CAN DO'S EVIL EMPIRE
The following is the conclusion of the book, "Energy Transition and the Local Community: A Theory of Society Applied to Hazleton, Pennsylvania."
It was written by Dan Rose, professor of social anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and published in 1981 by University of Pennsylvania Press
The book details the deadly consequences of the Greater Hazleton area's shift from coal mining to other industries with devastating results, primarily because of the heartless, cold-blooded officials of CAN DO, its industrial and economic development corporation.
POSTSCRIPT ON HAZLETON
Like any other bureaucracy, CAN DO presently has a bureaucratic momentum with large investments in social visibility and a large number and invisible constituents.
The overinvestment in industrial park land represents the more tangible side of this built-up motion. This is potentially dangerous for the flexibility of response that is demanded by changing condition; and, perhaps, more seriously, it can introduce possibly damaging features into the regional system in pursuit of its established goals.
During an interview with an executive officer, he elaborated at length on the problems of industrial waste disposal and recycling.The conversation built up on the tortured issue of environmental pollution and the growing resistance on the part of some segments of local communities to polluting industries.
The officer recounted two such cases and indicated that Hazleton would pursue those industries that other communities had vigorously rejected. One such firm was a lead recycling plant that extracted the substance from old auto batteries, and the other was a new chemical corporation formed to recycle hazardous chemical wastes from existing toxic fill sites and operating industries.
During the 1974 fieldwork, it became apparent that CAN DO recruited firms regardless of the potential or real hazards that the workplace might have, displaying a lack of concern for the health of the workers whose disposable incomes they sorely need.
The new strategy of recruiting those firms other communities rejected suggests several complex dimensions. It is the case that the wastes of industrial society need proper treatment; the high incidence of cancer in New Jersey, the higher per capital in the United States, is directly related to the large concentration of chemical companies and reflects a flagrant example of this pressing demand.
On the other hand, the question remains who will insure that the recycling and waste treatment firms Hazleton recruits will protect those workers involved in the physical manipulation of the toxic materials? There is no adequate answer. The CAN DO members now appear to be trading the health of their regional works for the pursuit of their own goals. They are, in addition, counting on public support for their moves, believing, perhaps rightly, that the citizenry of Hazleton will not object to hazards in their workplace because they are willing to risk their health and that of their kinsmen for jobs.
For workers, this is not a dilemma that readily admits to socially just outcomes. CAN DO is thus counting on the tradition of risk-taking among the descendants of miners, who once worked in the most debilitating and deadly region during the Industrial Revolution.
There is ample evidence of the lack of concern over the well-being and social organization of the labor force on the part of the CAN DO staff and in its recruitment policy. The numerous unions associated with the local industries are considered to be divided, hence good, unlike the monolithic United Mine Workers of little more than a generation ago (there are more than 20 unions, and 90 percent of the industries are now unionized.
Labor, like management, is considered by CAN DO to be an internal affair to the incoming company.
One officer commented that labor is not always to blame and that poor management decisions have resulted in blatant failure in firms in the industrial park.
Despite criticism of management, the indifference toward labor is even more apparent.
When asked if Hazleton had labor problems, and officer commented that they had a bit but not as much as the larger cities of the anthracite region. An informal and personalistic relationship between organized labor and CAN DO was revealed, and it speaks of the inadequately understood and far from dominant role labor has played in United States life.
COMMENTS BY A CAN DO OFFICIAL
"The only thing that we don't have here is a good, good strong labor leader that could... Back years ago Tom Kennedy was the vice-President and then eventually President of the United Mine works. He was born and raised in Hazleton. He had his home here while he had his office even down in Washington. He was under John L. Lewis; he was Vice-President then.
"And when there was some union problems in some of the plants, and we could foresee that maybe it would be a week or two or something like that -- at least the talk was like that -- the company and the union so far apart that very politely we would ask Tom Kennedy, "Why don't you pick up the phone and call the union people and find out what the story is."
"And he would just in his own way with his political pressure ask: 'Alright, what's goin' on and what're ya lookin' for?' That's what Tom Kennedy was saying, okay: '"What're all talkin' about'?"
