Legislators Are the New Mill Owners

JUSTICE They stare out at us unsmiling from tintypes of the first photographs, from the tea-colored pictures of thin, ragged immigrants, huddled in cold bare rooms in tenements, children clinging, dazed and frightened, their paltry belongings tied in scarves. They look out from pictures of dreary pioneers, in front of sod houses without windows, from grim photos of old, weary children working in the mills and sweatshops of the early nineteenth century. We weep for the thousands who died of poverty and disease and tell ourselves how wonderfully the world has changed, how we now can have fresh fruits and a variety of vegetables year ‘round, how there are miracle medicines to keep us healthy and cure illnesses, how homes are better built and heated, Self-righteously, we smile at each other while legislators we keep electing, like the mill owners of old, line their pockets greedily as they deny raising the minimum wage to a living wage, while they have the best health care, paid for by the taxes of the many, but vote to deny it to those whom they represent, while they buy the finest of foodstuffs and vote to cut allowances for food stamps. Greed and hypocrisy still rule, and we sit on our sofas with our blindfolds on continuing to vote for lawmakers who only care for their own elite, scorning the poor, the ill, and the indigent who often work at slave wages to provide them with all that they have. We pride ourselves on justice, but, in reality, there is no justice.