— THE CADRE, SEPT. 9, PAGE 11 I used to make them.” Isaid, “oh, you used to make this toy? It must have been a goOd job.” She said, “Well, not really. I used to work in the inspection department.” “You see, when you push the button in little Annie-Fanny’s back, her right arm goes up and down like this. Any my job was pressing the button four times. Ifit worked four times in a row, it passed inspection. If the arm stuck, it didn’t.” That was herjob. Eight hours a day. 5 days a week, 48 — 50 weeks a year, pushing that button, watching that button and that arm go up and down, up and down. That’s wat we call CRAFT SMANSHIP in America. ‘ We have butchers, who don’t learn how to cut meat, we have butchers who learn how to cut fat, pour blood on it, and call it chopped meat. We have farmers who are told, somehow, that they’re paid not to produce. And another example: Walking by an escalator, I look down at a guy fixing the escalator, and just to make small talk I say to him, “Boy, these escalators are breaking a lot aren’t they? ” And he says to me, “You’re damn right and they better keep breaking because if they don’t I’m Out of a job. Now that guy’s job, under the profit system means that he is against me. It means th at I want elevators that work and he wants elevators that break. The steel worker wants steel that wears out and we wan' t steel that lasts. Th e butcher wants meat that’s cheap and we want meat that’s good. The pro- fit system places us against each other. PROFIT MEANINGLESS WORK The profit system guarantees that work is going to be meaningless. And that just doesn’t go for that particular worker. Some of you may say, well, yeh that’s_ true, but you know how workers are.” You say, “Y es sir, that’s why I’m going to college, I don’t wanna pour blood on meat, I don’t wanna raise that arm, I want ajob with real responsibility. I want ajob that’s going to make me somebody. Iwant a job with great insight and crea- tivity. Yes, sir that’s why you go to col- lege.” ' Well let me speak to about half the people in this room right now. I’m speak- ing to women. Any aspirations you have about a career, under the present system, will be very, very sad hopes because they will be crushed. Now ‘ let me talk about why those things are ' going to be crushed. ' The reason why they will be crushed is that we have a system in our country that says that it’s your job to have children. Now I don’t mean for nine months. I mean for your life. You see, men don’t like Children too much. Man? He has more im- portant things to do with his life. He has to go out and win the bread and butter. ~ No you may ask “I have a college degree. I can win the bread and butter.” Yeh, but what man is going to sit home an d take - care fo a baby with a BA. ?But yet, you’re expected to do it. Your job now is to be the college educated wife, the good conversa- tionalist, the person who is brough to par- ties and occasionally given some baby- But basically when you ha ve a child, your relationship with that child is one that you’regoing to have for at least those first six years before he goes off to school. .And if you have two or three children it’s going'to continue for at least six, nine, ten years. ._ue‘-{ no“ . .lzlfifdl "merit gtifif’l; “,0 limit! i Now Ihave a child. I find’it very hard to bring up a child. I find it very hard to be a real loving person, because my child — her name is Lisa — takes up a lot of my time, sometimes even when I didn’t really want to be with her; time when Iwantto be alone. She demands things of me that some- times I don’t want to give. Sometimes I’m really freaked out and I’m very lonely and upset. But she’s only a year and % and she says to me, Iwant something, and what I say is “I want you to go away.” But then I realize she can’t go away because I’m her father. A lot of times I have to take care ofher alone, then Ihave to say to myself, O.K. It’s too bad you ‘ freaked out. You have to deal with her. So Ideal with her. Ideal with her mechan- ically. I giver her a bottle and hope that she goes to sleep, even though she’s passed the age when she wants to sleep all the time. I do other mechanical things but basically I’m not with her. Now we men are going to face a lot of those problems. _ The first thing you’ve been told is that- it‘s an evil thing not to want to be with your kids all the time. What do you'mean you don’t wanna be, you’re told, did you ever see Ozzie and Harriet? When did you ever see Harriet not want to be with her kids? After all, every mother you’ve seen on television loves her kids all the time. The good mother