for themselves and farmed Durham wheat, and raised a very large family of eight. Being Lutherans, they were strong believers in the bible and in being “fruitful and multiplying.” Their large family size is an example of how commercial scale culture takes advantage of the “protestant work ethic.”
At a personal level, having a large family was a sign of status during this time period. It not only symbolized that you had “plenty” if you could afford to raise such a large group, but my family in Montana, along with many other farmers, also had large families for strictly utilitarian purposes–cheap labor. However, it was also utilitarian from a commercial scale cultural perspective as it provided a continuously expanding consumer base, and provided laborers from those who left their farms for the cities.
Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West Coast, San Francisco, CA 1912
The seeds of financialization were already being sown in the big cities like New York through the formation of the New York Stock Exchange. Speculation in the market during this time fueled by a belief in, and the practice of, laissez-faire economics, set the stage for the huge stock market crash and depression that followed. Many of the farmers in Montana and elsewhere lost their entire stakes during this crisis. My great grandparents managed to hang onto what they had, but had to sell off a substantial portion of their holdings in order to achieve this.
Some of the farmers near them were using newly developed agricultural machines based on fossil fuels, and were not hit as hard because they had already managed to raise a larger surplus with less effort and bought up some of the smaller farms. These were to become many of the future “super farms,” or corporate growers. Eventually, my great grandparents, and many of the other farmers around Dagmar, were discouraging their children from continuing to farm, actually urging them to look for better employment elsewhere.
Before passing away, my Grandmother, Eleonora, told me that Dagmar, MT used to be a thriving community with many schools and churches and a beautiful downtown. But, as the children began to leave in droves, and the population decreased, so did the tax base. That translated into less vitality, and the town shrunk with more buildings, businesses, and schools closing. It is now a mere shadow of its peak reached between 1900–1945. This illustrates that even in rural farming communities there was, and still is, a dependence on commerce for survival. My grandmother left Dagmar for California after getting a letter from a former schoolmate who told my her about an upcoming job opening in Santa Barbara, one of California’s most beautiful coastal areas.
Commercial scale culture makes people totally dependent upon money by turning everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold. Everyone who comes to America and lives in a similar situation, or is born into this type of system quickly learns this.
Commercial scale culture in America fueled the desire of many people to be able to produce things cheaper and faster, and to reduce production costs, thereby increasing profit margins. This desire was the precursor to the industrial revolution, which churned out more machinery, and products. All of this new machinery needed oil to lubricate it, and fuel it. This need was greatly exacerbated by the advent of the automobile, which created a huge demand for oil like never before in history.
Oil was gold back then, as it is now, and some of my relatives decided that they weren’t going to be left out of any of the potential wealth this boom was creating. So, while my grandmother’s grandparents and parents were settling and farming in Montana, my grandfather Edward’s grandparent’s, on his father’s side migrated from Scotland in the late 1800’s, coming to California in search of some of that oil.
My great, great grandfather James, and his son, James Jr., bought up property along the California coast from Goleta (just north of Santa Barbara), north to Refugio Beach believing that it contained oil. The land was cheap and everyone thought that they were crazy to buy any of it. James, Jr. also ran a gas station in Santa Barbara. He was never very successful at finding oil on any of the property that he had purchased or inherited from his father, and when he got older he sold it to one of the large oil companies that did eventually manage to extract oil from some of his land using more technologically advanced techniques.
My great, great, grandfather, Alfred, came to America around 1870 via Ellis Island, leaving his wife, Lucy, in England until he could evaluate America and decide where to live before sending for her. My grandmother, Eleonora, had a bundle of his letters, and went through then so she could share information with me about his trip.
Taking a very risky and dangerous journey, he came across America by wagon, and while in Arizona, was caught up in a war with some native Americans during which an arrow pierced his hat! Once in California, he fell in love with coastal Santa Barbara, and decided that it was the right place to settle. He sent for Lucy and his daughter, Elsie, my great grandmother, who was only three years old at the time.
They took the long way to California, going around Cape Horn, South America, because Alfred feared that they would never be able to endure the trip he had just taken. Alfred was a skilled carpenter and, later, an aviator. In 1880 he built a house in Santa Barbara that he sold to my grandparents for almost nothing as a wedding present before moving to San Francisco.
My grandmother raised all of her children in this house. Oddly, because her house was built before the actual street existed, there are steps from the street that lead down into her front yard. It is the only house on her street below grade like this because when the City of Santa Barbara built the street, they elevated it, building all of the other houses on it at the new level.
