Folks,
may I remind you that this is not a political forum. While everyone is entitled to have his/her view on political issues , this is not the place to voice it. There are platforms much better suited for that.
Let´s move on to more railroad related topics now.
garr Doing a quick google search it looks like the anti child labor movement in America started in the 1830s, began really building steam in the 1880s, ultimately resulting in federal legislation in 1916(later ruled unconstitutional twice) with US finally passing in 1936 the Walsh-Healey Act making it illegal for the federal government to purchase anything made with child labor. The great depression ultimately ended child labor in the USA because of the competition for jobs between adults and children. My question is the timing of the 1916 passage of legislation banning child labor. With that being right in the middle of WWI was there no labor shortages like what was experienced during WWII? Is the Walsh-Healey Act still on the books? Jay
Doing a quick google search it looks like the anti child labor movement in America started in the 1830s, began really building steam in the 1880s, ultimately resulting in federal legislation in 1916(later ruled unconstitutional twice) with US finally passing in 1936 the Walsh-Healey Act making it illegal for the federal government to purchase anything made with child labor. The great depression ultimately ended child labor in the USA because of the competition for jobs between adults and children.
My question is the timing of the 1916 passage of legislation banning child labor. With that being right in the middle of WWI was there no labor shortages like what was experienced during WWII?
Is the Walsh-Healey Act still on the books?
Jay
Jay:
To answer your questions this is what I found:
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act was a federal law that punished states for child labor. The law prevented "movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated." This law was declared unconstitutional in 1918 and was rewritten. The revised version was passed and put into law, then declared unconstitutional a second time. The law was a step in the right direction, but it failed to make any significant change other than to support later attempts to pass. .."
Read more: Child Labor Law Act | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6538631_child-labor-law-act.html#ixzz1aA1AFng1
Follow this link: THE HISTORY OF THE WALSH-HEALEY ACT of 1936 : [This was actually a law to control federal purchasing requirement and eliminate those goods manufactured with child labor}
and then in 1937: "...In 1937, a second attempt to make the federal government able to regulate child labor failed. However, 1937 was also the year when another federal sanction law was passed: The Sugar Act prevented beet growers from garnering benefit payments if they violated a state's work standards for minimum age and work hours. Right after that came the next success in 1938: The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, which meant that the U.S. federal government was finally able to regulate minimum age and work hours for children..."
Read more: Child Labor Law Act | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6538631_child-labor-law-act.html#ixzz1aA3Ia9Yx
Lastly from the Dept of Labor website: http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-pca.htm
The Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (PCA)
Probably all you will want to know about currrent Child Labor Provisions.
Jay - Maybe a piece of the answer: Britain paid for supplies it bought from the U.S. early in the war by cashing in its large investments in U.S. railroads. The U.S. entered the war in 1917.
greyhounds For people to get out of misery they need wealth. Wealth is produced by commerce. Labor is a part of commerce, but it is not only element of commerce nor is it more or less important than the other elements. You don't like those facts because of your political ideology. I don't care. It's reality.
For people to get out of misery they need wealth. Wealth is produced by commerce. Labor is a part of commerce, but it is not only element of commerce nor is it more or less important than the other elements. You don't like those facts because of your political ideology. I don't care. It's reality.
1. Please don't try to pretend your comments are not ideological, just facts or reality. They are very ideological, as one can see in your selection of experts, such as Walter E. Williams. Yes, he is a distinguished economist. He is also a libertarian and because of that, a frequent guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio show. he also supports the right of secession. Facts.
2. I gave a dictionary definition of commerce. it is part of the process of creation of wealth, not just part of commerce. Fact.
3. You are free to say, believe, or cite whoever you want, but stop pretending to be a Jack Webb type, with your "Just the facts" responses as though they were not ideologically-based opinions and your interpretations of reality.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Mike, thanks for that quotation. Back in the sixties, I first read Thomas Costain's novel The Tontine, which has a part that shows some of what child labor in England was--and how individuals who worked together were able exert pressure on a magnate to alleviate some of the misery the children endured. One difference between those involved in using child labor and those who held people in bondage is that that employers of children had nothing invested in the children.
