Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

suming things and owning things, no matter how shoddy
or trivial, is the mass religion. The real world of desperate
toil, the world of the proletarians who own nothing but
their labor power, is looked down upon with contempt and
fear by the Euro-Amerikans.
Euro-Amerikans know how privileged they have it
on a world scale, how exceptional they are. Interviews by
one reporter in an Iowa industrial city found: "...the
prevailing attitude expressed here was capsuled in this
comment from Don Schatzberg, the 46-year-old foreman
of a concrete-pipe plant:
" 'If you had a chance to pick your country, where
else would you go? Where else can a working man own his
own house and two cars and take a vacation every year?
I'd say I'm a happy man, not a bit unhappy with my
lifestyle,. . .'
"Like Mr. Schatzberg and many other Americans
elsewhere, workers here often seemed to equate success
with ownership of homes, cars, campers, boats and the
like.
" ' I work a lot of hours,' said James Dirkes,
Teamster union shop steward at Zeidler, 'but I've got a
car, a truck, a boat and a camper to show for it.'
"And LaVone Feldpouch, a 36-year-old wife and
mother who works as a clerk for Deere, where her husband
is also employed, said: 'I feel my life is an upward curve,'
She noted that she and her husband had accumulated three
houses and added: 'We're not going to stop there.' They
also own two cars, a truck, a boat and a motorcycle and
take two vacation trips a year, one with their children and
one without." (6)
All statistics show that the amount of consumption
in Euro-Amerikan society is staggering. Enough so
that it establishes for the mass a certain culture. In the settler
tradition today's Euro-Amerikan culture is one of
homeowning, with 68.4% of all settler households in 1979
owning their own home (up 50% from 1940). These
households share a cornucopia of private electric appliances:
89.8% of all U.S. homes in 1979 had color TVs
(watched an average of over 6 hours per day), 55% had airconditioning,
77.3% had washing machines and 61% had
clothes dryers, 43% had dishwashers, 52% had blenders
and food processors, and so on. (7) Much of the world's
health products are hoarded in the U.S., with, for example,
one out of every three pairs of prescription eyeglasses
in the world sold here.
In terms of the "basics," the rhost characteristic
for Euro-Amerikans is the automobile. In 1980 there were
a total of 104.6 million cars on the road. 84.1% of all U.S.
households had cars, with 36.6% having two or more. (8)
Everyone says that owning automobiles is a "necessity,"
without which transportation to work, (83% drive to
work) shopping and childcare cannot be done.
A Bureau of Labor Statistics study shows how the
"average wage owner" in Boston of 1875 had to spend
94% of the family income on "necessrtres: food, clothrng
and housing." A "Century of Progress to 'the Good
Life"' later, the study found that the "average wage
earner" in 1972-73 in Boston spent only 62% on these
necessities, meaning they "could afford to spend 38 percent
... on nonessentials."(9) We should note that few
Euro-Amerikans would agree with this elemental definition
- since in their society such things as automobiles,
sleeping pills, college education, drycleaning, telephones,
etc. are viewed as "necessities."
These by no means exhaust the list of Euro-
Amerikan private possessions. Stocks - one of every
seven Euro-Amerikans owns at least some corporate stocks
- vacation homes, land, hair dryers, motorcycles, exercise
equipment, guns, boats, annual changes of clothing styles,
and on and on. We have brought up these boring, almost
mind-numbing lists of possessions to drive home the point
that consuming is a disease among settlers, an lnfectlon
that is dominant in that culture. Euro-Amerikan life is no
longer centered around production but around consurnption.
This is the near-final stage of decadence.
All this is only made possible by the generalized
high income that characterizes Euro-Amerikan mass life.
The median Euro-Amerikan family income in 1981 was
$23,517.(10) This is not equally distributed, quite obviously,
but the extent to which many Euro-Amerikans in all
classes - an absolute majority - shared this generalized
high income is striking. Between 1960 and 1979 the percenmms
m m than $40,000 a year as an oiler on an electric shovel. 148 tage of settler families earning over $25,000 per year (in