For the next generation in my family, my grandparents, life was a real transition period. Their upbringing, reinforced by their experiences growing up during the depression, as well as how things were during World War II, created a strong belief in both of them regarding the value of hard work, and they were very grateful for what they had.
There is nothing like a depression and a world war to throw fear into millions of people. Fear that would last a long time. As long as those terrifying memories lived, so would a nose-to-the-grindstone attitude amongst the people. This fear based work ethic is precisely what corporate America needed, wanted, and loved. As they produced more, the extra profit enabled corporations to expand, both across the nation and eventually globally.
At the same time, a multitude of new, technologically advanced line of products were being pumped into our culture. This created a sense of want in our nation, and there were many things to want now. Appliances like washing machines, electric mixers, radios, telephones, became must haves. Once television arrived, America fell in love with it instantly. It was a sign of financial success and status to own one, and it was the perfect tool for corporate America to use for keeping people wanting to have more.
Companies could now instantly beam the images of their products into the television sets of all the consumers that were now gathering by the millions to watch. This device, along with the automobile were, in my opinion, the two inventions that did more to benefit modern commercial scale culture’s agenda than any others. People were now willing to work harder than ever to own more of the miracle devices that were being marketed to them, and my family was no exception.
My then young former grandmother, Eleonora, and all her siblings, had left the farm in Montana for greener pastures–namely work–wherever they could find it. My grandfather, Edward, and my grandmother Eleonora, on my father’s side, raised a large family in the previously mentioned house that was built by my great, great, grandfather Alfred in Santa Barbara.
My grandfather was a foreman who worked for the city sanitation department. My grandmother babysat, ironed for people, and eventually went to work for a local elementary school selling lunch tickets to students, a job that she just retired from in 1997!
My grandfather on my mother’s side, Archie, was a commercial fisherman who harvested Bonita in the then rich fishing waters off of the southern California coastline. My grandmother, Mary, worked as a clerical person for the City of Santa Barbara for many years, eventually retiring from that position.
Already, the more traditional industries like farming and fishing were being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The number of farms were shrinking, with those that remained getting bigger. Many of the small farms in the central valley of California were being consolidated into large mega-farms that grew for corporations like Green Giant, Libby’s, and Del Monte. My mother’s father had to sell his boat and fishing equipment when he could no longer compete with some of the corporate fishing outfits that engaged in large drift-netting operations. He was never the same man after that. He fought alcoholism and unemployment the best that he could, but unfortunately, eventually lost his life to alcohol.
As stated earlier, my other grandparents were employed in local government positions and remained there all of their working lives because they had secure jobs that provided benefits never previously enjoyed by most of working America, and provided them with a comfortable middle class existence. Many similar jobs were created by the federal government during World War II and during the Korean conflict, earning them the reputation for being good jobs for working class people who did not necessarily have, or need a college background.
My father’s and mother’s generation were the first to be influenced in a significant way by television, along with far more technology than any previous generation. My parents and their siblings all bought into consumerism “hook, line, and sinker.” They grew up wanting to have it all. They wanted to achieve the “American dream” of marriage with kids, home ownership, and all the toys that money could provide. They were extremely patriotic and believed that America could do no wrong.
A popular motto during their early adulthood years, the 1960’s, was, “America, love it or leave it.” Conformity to social norms and conventions took precedence. However, there was much social unrest beginning to be felt and this instability increasingly unfolded as the 1960’s progressed.
Racial inequality was becoming intolerable and there were riots over this in the South, in Washington D.C., and in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Women were growing weary of being second class citizens, and the Vietnam war began. People were getting fed up with the status quo and of the rigid conformity that prevailed during this time period.
Via television, and unprecedented advertising, corporate America sold the country on a plastic, phony, ideal of success. Social unrest over Vietnam and the ecological consequences of our “advanced” culture began to emerge. Many young people and college students were protesting, and some began dropping out, dropping acid, and smoking marijuana which bucked norms and created much fear in conservative circles. Finally, divorce began to become prevalent in America, and it profoundly affected my family.
The climbing divorce rate was caused, in part, by the whole movement to change the status quo just mentioned during the 1960’s. However, divorce became even more prevalent during the 1970’s as many corporations continued their consolidation, becoming very powerful transnational companies. Their activities directly contributed to this familial crisis by raising the price of goods and services repeatedly.
Without getting into all the economics that would normally accompany such a claim, let me just say that I don’t entirely buy into the theory that heavy consumer demand solely created the high, double-digit inflation that took place during the 1970’s. Contributing to high inflation was the now-proven-bogus “energy shortage” that caused the price of gasoline to double. Additionally, housing costs were rising exponentially, along with interest rates, as was the cost of food. This created additional capital that was used by the corporations to pay for much of their global expansion efforts.