Johnny
My experience is limited to a paper route which resembled hard labor only when it rained or snowed. My father worked as a messenger at St. Albans headquarters of the Central Vermont from the age of 12 through high school. My maternal grandmother (1889-1985) worked full-time at a mill in Massachusetts after the 8th grade. I wish I had thought to interview them on this subject.
Mike
CHILD LABOR IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES (1899)
BY CHARLES B. SPAHR
There has been child labor ever since the world began, but child labor became a pressing public problem barely a century ago in England, and only during the present generation in America. This does not mean, however, that child labor was never an evil before the present century, and still less does it mean that the conscience of men and women never awoke to the evil until three generations ago in England and a few years ago in our own country. Child labor until a few years ago here, and until three generations ago in England, was the labor of children in helping their own parents, and the love of the individual parents for their own children was a far better protection to the little ones than any law that could then have been enacted. It was only with the invention of Arkwright's spinning frame in 1769 and of the power loom a few years later, that spinning and weaving in the factories took the place of spinning and weaving in the homes, and the need of public law to protect the children against task masters who cared nothing for them became imperative. For centuries, England had had laws to protect orphans who were apprenticed to strangers. Now in the factory districts virtually all the children became apprenticed to strangers, and law was equally needed to protect them against inhumanity.
The law, however, was slow in being enacted. Just as today less skill is needed in the factories where carpenters' work is done by machinery than in shops where it is done by hand, in the same way apparently less skill was needed to " tend the machines" in the textile factories than to manage the hand looms at home. Old persons were absolutely unfit for the new work. The nimble fingers of young children were especially in demand, and the interests of the factory owners were arrayed against any limitation of child labor. This period was the darkest one in England's industrial history. It was the time of the Napoleonic wars, when the taxes caused by these wars took a third of the wages of independent workmen, and made pauperism for the first time a great national curse. The middle classes suffered corresponding losses, but the wealth of the wealthier classes rapidly increased. Nowhere more than in the factory towns did these tendencies assert themselves. The wealth of the factory owners rose by leaps and bounds until they vied with the great landlords in power, but in the factory towns it seemed as if the life of the working people was being crushed out. Huddled together in unsanitary homes - or rather sleeping-places - and working in unsanitary factories, the death rate in some of the cities became double the usual rate in rural England. This meant that the average time of life was reduced to less than twenty years. More than anyone else the children suffered. "Children of all ages, down to three and four," says Willoughby's "Child Labor in England," "were found in the hardest and most painful labor. Labor from twelve to thirteen and often sixteen hours a day was the rule. Children had not a moment free save to snatch a hasty meal or sleep as best they could. From earliest youth they worked to the point of extreme exhaustion without open-air exercise or any enjoyment whatever, but grew up, if they survived at all, weak, bloodless, miserable." After a while the heart of England protested. As early as 1819 the employment of children under nine was prohibited, and the labor of those under thirteen was limited to twelve hours a day, but it was not until near the middle of the century that the protest availed to secure effective measures. To the Earl of Shaftsbury belongs the credit of carrying these measures through Parliament. It was he who really awakened the conscience of England to realize that little children in factories and in mines were being condemned to "hours of labor not exacted from the most hardened criminals." In his great conflict, as he said, his support was the nation's heart. Not only was its wealth arrayed against him, but its culture also. Nearly all the writers on economics took the position that the limitation of child labor would injure England's trade. A few clearheaded economists, like Macaulay, had the penetration to see that whatever produced better men would in the long run produce better work, and that therefore England need not wait for other countries before restricting the hours of labor to such as would preserve health and manhood. But such insight came only to those whose consciences were stronger than their concern for material gains. The final victory of 1847, reducing the working time of all persons under eighteen to ten hours, with half time and five hours of schooling for those under thirteen, was distinctively a triumph of heart and conscience over theories and the demands of business. Today, everybody in England realizes that England's commercial power was built up by the protection afforded to the physical and intellectual vigor of her working people; but half a century ago Mrs. Browning was a "sentimentalist" when she wrote:-
'' The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young, young children, 0 my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others
In the country of the free."
