'There's No Better Existence'

In 1955, a Democrat told Time magazine that being a "free-lancer" beat being a U.S. Senator. Today's freelance busters need to realize that for many of us, it's still true.

A gem of a gift landed in my inbox this week. A fellow freelance writer sent me this 1955 article from Time magazine titled “The Press: The Free-Lancers.”

First of all, you have to love the spelling on free-lancers, paying homage to medieval mercenaries who would wield their lances on behalf of the highest bidder. They didn’t work for free, but they were free to work. Bloody heathens, sure, but in the sense of freedom to earn a living in the way that worked best for them, still my kind of people.

Second of all, this passage right near the top of the article made me want to plant a smackaroo right on somebody’s lips:

“Thus, except for the handful of magazines that are largely staff-written, free-lancers have become indispensable. ‘The free-lancer,’ says Collier’s Editor Roger Dakin, ‘is the backbone of the magazine industry.’ He is also the substance of an American dream.”

So much of this is still true today, I kept thinking. Gallup says more than 6 in 10 adults would prefer to be their own boss instead of being somebody else’s employee. Many of us want a more flexible work schedule—just like the freelancer in the article who had a secretary transcribe his dictated articles from a “recording machine” so he could spend afternoons tending to his orchards.

I don’t have a secretary, but the best part of my afternoons is turning off my computer and taking a long hike on a local park trail with my dog. I can do this while AI transcribes whatever I need. If I get an idea for a piece that I’m writing, I can dictate it into my smartphone to use later.

Same difference, really.

Yet another idea in the article that still holds up is this:

“Most successful freelancers would not trade their work for regular jobs with the same income.”

That’s what the majority of freelancers today say, too. In fact, some of the most recent research shows that a whopping 84% of full-time independent contractors say we are happier working on our own.

This article was really on a roll, until I got to the end and saw this bit that made me stop, re-read and then pick up my jaw off the ground:

“Says Oregon Democratic Senator Richard Neuberger, who free-lanced for years before he was elected to the Senate: ‘There’s no better existence than a free-lancer’s if you can make a go of it. Being a Senator is not nearly so good a life.’”

It was startling to see a member of the Democratic Party in the United States Senate say out loud, for the whole world to see in a mainstream publication, that freelancing is a good life—a better life, even, than a top government job.

Oh, how times have changed for members of that political party, whose leaders now insist that we need all kinds of restrictions on being independent contractors.

If we’re going to stop the freelance-busting brigade, we need today’s warped thinking to realign with the truth that self-employed Americans have known for generations.

The fundamental right we need to protect is our freedom to be our own bosses, because for many of us, it’s simply a better way of life.

Times Have Changed

Reading the Democratic Party platform from 1956, just one year after that Time magazine article was written, shows how some things remain the same, but other things have dramatically changed when it comes to respect for the right to be our own bosses.

What’s the same is the Democrats’ general disdain for the Taft-Hartley Act. It’s a 1947 law that limits the power of labor unions. Congress passed it because lawmakers believed that some union conduct needed correction, such as charging excessive dues or forcing employers to pay for work that nobody was actually doing.

In 1956, the Democratic Party platform stated this about the Taft-Hartley Act:

“We pledge ourselves to full parity of income and living standards for agriculture; to strike off the shackles which the Taft-Hartley law has unjustly imposed on labor…”

Democrats today are still trying to get those congressionally mandated shackles off the wrists of frustrated union organizers with legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which targets independent contractors not just in the agricultural sector, but also in hundreds of modern-day professions ranging from real estate to graphic design.

The PRO Act would give the freelance busters access to millions of independent contractors who prefer to be self-employed and left the heck alone. Today’s Democratic Party platform just phrases its goal of undoing the Taft-Hartley Act and those freelance protections differently:

“Democrats will keep fighting to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, to give everyone the right to organize for better pay, benefits, and working conditions, and to hold abusive bosses accountable for violating workers’ rights.”

So, in that case, we have new lingo for trying to sideline freelancers who cannot be organized against our will, but the same general concept applies after nearly 70 years.

What has changed substantially in that same timeframe, though, is the Democratic Party’s feelings about communists, at least as it relates to the PRO Act. Back in 1956, the Democratic Party platform stated:

“We condemn the Republican Administration for its heartless record of broken promises to the unfortunate victims of Communism.”

Unfortunate victims of Communism. That’s a pretty darn clear rebuke of policies that communists favor.

Today, it’s the opposite. The Democratic Party stands side by side with the Communist Party USA in its support for attacking independent contractors via the PRO Act. In fact, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA and the Democratic Party have all been fighting for the bill together, for years now:

Yes, it’s disconcerting to see all three of them lined up that way, but it’s the truth. This is where things stand in the United States today on policymaking that affects everyone’s freedom to choose self-employment.

Another inconvenient truth is how much has changed in recent years compared to this nugget from the 1956 Democratic Party platform, when the party promised the:

“… award of a substantially higher proportion of Government contracts to independent small businesses.”

Compare that sentiment with what we see today from top Democratic Party officials such as U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who said this while speaking before North America’s Building Trades Unions:

It’s one thing to support a party policy that’s intended to improve the lives of farmworkers who aren’t going home with a fair day’s pay after backbreaking work in the fields under the hot sun.

What we have today is another thing entirely—an embrace of Marxist ideals over capitalism, in tandem with an effort to harness the power of government exclusively for the benefit of unions.

An American Dream

It’s honestly hard to imagine, in the context of today’s political tribalism, a Democratic Senator going on CNN or sitting down with The New York Times and saying anything even close to this:

“There’s no better existence than a free-lancer’s if you can make a go of it. Being a Senator is not nearly so good a life.”

At a minimum, that lawmaker would be laughed out of the room when it was time to dole out the all-important union campaign contributions.

He’d also definitely be shunned, as recently happened to Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona who was booted off the short list to be Kamala Harris’ running mate because unionists were upset that Kelly had quite reasonably said this about the PRO Act:

“I do have some concerns with the legislation, specifically things about who qualifies as an independent contractor. Sometimes employers often use that to their advantage. In other cases, I do think people should be able to be independent contractors.”

With the urging of the freelance-busting brigade, Harris jettisoned the idea of Kelly and instead named Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate.

I’ll give you one guess why:

We are living through a deeply disturbing aberration from centuries-long thinking about our fundamental freedom to choose self-employment. We are seeing a startling number of people seek and gain leadership positions who believe that government should be of, by and for the unions, instead of being of, by and for all the people.

Their beliefs are at odds with the majority of the nation. What was true for medieval free-lancers is still true today. What that 1955 article stated is still true today, too.

Being a freelancer is the substance of an American dream.

Not the American dream, but an American dream, for sure. Being self-employed is certainly not everybody’s dream. For some people, a union job is the American dream. And that’s fine too. But for tens of millions of us, being our own boss is the best way to make a buck.

For those of us who choose this path, it’s about having the right to hang out a shingle and go into business for ourselves—without our government or anybody else trying to tell us that we have to go work for another person instead. It’s about living life on our own terms, even if what we want is our afternoons free to tend to our orchards or walk our dog in the park.

The freedom to be self-employed always has been, and always shall be, a right worth fighting to protect.

Now, if only somebody would let me wield a badass lance while I’m doing it…