First book in Roland's popular Valediction For Revenge western series

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Tip o' the Day

Have you smelled fear; the cloying sickly fear that turns your stomach? Perhaps it was when your pickup hit an icy patch on a winter road, or when the grammer school bully singled you out for special attention at age eight.

Personally I've smelled fear in the outdoors -- very real and very cose when I inadvertently came between a sow grizzly and her cub along the Whitefish Divide, just north of the Big Mountain ski area; and when I intruded on a monster grizzly's territory up the Spotted Bear River.

But both were mere child's play compared to the smell of fear I've innocently invoked by clambering along tough mountain cliffs during a an exploratory day in the wilds. Unbeknownst to most, the danger of pushing relentlessly toward forbidding rock summits in the hope of continuing into remote and isolated territory is beyond doubt the most formidable danger an outdoorsman could encoounter in our western mountains.

I've been there enough to know it's much easier to go up until you find you can go no further, then discover it near impossible to descend over the same route you ascended only a few moments before. It's there, while staring at the ledge below, that the smell of fear trickles into your backbone. It's there you discover that courage travels but a short distance from heart to head, but when it goes, it goes so far no one can know where to find it.

A bear will, nine times out of ten, yield in a dangerous encounter. Not so with a rock face. It is unyielding, somber, emotionless. There is nothing -- nothing at all -- you can do except swallow your fear and begin your descent. Staring at the abyss won't help; only lowering yourself down, tentatively feeling for the toeholds and fingerholds you so confidently scrambled up moments before.

Better that you never got there in the first place. Better that you recognize and respect the greatest danger our wilderness mountains afford. Better that you never smell the bile that rises to your throat, or suffer the consequences of a foolish climbing error.

Roland, I am Robert's [West] youngest son, Ben. I truly appreciate the tribute you did for my dad on your website and your friendship with my dad throughout the years. He loved hunting with you. I miss him everyday because he was my hero. The only hero I ever had / email from Ben West

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CAPITAL AND LABOR -- A CONFLICT?

I read in a recent newspaper story where federal agents arrested 1,200 illegal aliens in a series of raids on meatpacking plants in six states. The raids apparently stimulated lots of barbs and arrows from both sides of the immigrantion debate. One group who favors vigorous enforcement condemned the raids as too little, too late and all that will result is the raids will be used as a "cover for amnesty."

On the other side, immigrant rights groups said, "The raid terrorized thousands of workers and their families." A spokesperson for the rights group sighed, "We've been doing raids fo 20 years, and the immigration problem is [still] soaring." The spokesperson added a thought-provoking statement: "You can't restore the rule of law until you respond to the law of supply and demand."

There in a nutshell is the heart of our problem. Not supply of meat -- that can come from Argentina or Queensland (if you wish to ignore and impoverish animal husbandry in the United States) -- but supply of labor to process that meat.

I recollect a passage in James Michener's fine book about Colorado's fictional town of Centennial. During the late 19th Century and into the 20th, sugar beet growers in the region experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining laborers for their backbreaking harvest work. They imported labor from Russia, Germany, Italy, and France -- whose only dream was to own their own farms. They tried Japanese laborers who proved -- men, women and children -- to be industrious and tireless and personally frugal. But as soon as the Japanese family accumulated sufficient savings, they bought their own plot of land and left the industrial farms' employ. Finally sugar beet growers located the perfect working men and women. Best of all, those perfect workers lived nearby. In Michener's words:

". . . Brumbaugh was afraid to tell anyone else what good workers Mexicans were, lest they be stolen from him. The men liked farming, understood problems of soil and were not averse to doing stoop-work. They had been employed to work from March to November, and what they were asked to do made no difference. They were meek people . . . .

Michener's tale, of course, indicates the current alien controversy has deeper roots than we're sometimes led to believe.

There's also this "believe it or not": one of the meatpacking plants recently raided for today's illegal aliens is located in Greeley, Colorado. Greeley, it is said, served as the model for Michener's Centennial.

So the demand is still there for working people in Colorado, indeed throughout America, but the supply isn't. One knee-jerk reaction might be: "Pay enough to work sugar beets and you'll find plenty of legal Americans to do the job." But I wonder. Even if growers were to pay 30 bucks an hour all across America, would workers willing to stoop all day in sunburning heat (without airconditioning) suddenly materialize? And what may be more to the point, how many of us could or would pay the suddenly inflated supermarket prices for sugar or strawberries or rutabagas?

Another element in this conundrum is the fear of some folks that illegal aliens are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers -- a point firmly made in Michener's book through connivance between certain employers and enforcement agencies. Perhaps. Certainly pittance wages without benefits is occasionally recorded. So the answer is yes . . . because somewhere there's bound to be a scumbag employer or two. But is it the norm? No, because, by and large, most people, employers and employees, aren't scumbags. One thing does seem patently clear to me, though -- that there must be a better way to address unscrupulous employers than by interdicting sometimes desperate people who are attempting to supply our demand.

Our central question to this conundrum perhaps should be to ask if illegal aliens is really our problem, or is it free trade in a global economy? Aren't we at least as alarmed about the flight of industry from our country as we are of aliens coming to America to fill unfulfilled jobs? Or am I somehow short of a full deck by assuming we'll solve our illegal alien problem when the last of America's jobs flees off-shore?

Because, like it or not, that may be our choices:

1) Supply the demand for labor here in America, or

2) Send our industry where that labor is plentiful.

In a worldwide economy, capital is clearly free to move about the globe. In fact that free-moving investment capital is sometimes key to the economic well-being of nations -- including ours. Labor, of course, being relegated to proscribed boundaries, has no such latitude. But it's not difficult to predict that the day may come when labor itself becomes a resource as rich as mother lodes of precious gems or indispensable metals -- an industry attractant, if you will -- within those boundaries. Or, jarring as the idea might seem, labor will be released to flow as freely as capital about the globe.

Supply. Demand. The basic principles upon which any successful free-enterprise system is founded.

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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Book four in the Valediction For Revenge series, Gunnar's Mine, is set in Colorado mining country, as is the sixth and final book in the series, The Silver Yoke

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