"And then he would let someone know, and then they'd say to the company, 'Alright, company, let's get off your high horse,' "And the first thing you know, the thing was settled. This meant you had a good strong labor leader in the area. There's nothing wrong with that."
The disregard of the labor force; the hazards of the workplace; the further potential ecological degradation of the mountain, and the stagnating regional economy are problems that may prove insurmountable to evolving CAN DO strategies and existing social organization. The stresses in all the anthracite communities are continually being played out in relation to the world economy. The fluctuating moods of the Hazleton Mountain business people reflect the inadequately-met problems of a formerly essential extraction region.
I have two final observations to make, both speculative, one concerning the evolving social organization of the Hazleton region, the other about the long wave in the evolution of the international economy. CAN DO as an entity faces a couple of strong challenges that will change it.
The first challenge is the current energy transition that's upon us with the attendant downturn of the economy and the further decline of employment possibilities in the anthracite region.
The second challenge that CAN DO must face is the aging and retirement of the post-war generation of men whose vision of a revitalized community was first realized, then disappointingly eroded. Who the next generation of CAN DO people will be and what their perceptions and organizational responses will be is a matter worthy of serious speculation.
If a high demand for anthracite should materialize along with the predicted greater world-wide use of coal, then new organizational structures will rapidly emerge in the coal region once again beyond the reach of the communities, like Hazleton, that now enjoy a prominent position to control flows of energy, matter, information, labor and capital.
CAN DO could be rendered socially obsolete. My own sense is that CAN DO will in fact not outlast this age cohort in the form that can now be discerned.
My second observation is more in the nature of a reflection on some of the implications of the model set forth. I consider the behavior of the long wave, if indeed it does register underlying energy transitions, to be unnecessary. These great fluctuations cause local-level hardships that seem completely unwarranted and avoidable.
Although I have claimed that the capitalist world-system is determined at this point in history, I have not succumbed to the fatalism such a view might encourage.
Rather, I believe that if the world-economy were perceived to be a function of the adaptation of the human species to the planet by means of energy exchanges, then that awareness would facilitate intervention. Intervention would require that conceptual and institutional means be found to insure a stabilized relationship between the world population and world energy supply and distribution.
The great fluctuations must be dampened by insuring an energy supply that does not exhaust resources, an exhaustion that causes the decline in the economy and world-wide depression.
The human suffering resulting from these economic vicissitudes could potentially be alleviated. Perhaps the greatest justification for such an optimistic view results form the theory of evolution itself. By assuming that we are evolving toward greater complexity and are becoming conscious of this evolution,t hen the next logical step is to think, as many are doing, on where we fit and wish to fit in the continuing process, that is, the future. (Kenneth) Boulding has observed that:
"With man, however, comes self-awareness, and not only self-awareness but awareness of a whole system in which the self is embedded. This can produce conscious effort toward a change in the system of the world whether biological, physical or social."
"In any human social system, therefore, the image of the world possessed by its human participants is a vital element in the overall dynamics of the system."
"We cannot tell what the system will do unless we know what the people in it think of it, for what they think affects their behavior and their behavior affects the system."
With these observations, Boulding anticipated the ecological transition heralded by (John L.) Bennett and by (Gregory) Bateson. The challenge is to begin designing our future while insuring the possibility that we will continue to have one. The philosopher Hussrl nicely captured (in 1935) the basis of my expectation, which is rooted in the scientific enterprise.
"Scientific cultures under the guidance of ideas of infinity means, then, a revolutionization of the whole culture. It also means a revolutionization of historicity, which is now the history of the cutting-off of finite mankind's development as it becomes mankind with infinite tasks."
I end on a note of scientific optimism. The local communities that anthropologists almost invariably study, and often serve as advocates for, suffer or benefit as the esult of the hidden machinery of exogenous forces.
By controlling the larger system, the interests of local regions and ways of life can, it is hoped, be more justly served. One aspect of the infinite project should be able to control the greater system in the interests of facilitating the lesser systems, on which the greater necessarily depends.
