{"id":333,"date":"2007-06-09T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-09T14:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/?p=333"},"modified":"2015-10-29T18:44:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T01:44:29","slug":"raise-a-glass-to-the-bosses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/2007\/06\/09\/raise-a-glass-to-the-bosses\/","title":{"rendered":"Raise a glass to the bosses!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/CompanyTown_rowhouse.jpg\" alt=\"And the Company Says\" align=\"left\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"2\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 180%;\">R<\/span>aise a glass to the bosses!<\/p>\n<p>Toiling away in their chrome steel towers, a secretary on the lap and a Cubano going out in the ashtray, they pull the levers that make you and me dance.<\/p>\n<p>A hundred years or a little more ago there was open warfare between the bosses and the workers&#8230; the workers had the numbers &#8212; after all were the ones doing the work &#8212; but the bosses kept the money, or most of it. And they pumped a fair bit of it back into protecting the system they had worked to perfect, hiring private armies to beat back the roiling masses outside their towers. When voices and placards were met with fists, and fists were met with clubs, and clubs were met with guns, guns were met with bombs&#8230; there was war in the streets and in the factories.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t good for <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">anyone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s self interest and then there&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">enlightened <\/span>self interest. But there wasn&#8217;t a whole lot of <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">that<\/span>, then. It took years, decades to turn a hard-fought and uneasy impasse into a period of relative productivity, peace, and even prosperity for&#8230; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">more<\/span>, if not all.<\/p>\n<p>The Good Book (pick <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">your <\/span>favorite) seems to suggest that <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">greed is the root of evil.<\/p>\n<p><\/span>And that&#8217;s always made a lot of sense to me.<\/p>\n<p>People who think <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">their <\/span>needs are so important that they are justified in taking from <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">you&#8230;<\/span> people who become trapped in a self-built prison of compulsive aquisition, <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">as though they were saving up for the afterlife<\/span>&#8230; we know what they do to society.<\/p>\n<p>But what do they do to themselves? The malignancy of their greed eats them from the inside out, even as the wealth piles up around them&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b><i>And the Company Says<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-333-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/TKMajor_AndTheCompanySaysAYoS_2007-06-08\/2006-06-08_AYoS_And_the_Company_Says.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/TKMajor_AndTheCompanySaysAYoS_2007-06-08\/2006-06-08_AYoS_And_the_Company_Says.mp3\">http:\/\/www.archive.org\/download\/TKMajor_AndTheCompanySaysAYoS_2007-06-08\/2006-06-08_AYoS_And_the_Company_Says.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/TKMajor_AndTheCompanySaysAYoS_2007-06-08\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">more stream &amp; DL options<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\"><i>previous versions<\/i><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/2006\/01\/company-says.html\">Tuesday, January 10, 2006<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">lyrics<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<b><i>And the Company Says<\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/b>You walk into town<br \/>\nand you look all around<br \/>\nand it doesn&#8217;t take long<br \/>\nto see that something is wrong<br \/>\nvery wrong<\/p>\n<p>the people stand around<br \/>\nwith their eyes on the ground<br \/>\nit doesn&#8217;t take long<br \/>\nto see that something is wrong<\/p>\n<p>and the company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nnow, if you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t ya hang around<\/p>\n<p>and the Company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nif you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\nsell a penny on the pound<br \/>\ngive &#8216;way<\/p>\n<p>One man stands<br \/>\nsays I don&#8217;t run<br \/>\nbut the goons come around<br \/>\nwith their clubs and guns<\/p>\n<p>and they knock him down<br \/>\nand they kick him around<br \/>\nand they drag his body<br \/>\nto the edge of town<\/p>\n<p>and the company says<br \/>\nhe&#8217;s better off dead<br \/>\nthan fightin&#8217; with us<\/p>\n<p>and the company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nif you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\nwe&#8217;ll put you in the ground<\/p>\n<p>and the Company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nnow, if you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t ya hang around<\/p>\n<p>and the Company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nif you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\nsell a penny on the pound<br \/>\ngive &#8216;way<\/p>\n<p>and the company says<br \/>\nhe&#8217;s better off dead<br \/>\nthan fightin&#8217; with us<\/p>\n<p>and the company says<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a company town<br \/>\nif you don&#8217;t like that<br \/>\nwe&#8217;ll put you in the ground<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">(C)1986, 2007, TK Major<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raise a glass to the bosses! Toiling away in their chrome steel towers, a secretary on the lap and a Cubano going out in the ashtray, they pull the levers that make you and me dance. A hundred years or a little more ago there was open warfare between the bosses and the workers&#8230; the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,67],"tags":[476,477,479,478],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1729,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/1729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}