is the one who wants to be with her kids all the time. She loves every minute of it. OK. models are held up for us, models that are destructive, models that are unreal, models that speak emotionally that we can’t possibly meet and that force us to feel lousy because we just think, “Man, I’m just not as good as old Harriet, ” instead of saying, “God-dam Harriet. You’re a liar. Your’re a fraud.” So maybe people should help us. Maybe they should say that kids should be brought up in some way, collectively, not by the state, but by a group of people who get to- gether and figure out different ways of taking care of kids. Some people really like to care for kids alot of the time. Other people like to take care of kids three or four hours a day. That’s not the point. The poin tis that we have to figure out some creative way of taking care of children. That involves men. When my daughter was about four or five months, my wife and I were separated which meant that I didn’t have any option. Ihad to learn to take care of a child. F or the first four or five months of the marriage, Ijust psychologically said, “It’s her kid, it’s her job to do a lot of those things.” Then all of a sudden Ihad to learn to stay up in the middle of the night when I wanted to sleep. I had to take the psy— chological responsibility of being alone with a helpless pemon; helpless because five or six month old kids are pretty helpless. NEW INSTITUTIONS NEEDED Now, why in the hell can’t we think of more human ways to taking care of kids? Why do we have to have all these marriages that are built on false organizations. I’m saying that the answer may be different kinds of marriages where different couples decide on what they want. I h ave friends who aren’t married, who are living together and who are having kids. Ihave five or six friends living in what they’call the collective, where they bring up a couple of kids together. Some of them are separated. Some of them aren’t. Some of them have ‘ "happymarriagesil D I have ffiends'who'believe it’s right for you to sleep with anybody you want to. I have friends who believe you should only sleep with one person, not because it’s a ’ rule, but just because they don’t want to sleep with other people. What I’m saying is that I’m amazed that we live in the type of society where socrety tells us that one form of organization is the only way to have a marriage when in fact, if you look at' the average marriage, you see it’s not working. Yet society won’t look at itself and say, “something’s fishy. We gotta admit that ours isn’t the only one and maybe, in fact, is one of the most ludicrous ones.” OK, so much for a society which makes it very hard to love you own kids. Now let’s talk about men and the few women who will take careers. The kind of careers that people take in business are being advertised today as very dramatic, very exciting, dynamic. But let’s talk about it. You are a personnel director. You are told you have a lot of responsibility, 3 lot of freedom. But what kind of real. responsibility do you have?You have the resonsibility to tell ‘people what to do. What’s yourjob?Yourjob is to get them to work harder. Why? Because working harder makes more profits. You ought to read Business Week to see what the business men think about you. For example, Business Week advertises that Feder’s air conditioners should be used in: the factory. Why? Because the days of the sweat shop are over. Great, That’s a really great idea. Maybe the bosses are getting a little more humane. But wait — why do we want Feder’s air conditioners? Because do you know that cooler workers are happier workers? And happier workers produce more. And workers who produce more make more profits for the company. So in fact, the only way you can sell a Feder’s air conditioner to a factory is to tell people they’ll have cooler, happier workers who will make more money for th em by their increased production. That’s a hell of a reason to tell someone they should or shouldn’t have to work in a hundred degree temperature; because in fact we can build all the air conditioners we need. But the only way we can sell them is by selling them to people who see something in it for themselves. There’s a new magazine now called Careers. You ought to look at it because it’s geared to the young market. Careers is a psychedelic Oppression. What it says is turn on, tune in, and do (Continued on page 13) LTD. Flowers Wired Wodd Wide HOSPITAL ORIGINALS WEDDING DESIGN CORSAGES — FUNERAL 894 - 7893 Royalty Mall Location 894 - 3818 201 Gt George — Charlottetown rip»: it».. ,..L.,