In this country the movement to restrict the employment of children did not begin until that in England had triumphed, but here the restrictions from the first have generally been more rigorous than those imposed in England even now. Massachusetts practically led the way with an act passed in 1866, and since that date one after another of the northern states has followed her example, until the territory covered reaches across the continent and includes nearly every state with any considerable factory population. As a rule, the age under which children are not allowed to work is twelve or thirteen, whereas in England it is only ten; and our laws, like the English, usually require a certain amount of schooling until the children are fourteen. Here, however, the superiority of our legislation ceases. The English factory laws are well enforced, while our factory laws, as a rule, are badly enforced and our compulsory education laws, if anything, even worse. Some of our states have no public officers charged with the enforcement of these laws, and were it not that the public sentiment of our citizens requires far more schooling for the children than is required by public sentiment in England, we should have little occasion for pride. At this point, however, lies the superiority of American conditions. The great body of American families will keep their children in school as long as they are able, without the compulsion of law. In England, according to the report of 1842, one-third of those employed in coal mines were children under eighteen, and nearly half of them were under thirteen. In this country, the number of children under thirteen who work in even the lightest employment is relatively insignificant; according to the last census, only about three per cent of the labor force of this country consists of children under fourteen.
But while conditions are far better here than in England, we cannot boast that they are improving, save in Massachusetts and a few other states where organized labor, supported by a better public sentiment, is now securing the enforcement of the restrictive laws. Between 1870 and 1880 the amount of child labor in this country decidedly increased. In 1870, out of 5,604,000 children between ten and fifteen years old, 739,000 were wage earners; in 1880, out of 6,649,000 children of these ages, 1,118,000 were wage earners. The last census changed the classification of children, so that exact comparisons are impossible. It reported that of 7,033,000 children between ten and fourteen years old, but 603,000 were at work, and on the basis of this report Commissioner Wright claims that a great gain has been made. This, however, is doubtful, as fourteen is precisely the age at which children are most likely to leave the grammar schools and go to work.
At the best, much remains to be done. The employment of over half a million children under fourteen in factories, shops and mines demands serious national attention. In the mining regions of Pennsylvania, boys of twelve are taken out of school and put to work for ten hours a day at the breakers, picking slate from the coal; and in the south, boys and girls are taken from school before they are ten and set to.work for twelve hours a day in the cotton mills that are now being scattered over the country. The children in the cotton mills work with surprising animation, but their best employers admit that these children are sapping their strength and are likely to pay in the future for their exhaustion now. These employers say that they would gladly refuse to employ such children, but are compelled to do it; because otherwise the parents of these children will go to other employers not so scrupulous. Only the action of the state can compel and enable all to conform to the requirements of humanity. In the mines and in many of the workshops the labor of the children is a saddening sight. All the cheer seems to have gone out of their lives. They have been robbed of their childhood and robbed of the educational opportunities that should be the birthright of every American boy and girl.
The argument often used that child labor deprives parents of employment is not usually a valid one. It is true that in cotton factory towns hardly any man over forty is at work, and his little children are in factories while he "totes" the meals. But this is largely due to the fact that the fingers of the father are no longer nimble, and that there is rarely much employment in the neighborhood of a cotton factory to which he can turn his hand. Where industry is diversified, the labor of a factory worker's children no more keeps him from working than the labor of children on the farm keeps farmers from working. The wages the children earn can not be spent without paying for the labor of some one else. This labor, therefore, is not the embarrassment to the employment of parents it is often asserted to be. As a rule, its worst effect upon the labor of adults is by increasing the number of those seeking jobs, without increasing the number of those giving them, and thus slightly reducing the level of wages. These material considerations, however, are of minor importance. The ground upon which child labor is to be prohibited is not the right of adults to be protected against competition, but the right of the child to be fitted for the competition which he must meet in after life. That which lifts this country industrially above the countries of Europe is chiefly the superior vigor and intelligence and ambition of our citizens. We cannot afford for the temporary gain from the labor of children to impair the foundation of our national superiority. We could not afford it, were the production of wealth the supreme end of the state; but since the supreme end of the state is the production of manhood, child labor that saps physical vigor and dwarfs mental growth must be regarded as a criminal waste of the nation's best resources.
