CSotD: Seems like Old Times
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"How India’s Gig Economy Is Trapping its Workers in the Cycle of Poverty," by Thomas Manuel and Satwick Gade is an examination of the semi-quasi-self-employment of women making bidis, the little leaf-wrapped cigarettes popular in India.
It's worth a read in itself, but I probably enjoyed it more because it seems like such a direct line to the abuses of our own 19th century economy that led social reformers and labor organizers to unite, and it's particular fitting in that the labor unions got their edge in New York City in large part because of piece-work abuses in the cigar industry, a topic that came up in an historical fiction piece I wrote.
Cigars, bidis — the size is quite different, but the abuses are much the same, including illnesses caused by handling of tobacco.
Reading through Manuel and Gade's piece, the same complaints and abuses are outlined that Helen Stuart Campbell found in the tenements of New York, including the rejection of piecework — often clothing in her cases, but bidis in the cartoon — for reasons so trivial that it was clear the intent was to cheat the worker.
Annie Daniels, in 1905, found that the abuse went well beyond women and described whole families doing piecework in the tenements from first light to midnight, right down to "an extraordinary case of a child of 1 1/2 years, who assisted at a kind of passementerie." (i.e., assisting with putting ornamental trim on garments)
Cigarmaking itself was a skilled craft, the actual rolling being dominated by Bohemian women, while their husbands and children stripped and prepared the leaves, but the fact that it took talent and experience didn't stop the buyers from rejecting cigars and making other unfair demands on the workers. (This account differs from what I found in my own research, but explains the basic unfairness that ties it to the bidi-makers.)
These abuses launched the career of Samuel Gompers, but also came to the attention not just of social reformers like Campbell and Daniels as well as Jacob Riis, but of people with a little more sway, like Theodore Roosevelt, an up-and-coming state legislator whom Gompers took for a little industry tour.
I don't know that India has any Theodore Roosevelts waiting to support reform — we sure don't have any to spare over here — but the changes in our tenements began with publicity, and it may be that cultivating cartoonists is more practical at the moment than trying to find crusading politicians.
As for the "gig economy," it's just one more element of our stripping away those turn of the century reforms and a return to the robber barons that TR and the social reformers fought.
But, y'know, it's kinda hip to stick it to the Man. Not terribly profitable.
But gig capitalists are the new heroes.
So it's hip to be scab.
They may already be winners
I noted recently that Clay Jones had found himself a winner in a contest he only vaguely remembered entering, and that only in a sort of "yeah, sure, whatever" response to an email.
It makes me wonder how many of the artists in the International Trumpism Cartoon & Caricature Contest were similarly invited and didn't look into the sponsor, one of the main objections being, as discussed here before, the fact that Iran locks up cartoonists who offend the hard-liners, and I don't think this contest is part of the reformists' agenda.
That said, and with no intention of celebrating the contest itself, they did end up with a website full of rather good art from around the world, and, since they haven't taken Jones' work down, it may be that other artists have regretted entering — or allowing their work to be entered.
So it's sort of like a porn site, in that you really shouldn't visit, but, golly gee, it's hard not to take a little peek, purely in the interests of learning about some artists you hadn't seen before.
Who knows? Some of them may have entered on purpose.
I guess it would be okay to show a couple as long as I can find a way to link back to their actual sites.
This one was easy: Saeed Sadeghi has it on his Facebook page, too.
Mauricio Parra Herran doesn't seem to have updated his blog in awhile and there aren't any political cartoons on it, but, whatever his feelings about the Iranian contest, he entered this one in a contest in Portugal, after which he sat for an interview with a Colombian journal in which he cited some major credits, so I'll tag back to that.
However, I really can't justify posting any more from such a dubious site, and I don't have the time at the moment to track all these artists down to their own spots.
But, whatever their motivations and methods, these contest organizers assembled quite a collection. I may do a little more snooping and, if I can track them to more legitimate places, begin to check in with some of these artists.
The Book Nook
I haven't said much about the rebirth of Bloom County, in part because Breathed's on-again-off-again retirement from cartooning caused some chaos within the newspaper sector when I was working there, but largely because … well, because of everything Heidi MacDonald Johanna Draper Carlson says here.
When I coach my young writers, I tell them that it's okay to not like a book, as long as you aren't a wiseass about it and are fair in expressing why the book disappointed you.
Clearly,, Heidi Johanna already knew all that. This is what a bad review should look like.
Meanwhile, I have no information on what you'll find inside Barry Blitt's forthcoming book beyond what the publisher has to say about it.
But the publisher likes it, so that's good.
And it contains, they say, 25 years of Blitt's illustrations for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair "and more," and, if you're not familiar with his name, you've still seen plenty of his work.
He's certainly earned the kind of cred that makes pre-ordering this book a safe bet.
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