The financial “crunch” this created for American families steadily forced more mothers, including mine, and the mothers of the households of most of my relatives, to go to work so that our family’s current lifestyle could be maintained. This added major stress and instability to my household and those of my kin. The effect of this was the eventual divorce of my parents and all of their siblings!
Needless to say, this had a long-lasting negative effect on my siblings and me. At times, we still look back and discuss all of the familial carnage that resulted from my parents getting divorced. We also reflect on the wreckage that most of our cousins experienced as their parents were divorced. This was a very sad chapter in my family’s history, and in the history of our country. The divorce rate steadily climbed to 50% and has remained roughly at this mark ever since.
The financial crunch continued into the 1980’s getting even worse for some with Reagan’s “trickle down economics.” Now, there is no way for a family to survive and live a middle class existence unless both adults in the family work full-time. This new development which puts the American family in a vise, like it did to mine, has created whole generations of “latch-key kids,” and children being raised without proper interaction and supervision by adults. Drug use and juvenile crime became prevalent, along with a corresponding rise in the incidence of gangs as a substitute for family across America.
As I grew up we had to constantly relocate while my mom chased gainful employment or after my step-father landed a job that moved us to another part of the state. We were always one paycheck away from financial meltdown. Now, this seems to be the norm for everyone in my family. Everyone is too busy working to get together and, most often, do not communicate with each other at all any longer. We are spread out all over the western states, with me here on the east coast, and my former step-brother living in the eastern part of Canada.
Family reunions first began to become more scarce as ties weakened from relatives being away from each other for longer and longer periods of time, which subsequently diminished the importance of having reunions, or moved the reunions into the back seat. Everyone became free to use the “I have to work” excuse, which more often than not was not an excuse at all, but a cold, hard reality. Now reunions are non-existent.
Like the majority in this country, most members of my family work harder than ever just to make ends meet. They aren’t getting paid nearly what they’re worth, and they’re scared about losing their jobs.
The cost of owning what is needed to survive has become so expensive that many in my family are now in greater debt than they’ve ever been, causing them even greater fear regarding the loss of their jobs. So, they take what they’re given, by and large, and keep their nose to the pavement working longer hours, for less money or for the most they can get for their particular skills.
Some of us have retired in recent years and are on a fixed income. Unfortunately, the cost of living is skyrocketing again due to a multitude of reasons, with the main one being good old capitalistic greed! Whenever greed has an excuse or a reason for being that way, it happens. COVID-19 was the recent big excuse. The supply chain shortage resulting from shutdowns to prevent mass deaths from occurring was the biggest excuse I’ve seen in my lifetime for greed!
My family and millions just like them have and will relocate to where and when their company wants them to, or to where any employment may be found offering them more money and better benefits. Unfortunately, familial ties and family unity now take a backseat to this reality.
Overtime, much has changed with the culture in the United States and my family, but these changes are not unique by any means. My family is merely a micro-iconic representation of what has happened to the bulk of working and middle class families all across our nation as commercial scale culture, led by transnational corporations, continues to aggressively advance towards their goal of increasing profit.
They’ve done this without any real concern for the psycho-social ramifications of their actions on the people in this country, or the ecological consequences on the planet. What they’ve done elsewhere around the world is even worse, but that’s another paper (at least!).
By and large, we’ve been fooled and often suffered victimization while companies continue to drive towards as much profit as possible, while simultaneously gaining control over as many markets as possible. This plan is maintained by the power elites that control these companies, and their plan has largely succeeded.
We are all dependent on these companies for virtually everything we need or more than we care to admit. The majority in this country continue to socialize their children to believe in our way of living and our capitalistic ideology as they work longer, and harder than ever to have all that they’ve been programmed to believe they want.
Corporate America no longer needs religion or “God and Church” to get people to work hard. In fact, religion, by lecturing us about the evils of excess consumption, has become somewhat of the enemy. But this isn’t really any threat to a culture that has largely replaced God with money, and church with television, and much of television with streaming and smartphones, while companies continue to churn out more trinkets and toys for us to be preoccupied with, moving their plans forward completely unhindered.
The modus-operandi cannot be sustained!
Unless we take a hard look at the nature of things as we know them today, opening our eyes and deciding to make some hard, but badly needed choices in a new, more socially and ecologically balanced and responsible direction, I have no doubt that we will end up going down in history as just another failed civilization being added to the scrap heap of failed socioeconomic systems!