zugmann Yardmaster01: Though I don't condone forcing children to do labor I am for letting them do it, with the understanding they can quit anytime they choose. I can't help thinking that the end of children being allowed to work led to the rise of the welfare entitlement syndrome gripping this country today. Today's kids have grown up with the belief that everyone owes them everything and then become enraged when they don't get what they want. These kids then grow up demanding free health care, a good paying job that requires no effort and a cushy retirement at a young age. They demand "someone" give them all of these things and that someone is usually the government. I'm sorry, but you can count me among the few who think people should work for what they want. Pat. Let me guess - you walked uphill both ways to school in the snow with no shoes, right?
Yardmaster01: Though I don't condone forcing children to do labor I am for letting them do it, with the understanding they can quit anytime they choose. I can't help thinking that the end of children being allowed to work led to the rise of the welfare entitlement syndrome gripping this country today. Today's kids have grown up with the belief that everyone owes them everything and then become enraged when they don't get what they want. These kids then grow up demanding free health care, a good paying job that requires no effort and a cushy retirement at a young age. They demand "someone" give them all of these things and that someone is usually the government. I'm sorry, but you can count me among the few who think people should work for what they want. Pat.
Though I don't condone forcing children to do labor I am for letting them do it, with the understanding they can quit anytime they choose. I can't help thinking that the end of children being allowed to work led to the rise of the welfare entitlement syndrome gripping this country today.
Today's kids have grown up with the belief that everyone owes them everything and then become enraged when they don't get what they want. These kids then grow up demanding free health care, a good paying job that requires no effort and a cushy retirement at a young age. They demand "someone" give them all of these things and that someone is usually the government.
I'm sorry, but you can count me among the few who think people should work for what they want.
Pat.
Let me guess - you walked uphill both ways to school in the snow with no shoes, right?
No. I had a childhood with just about everything anyone else had. I'm also in a union and have served on our executive board and this has given me insights into the vast bureaucracy of people pushing paper around in circles to justify their jobs. I had a chance to do odd jobs as a kid that would be outlawed today and believe I'm the better for it. If it's OK with their parents, let the kids work.
schlimm Commerce: an interchange of goods or commodities, especially on a large scale between different countries (foreign commerce) or between different parts of the same country (domestic commerce); trade; business. So although commerce represents a part of the process of business, labor is the necessary and largest component and first principle. Perhaps you'd say it's just a difference in semantics, but leaving out labor from the creation of wealth and attributing it to commerce, with no mention of labor, resources, etc. is significant.
Commerce: an interchange of goods or commodities, especially on a large scale between different countries (foreign commerce) or between different parts of the same country (domestic commerce); trade; business.
So although commerce represents a part of the process of business, labor is the necessary and largest component and first principle.
Perhaps you'd say it's just a difference in semantics, but leaving out labor from the creation of wealth and attributing it to commerce, with no mention of labor, resources, etc. is significant.
Oh, I mentioned labor. It's a very necessary part of commerce. But then, so is capital. And raw materials, And knowledge. Neither element is more important than the other. They're all necessary.
Look at it in this context: Take something basic like wheat. To make it useful and valuable it has to be moved out of the field and to a mill where it can be turned into flour for bread making. Labor by itself won't do that. What do you propose? Someone carrying the wheat grains in their hands while walking barefoot to a flour mill? Because that's what you've got without the other three elements of commerce.
A much better way is to use a truck. Now the truck (capital) is useless without a driver (labor) and the driver is useless without the truck.
Neither the driver nor the truck is any good without fuel (raw material).
Neither the driver nor the truck nor the fuel will do any good without knowledge. Someone has to know that they need to buy a truck, hire a driver, and buy some fuel. Then they need to know to send the driver/truck/fuel combination to the wheat field and deliver the wheat to a mill. (Your basic transportation management.)
