What can we do for men who took pride in blue-collar work?

Is there any future at all for blue-collar workers in this country?

The quarry

In the wonderful 1979 movie "Breaking Away," four recent high school graduates are trying to decide what to do with their lives.

They spend part of their time swimming in a quarry that once was filled with stone that men from their fathers' generation cut to build large buildings in Bloomington, Indiana.

One night one of the boys is out walking with his father, who spent decades working as a limestone cutter.

The boy is telling his dad that students at the university (Indiana) call the kids in the town "cutters" to put them down, and his dad tells him he was proud to work as a cutter. There was one thing strange about it, though.

"I was proud of my work," he said. "And the buildings went up. When they were finished the damnedest thing happened. It was like the buildings were too good for us. Nobody told us that. It just felt uncomfortable, that's all."

It's just an example, but it's a good example of the type of jobs that used to be available to men with strong backs who may not have had much in the way of education. By the 1970s, those jobs were starting to go away. In the 40 years since, the guys who used to do those jobs haven't just fallen through the cracks. They've fallen off the edge of the Earth.

And if they thought the buildings made from their limestone were too good for them, wait till you see how they feel about the country that has thrown them away.

There just aren't enough janitorial and security guard jobs available.