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February 23
Serenus the Gardener, W.E.B. Dubois, and Alabama's first antitrust law.
David Barnhart
February 23, 2025
Mantis, 2024. Own photo.
On February 23, 1883, Alabama became the first state to pass an antitrust law, making it illegal for railroads to fix prices. Unfortunately, Alabama has since become friendly to monopolies and price-fixing, allowing the major statue utility, Alabama Power, to charge residents whatever it wants while it buys as much positive news coverage as it can.
Today is the Feast Day of Serenus the Gardener, martyred on this day in 307. He is a patron saint of gardeners.
Today is the also the birthday of W.E.B. Dubois, sociologist, author, and civil rights advocate. In addition to helping found the NAACP, he wrote extensively on the history of racism in the United States, and demonstrated how capitalism contributed to racism.
Reflection:
Perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of current America is the attempt to reduce life to buying and selling. Life is not love unless love is sex and bought and sold. Life is not knowledge save knowledge of technique, of science for destruction. Life is not beauty except beauty for sale. Life is not art unless its price is high and it is sold for profit. All life is production for profit, and for what is profit but for buying and selling again?
Prayer: I cannot come up with a better prayer than W.E.B. Dubois’s own words:
Give us grace, O God, to dare to do the deed which we well know cries to be done. Let us not hesitate because of ease, or the words of men’s mouths, or our own lives. Mighty causes are calling us—the freeing of women, the training of children, the putting down of hate and murder and poverty—all these and more. But they call with voices that mean work and sacrifices and death. Mercifully grant us, O God, the spirit of Esther, that we say: I will go unto the King and if I perish, I perish.