All the elements are necessary to conduct commerce and create wealth. Since they're all necessary, none of the elements can be said to be more important than another one of the elements.
Adam Smith said that you needed three elements to produce something. 1) Labor, 2) Capital, 3) Raw Materials. I've seen modern economists such as Walter E. Williams add #4, knowledge.
In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee employed Lewis Hine as their staff investigator and photographer. Hine travelled the country taking pictures of children working in factories. Hine also lectured on the subject and once told one audience, "Perhaps you are weary of child labor pictures. Well, so are the rest of us, but we propose to make you and the whole country so sick and tired of the whole business that when the time for action comes, child labor pictures will be records of the past."
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?fa=displayed%3Aanywhere&sp=1&co=nclc&st=grid
Greyhounds, I did not post in response to your endorsement of John D. Rockefeller.
Something is terribly wrong when intelligent people can't see anything morally wrong with the sort of "child labor" portrayed in the pictures. They were not pictures of children working on a family farm. The latter kids, even engaging in hard work, also went to school. The kids in the mines and factories did not as a rule get educated and were exploited to keep wages low.
Modelcar Again...just a comment: My view of child labor, is not based on the few photos we've looked at on this post. As a Christian, I base my opinion on what the civilized world certainly must believe. "Child Labor" was, is...morally wrong under any circumstances.
Again...just a comment: My view of child labor, is not based on the few photos we've looked at on this post.
As a Christian, I base my opinion on what the civilized world certainly must believe. "Child Labor" was, is...morally wrong under any circumstances.
My only point about the photos was that they were being used to portray the horrors of child labor. I would not be surprised if that is why the photos were taken. In any case, I do not believe they convey anything abhorrent. Oddly, they seem to convey contentment. They do convey the fact that young children were in the workforce.
And I understand your point about child labor being morally wrong, but why exactly would it be morally wrong? If there were abuse, and servitude associated with it, I would see that as morally wrong. But as has been mentioned, children on farms often worked as hard as possible. Would that be morally wrong? I just wonder where the line is drawn and why. Young people are often encouraged to get some kind of work experience before they are legally old enough to be hired by industry.
Bucyrus I just took a quick look over the whole thread, but it jumps all over the place, and I could not find that quote about slavery being necessary. Could you tell me what page and post it is in?
I just took a quick look over the whole thread, but it jumps all over the place, and I could not find that quote about slavery being necessary. Could you tell me what page and post it is in?
Top of this page, last paragraph.
Quentin
schlimm ................... Some believe commerce creates wealth. Perhaps some of us still believe ...................... that the people create wealth.
................... Some believe commerce creates wealth. Perhaps some of us still believe ...................... that the people create wealth.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
schlimm B: You claim no one said slavery was necessary? Here's the quote: "Slavery, both black and white (indentured servitude) was harsh, cruel and ruthless, but without it we could not have become a commercial power and survived." Although I can imagine you will claim no one said "necessary," the phrase above is saying exactly that.
B: You claim no one said slavery was necessary? Here's the quote:
"Slavery, both black and white (indentured servitude) was harsh, cruel and ruthless, but without it we could not have become a commercial power and survived."
Although I can imagine you will claim no one said "necessary," the phrase above is saying exactly that.
No, I would not dispute what the phrase means. I agree that it means slavery was necessary. I just had not recalled anybody saying anything like that. I will review the thread, since I am curious as to who said it and what else they said. I do believe slavery was morally wrong. But I also believe that the contention that we could not have become a commercial power without it is absurd.
schlimm Differences in attitudes and beliefs. Some make rationalizations for child labor. Some on here believe slavery was necessary. Some believe commerce creates wealth. Perhaps some of us still believe that child labor was flat out wrong, slavery was morally evil and that the people create wealth.
Differences in attitudes and beliefs. Some make rationalizations for child labor. Some on here believe slavery was necessary. Some believe commerce creates wealth. Perhaps some of us still believe that child labor was flat out wrong, slavery was morally evil and that the people create wealth.
