Where did they go?

[Jackpine Radical]

There was an old America that I heard of from those now gone, who were old when I was young. It was an America where neighbors helped each other, where the entire community rolled up its sleeves to respond when hardship fell upon any among them. Wealth and security were not individual matters, were not based on the individual's possessions. Prosperity lay in participating in the community, security was measured by the number of neighbors who would come to your aid in case of personal misfortune, or to the aid of the community at large in case of shared distress.

The stories I know are from Wisconsin. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a land of immigrants; a higher percentage of Wisconsinites were foreign-born than in any other state or territory in the Union. The society was welded from Scandinavians, Germans, Celts, Poles, Italians, and many others.

These were people who allied their own interests with those of the community. They are the people who built the co-op movement and the Progressive movement. They invented unemployment insurance and Social Security.

Where have they gone, those old ones with their brogues and broken English whom I knew as a child? They would have known how to cope with New Orleans, and they would have brooked no nonsense from the self-absorbed, immoral pack of fools now in charge.