Meet John Walker, alias \u201cBlack Jack,\u201d a licensed hawker in Victorian London. He makes a living distributing coal to Londoners in winter and selling sand to stables in summer. Like larger entrepreneurs, he plays the spread between wholesale and retail. \u201cWholesale, a sack [of coal] fetches me one and six; but it pays best to sell it to poor folks, my chief customers, in small lots at a penny and two pence a lot.\u201d Sand he buys at 11 shillings a ton and lays down for 30 shillings a ton. But there\u2019s overhead to consider\u2014the donkey. Remarked one hawker, \u201cI always feed my beast to make sure he gets his grub regular. I look after him too, as I would a brother. He\u2019s worth all the trouble I can take about him.\u201d Fortunately Black Jack\u2019s beast was reliable\u2014\u201cmy donkey\u2019s took me home many a night when I had a drop o\u2019 drink in me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other hawkers dealt in strawberries purchased at Covent Garden. The business worked as follows: \u201cThree partners, with a joint capital of 4 pounds [sterling] may invest in a lot that will turn out thirty-five or forty dozen \u2018punnets\u2019 [baskets]. These they will readily dispose of the same day at an average price of four pence a basket, or a trifle less.\u201d Strawberries had to be handled with care. \u201cStrawberries ain\u2019t like marbles that stand chuckin\u2019 about,\u201d explained one dealer. \u201cThey are what you may call fancy goods. . . .You should never let them know you\u2019ve got fingers, leastwise fingers like mine \u2013 all thumbs. They don\u2019t like it. They must be worked without touching. . . . They won\u2019t hardly bear to be looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other laborers worked the Covent Garden flower trade. About two thousand men were employed bringing flowers to the hundreds of stalls in the market; another two thousand fanned out around London, carrying flowers to the various purchasers. These men were paid job-by-job, but an elite group had regular employment in the flower stalls; at 5:00 AM they brought the flowers from the wholesale market to their shops, where they arranged the inventory in a pleasing manner.<\/p>\n
A Post-Capitalist Neighborhood<\/strong><\/p>\n Because these men, though poor, were firmly connected to London\u2019s commercial economy, they earned the income and self-respect that comes with having a real job. That\u2019s not the case with all too many young black males in America\u2019s inner city, which makes them susceptible to substance abuse and crime. According to the Urban Institute, in January 2010 the employment \/ population ratio (which takes account of both the unemployment rate and labor force participation rate) was just 39.9% for young black men, versus 57.4% for young white men and 52.8% for young Hispanic men. So 60% of young black men were not working. And that is a national <\/strong>figure\u2014it is even higher in inner cities.<\/p>\n A NYT article by a Johns Hopkins historian argues that Baltimore\u2019s poor are exploited by capitalists who control retailing and real estate. Unfortunately he\u2019s wrong. Mainstream business interests have pretty much abandoned vast residential areas in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit and other cities. There\u2019s not a lot of profit in selling to households earnings $20,000 or $30,000 per year, especially when taxes are high and costs for security, insurance, pilferage, etc. are inflated by high crime. A tour, via Google maps, of the Baltimore neighborhood where the CVS store was looted and torched reveals only a smattering of national brands such as Subway and Burger King. Interestingly, there is a super-abundance of \u201ccarryout stores\u201d mostly selling chicken and Chinese food\u2014which suggests many residents don\u2019t have the facilities or access to fresh produce that would allow them to cook at home. There are also plenty of check cashing stores, tax preparers, liquor stores, beauty salons and small stores selling clothes, used furniture, etc.<\/p>\n Wrong Turn<\/strong><\/p>\n Such neighborhoods are a forlorn monument to liberalism. In the late 1960s the Civil Rights Movement and War on Poverty morphed into a campaign for income redistribution that was all too successful because both Democrats and Republicans were frightened by urban riots and took perpetual prosperity for granted. Transfer payments soared. Across the political spectrum capitalism was deemed un-cool and unnecessary; it was Richard Nixon who stupidly, and disastrously, imposed wage and price controls in 1971, setting the stage for double-digit inflation in 1973. (If you know you can\u2019t raise prices while your own costs are rising, you don\u2019t build new capacity.) During the dreary 1970s mainstream businesses decamped from increasingly over-taxed, crime-ridden cities, leaving the poor to the tender mercies of corrupt politicians and public employee unions.<\/p>\n A Capitalistic Anti-poverty Agenda<\/strong><\/p>\n Liberals triumphed; the poor suffer. They are not literally \u201ctrapped\u201d in \u201cghettos;\u201d suburbanites commute into central cities, so obviously reverse commutes are possible and, indeed, are made by many. What is needed is economic reform that produces a prolonged period of strong GDP growth and robust labor demand, such as we had in the late 1990s. That was a period of welfare reform, a capital gains tax cut, soaring stock prices, and rising income inequality\u2014but also major progress for poor black Americans. The percentage of blacks in poverty dropped from 33.4% in 1992 to 22.5% in 2000.<\/p>\n Today the indicated reforms are pretty obvious\u2014corporate tax reform that repatriates $2 trillion in corporate cash stranded overseas, an \u201call of the above\u201d energy policy, school choice for poor inner-city parents (not just rich liberals like the Obamas and Gores), and repealing anti-full-time-employment regulations such as Obamacare. Republican Presidential candidates should aggressively push a capitalist anti-poverty agenda for the inner city but eschew dumb gimmicks like \u201centerprise zones\u201d and temporary tax holidays.<\/p>\n Copyright Thomas Doerflinger 2015. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meet John Walker, alias \u201cBlack Jack,\u201d a licensed hawker in Victorian London. He makes a living distributing coal to Londoners in winter and selling sand to stables in summer. Like larger entrepreneurs, he plays the spread between wholesale and retail. … Continue reading