Teddy Roosevelt – Social And Industrial Justice (excerpt) – August 1912 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
In case you haven’t noticed, today is Labor Day. It is a holiday – most stores and businesses are closed. Most – not all. There are some businesses which choose to stay open because . . .well, it means money – something Society functions almost entirely on, it seems.
And there are some businesses who choose to stay open because it’s what they do – open no matter what, no matter how – they perform a service.
Past Daily is a seven-day a week, fourteen hour a day operation – we don’t close – we don’t take vacations – haven’t taken a vacation in the 9 years we’ve been up and running. And contrary to what the above photo might suggest, I don’t have an editorial staff, don’t have sound editors and don’t have a staff of archivists, slaving away over obscure and obsolete equipment – it’s just me; Chief, cook and bottle washer. All day – every day; holidays or no. My service gig.
Why do I do it? Because history is important – and having a place where you can discover archived things and discover new things every day is important -it’s my commitment to you and to history in general. Crazy? I know – but knowing about your society, your world and your culture is crucial if you’re ever going to make any choices in this increasingly complicated and insane life.
History isn’t an exercise in making judgements; it’s being witness to an event and telling people about it. What’s crucial is for you to decide based on what you know and what you find out in order to understand that some things have happened over and over, repeatedly in our world – some lessons are never learned because many lessons are forgotten. And I have made it my job to remind you.
So what’s all this leading up to? Survival; plain and simple. The Pandemic has hit a lot of people very hard; coupled with disasters going on seemingly all over the world at once – some archives have been destroyed, some priceless artifacts of our culture have been eradicated by fire or flood. That cannot happen. But like many people engaged in actively preserving history, I need your help.
As you know, I have suspended all our advertising a couple months ago because it was a huge distraction – a lot of annoying ads for products I wouldn’t in my right mind buy or promote – but the bottom line was; it didn’t pay the bills and it barely paid the server space rental for the website. And so it had to go. And the vast majority of you agreed.
But what that also means is I have come to rely on you, the audience for support, your contributions to help keep the site up and running and preserving all the sounds you hear.
A lot of you are using Patreon to subscribe to Past Daily – and if you can, I would love it if you would join them. So far, 81 of you have committed to supporting Past Daily each month. And for as little as $1.00 you can make a huge difference. You can also subscribe for a full year so you don’t have to look at recurring reminders and your support is assured.
I’ve also stopped doing the periodic Fundraisers – like the ads, they tended to be overkill and everyone seems to be doing them and have subsequently overdosed on them.
So that just leaves Patreon or PayPal – either works and both accomplish the same thing; giving me the opportunity to keep the site up and running and the daily grind of preservation continuing. There are little boxes dotting the site that say “Become a Patron” and each post has another couple of boxes saying the same thing as well as a logo for Paypal. You can click on any of those icons and it will take you to Patreon (or PayPal) where you can chip in whatever you can.
Needless to say, I would be more than grateful and we can go forward without worrying how the rent and the equipment get paid.
In the meantime – have a listen to an extended excerpt of this Teddy Roosevelt address from August 1912 on the subject of Industrial Justice – certainly apropos for now and another reminder that history repeats and repeats often.
Be safe and stay sane,
Gordon Skene
Past Daily
