too many people in Williams County were being used the way mining companies used coal in West Virginia. Human beings were the object of an extractive industry. They were mined for their labor and for their money. Too often, they were a “workforce” and not people at all. The goal was to pay them as little as possible and to get as much work out of them as possible while taking the least amount of responsibility possible. The modern American version of capitalism encouraged—even demanded—that employers extract the value from their employees while returning scraps to them and their communities.
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