Baltimore markets itself as Charm City. Among its charms are great seafood, terrific restaurants, the Inner Harbor, an assortment of wonderful ethnic neighborhoods and lots of good people. Unfortunately, it is also a dying city. Crime and poverty ineffectively managed for decades by misguided leadership does not bode well for its future.
I moved to Charm City in 1977 and ended up participating in an effort to save a business coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Over the next 12 years I got an on-the-ground education that upended the theoretical nonsense that dominated much of my academic work and political predisposition. Running a meat processing plant in a neighborhood where crime, violence, unemployment and disparity dominated the landscape tends to push one in the direction of reality.
Our business had no charm. It was old, out of date, losing money, in a terrible neighborhood and barely in compliance with USDA regulations. Viewed from both inside and outside, it did not look like a source of opportunity for me or anyone else.
We were trying to resurrect a dying business in a dying neighborhood of a dying city. Since the majority of our employees came from the neighborhood, I got an up close and personal view of the problems that plague our inner cities. Hundreds of young men (mostly men) passed through our doors seeking work. Some succeeded. Some failed. Most of them lacked basic academic and job skills when we hired them. Hence, they were not qualified to earn a “living” wage. If such a law had been in effect, we could not have stayed in business.
Neither success nor failure as an employee in our business had much to do with racism, education or police brutality. The neighborhood did suffer from some racism, poor schools and a few rogue cops. Despite those negatives, some degree of upward mobility was up for grabs for anyone who entered our front door willing to learn basic job skills and work hard.
It wasn’t pretty. It was a cold, dirty and stressful work environment. This particular opportunity was not wrapped up in an attractive gift box topped with a big bow. Opportunity existed never the less.
The major distinction separating success and failure was attitude. If a young man entered those doors seeking opportunity, more often then not he found it. If he entered those doors feeling victimized he most often failed. The starting pay was low. No one, including ownership had health insurance. We were in before dawn. Sometimes we worked late and on Saturday. But those who decided to join in the effort to create a profitable enterprise became part of the team. It took a few years to put together the winning team that charted a course to profitability so we had the wherewithal to provide health insurance and annual bonuses to every employee.
We were a bit of an anomaly. The thought of starting a new business in this neighborhood would scare the business pants off most entrepreneurs. What needs to change in such an enviornment to revive the community and attract investment? It’s pretty simple. Create a reservoir of hard working consumers and massively reduce crime. Blaming the police, seeing oneself as a victim and demanding billions of dollars will not get that job done.
The first step is very easy to envision, but politically near impossible to implement. Take the $15,000 currently spent on each child’s education in Baltimore and convert it into a voucher/opportunity scholarship that each parent could use at any school in the county. Suddenly, choice and competition would enter a closed and failing system. Over time bad schools would be abandoned in favor of good schools and new schools would emerge. It wouldn’t play out perfectly or quickly but struggling families would see light at the end of the tunnel. Everywhere this has been tried academic performance improves. Every other suggested form of school reform is like pedaling on an exercise bike. Lots of sweet and time spent going nowhere on a bike not capable of forward motion.
Step number two is even more difficult. It involves a cultural transformation. Out of wedlock births need to be discouraged as they were in the past. Eventually they need to be the exception rather then the rule. Some taboos serve a culture well. Young men and women need to be scolded within their communities if they choose to have kids before they are married and working. Social pressure needs to be employed to change behavior.
Studying, speaking proper English and respecting authority (to include the police) needs to be considered the norm. Churches need to be filled with nicely dressed young people every Sunday. Every kid at home and in school needs to be reminded, over and over again, how incredibly lucky they are to be born in America. Gratitude opens the door to success. Victimhood fosters failure. Every pastor, politician, pundit, district attorney and entertainer should use their particular bully pulpit to preach these messages. Those who have set bad examples (entertainers and athletes) need to make a very loud and public mea culpa. How about celebrity financed public service announcements echoing these themes?
What does any of this have to do with poverty and crime? If you believe, as I do, that we live in a nation of unlimited possibilities, then opportunity comes to those prepared to exploit opportunity. Even if that opportunity is an old run down business in a terrible neighborhood. If young people are optimistic, have been able to achieve a modicum of academic proficiency and are willing to work hard, then some degree of success will follow.
It’s not complicated. It all depends on a culture that demonstrates these values and demands the same from its young people.
Government does have a roll to play. A safety net to supplement private charity for the destitute and disabled is a sacred obligation of the richest nation in world history. Welfare needs to be work incentivized as it was after the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that has been denuded over the last several years.
I am not anti-government. We built a large freezer to support our growing business by means of a low interest industrial revenue bond. We were given employment incentives to hire x-cons. Those measures helped us grow and gave a chance to men who had paid their debt to society. But these sorts of incentives should be stopgap measures to be employed until the schools and culture are transformed so there is no need for artificial reasons to do business in Charm City.
Please look for my next post. I will stick with this topic one more time. I will tell stories about my time in Baltimore. That’s the most effective way to illustrate why some rose out of the muck and others are stuck in the quagmire.
Great article.