[woods]

I have been chewing this over, and honestly I just don’t know. I never understood it myself. As I noted in one of our Q&A sessions, Bush and Dukakis competed in 1988 to see which could more plausibly portray himself as the present-day Truman.

[woods]

That’s certainly a reasonable question. If you need sources that aren’t specified, I would simply ask for them here. I’m pretty sure the quotation you’re asking about appears in the online reading that accompanies the lecture you’re speaking of. The person who said it was Arthur Vandenberg, who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

[woods]

I’m afraid I don’t know of one. Sorry!

[woods]

I can’t lend support to one of these sites that gives you a list of 100 people and then demands that you scroll through them one at a time. This is a scourge. And although our faculty are glad to answer questions, devising a list of 100 people is an exceptionally time-consuming task that is a matter of opinion in any case.

[woods]

I can’t lend support to one of these sites that gives you a list of 100 people and then demands that you scroll through them one at a time. This is a scourge. And although our faculty are glad to answer questions, devising a list of 100 people is an exceptionally time-consuming task that is a matter of opinion in any case.

[woods]

I can’t lend support to one of these sites that gives you a list of 100 people and then demands that you scroll through them one at a time. This is a scourge. And although our faculty are glad to answer questions, devising a list of 100 people is an exceptionally time-consuming task that is a matter of opinion in any case.

[woods]

I’ve been trying to come up with something valuable to add to this, but I’m at a bit of a loss. You may indeed be better off giving the general forum a try.

[woods]

I think the themes discussed in the WWI material I did for this site are understandable to ninth graders. Certainly Wilson’s double standard, recognized by international lawyers everywhere, with regard to the British hunger blockade and the German submarine warfare. I just came across this article, by a guy who favors a vigorous prosecution of the War on Terror (and so is not a dogmatic noninterventionist), that you may find useful: http://20committee.com/2015/04/24/woodrow-wilsons-great-folly/

World War II is trickier, but I would note how mainstream opposition to intervention was. Pat Buchanan discusses this in A Republic, Not an Empire. Even the moderate of all moderates, Gerald Ford, was an enthusiastic recruiter for a campus America First Committee. Herbert Hoover favored staying out. JFK donated to the AFC. The New York Times’ military expert, Hanson Baldwin, said in his 1949 book Great Mistakes of the War, that it would certainly have been better to let the two totalitarian powers fight it out.

I would stress that we are dealing with 50-60 million dead people, and that for that reason, it’s obviously not out of bounds to think about alternate scenarios — unless we’re going to claim 50-60 million dead was the best possible outcome.

[woods]

I would be inclined to say that he should go to the best engineering school he can get into, and leave the libertarian stuff for his spare time. He won’t (or shouldn’t) have time for libertarian activism if he really intends to apply himself to engineering and make himself the best he can be. That’s my advice.

[woods]

Here’s an article of my own: “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Overproduction.‘”

[woods]

Historian Jim Powell writes:

Since the text refers to 1901, my first thought is that hourly pay rates generally might not have gone up for 20 years, since the trend for the last two or three decades of the 19th century was declining prices. With a fixed, unchanging wage, everybody was able to buy more and more for their money. HISTORICAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO 1970, published by the Commerce Department in two volumes, 1975, indicates there were falling prices for all or just about all commodities (I haven’t had time to look them up again). So, living standards were going up. Prices didn’t begin rising again till the first decade of the 20th century. Selecting 1900 or 1901 as a date when people would reasonably not have had a pay raise (for the same work) in 20 years ought to make a reader suspicious.

As for coal mining fatalities – I did a quick Google search and came across a US Department of Labor table indicating the number of coal miners and coal mining fatalities annually, from 1900 through 2013, http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp

In 1900, there were 448,581 coal miners and 1,489 coal mining fatalities – 0.0033193, or approximately 1/3rd of 1 percent.

I don’t know if that’s high or low, or whether the trend was improving or worsening.

One would assume high death rates would make it harder and more expensive for coal mine operators to recruit miners. Also major accidents, like cave-ins, would disrupt production and get a lot of publicity, likely to affect a coal mine operator’s ability to recruit new miners from outside his area.

Anyway, in 1910 (probably before much safety regulation or massive unionization), there were 725,030 coal miners and 2,821 coal mining fatalities, or 0.0038908 – a somewhat higher death rate.

In 1920, there were 784,621 coal miners and 2,272 coal mining fatalities, or 0.0028956 – a notable drop in the death rate.

I’m sure you have seen policy analyses showing that accident rates, death rates or whatever the data might be for a phenomenon (such as auto accidents, workplace accidents or environmental pollution) – began improving BEFORE federal regulations were put into effect or intensified, reflecting the self-interest of businesses. I expect reduced coal mining death rates would probably have more to do with better technologies than with the number of pages in the CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS devoted to coal mining.

I haven’t had the occasion to study much about coal mining, but I expect some types of coal deposits are more susceptible to mining accidents than others.

Jim then wrote back to add:

I forgot to address the claim that sometimes mine operators failed to pay miners per ton of coal mined. I have to imagine that an experienced coal miner would know he’s being cheated, if a mine operator claims a miner produced only a ton of coal when actually he produced 4,000 pounds. That’s a big difference, and one has to expect that a miner would step up efforts to find an alternative for earning a living. It would be interesting to find out where businesses might have been expanding not far from coal mines. For example, I recall that during the first half of the 20th century textile mills were moving out of (costly) New England and relocating in the South. Those factories probably drew at least some people from coal mines.

For sure, as we know, the best protection for workers was and is the availability of alternatives – and sound policies that make it easier and cheaper for more alternatives to develop.

[woods]

On balance I would lean more in Prof. Gutzman’s direction. I’ll alert him to this thread.

[woods]

I’ll do my best to look into this further.

[woods]

I would say some of both. The NSC-68 memo reveals a distinctly theoretical approach, in which a Soviet Union thought to be by nature expansionist must be stopped by the free world. On the other hand, decisions about where, when, and how to intervene were limited by ad hoc and practical considerations.

[woods]

This is a pretty sizable question. Whole books have been written about it. Can you narrow it down, perhaps?

[Author]

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