Schlimm, You say that some here believe that slavery was necessary. Can you point out where someone here expressed the belief that slavery was necessary ? I don’t recall anyone here expressing that view. ******* Sam, Just incidentally, I don’t recall saying that the past was ruthless, as you attribute to me. ******* People talk about revised history, as if there were a single accurate history. I would submit that in a very large way, aside from recorded facts and figures, history is in the eye of the beholder. Most people in the modern era almost always look at history as being harsh and miserable, even without considering the obvious hardships such as the Civil War, for example. They believe people in the past were not as smart as people today. These people in the modern era naturally see history through a dark lens because the modern goods and treasures they are attached to are absent from history. So when they look at history, they feel the sting of loss and deprivation. I believe that the majority of people simply don’t relate to history. They worry about the future and fight their way through the present. Once things move into the past, the battle is over. The past can safely be dismissed and forgotten. The past is nothing more than a graveyard of old battles that took place in the present. It is not a reality. That is why teaching history is a hard sell. However, there are some people, perhaps 5%, who actually enjoy looking at the past, and do so with a sense of nostalgia. The true historians are among this group. They see the past with the same cognition as most people see the present. They are open and sympathetic with the past, and often regard it as the time and place where most things were right before they all went wrong. The affinity for the past appears to be a naturally occurring trait rather than something they learned. So, you might say these people are wired for the past. The majority, however, mostly have disdain for the past. So the past is in the eye of the beholder. For example, if you start with the belief that it is abusive for people to have to work hard for something they should be entitled to, then child labor looks like child abuse. Some feel that these photos of the child labor era are repulsive to look at because of what they represent. I contend that they do not represent the same thing to everybody, including the subjects that posed for them so long ago. I think what you see in the photos depends on your pre-existing viewpoints concerning principles such as entitlement, victimization, individual responsibility, etc. Some regard the child labor era to have been as unspeakably horrible as the era of slavery. Some feel the photos are proof of the horror, and that they depict children as victims of it. I don’t see that in the photos. Sure there was an ugly side to child labor, as there was with many things, but I don’t think you can make that point by the photos alone. The photos will confirm that if you already believe it, but objectively, the photos don’t convey it. Earlier, I said the photos generally portray the children as confident and content with their lot in life. If you believe that they could not have possibly been content because of your idea of what their life was like, then you will find it impossible to see them as content and confident. This was posted earlier, but take another look at it. I was going to post this photo some time ago because I think it is interesting. It is an exceptionally high quality photo. As little Johnnie X strikes a pose with an ACL ventilator car, he looks quite confident and content to me. http://www.shorpy.com/node/4395?size=_original
Schlimm,
You say that some here believe that slavery was necessary. Can you point out where someone here expressed the belief that slavery was necessary ? I don’t recall anyone here expressing that view.
*******
Sam, Just incidentally, I don’t recall saying that the past was ruthless, as you attribute to me.
People talk about revised history, as if there were a single accurate history. I would submit that in a very large way, aside from recorded facts and figures, history is in the eye of the beholder. Most people in the modern era almost always look at history as being harsh and miserable, even without considering the obvious hardships such as the Civil War, for example. They believe people in the past were not as smart as people today.
These people in the modern era naturally see history through a dark lens because the modern goods and treasures they are attached to are absent from history. So when they look at history, they feel the sting of loss and deprivation. I believe that the majority of people simply don’t relate to history. They worry about the future and fight their way through the present. Once things move into the past, the battle is over. The past can safely be dismissed and forgotten. The past is nothing more than a graveyard of old battles that took place in the present. It is not a reality. That is why teaching history is a hard sell.
However, there are some people, perhaps 5%, who actually enjoy looking at the past, and do so with a sense of nostalgia. The true historians are among this group. They see the past with the same cognition as most people see the present. They are open and sympathetic with the past, and often regard it as the time and place where most things were right before they all went wrong. The affinity for the past appears to be a naturally occurring trait rather than something they learned. So, you might say these people are wired for the past. The majority, however, mostly have disdain for the past. So the past is in the eye of the beholder.
For example, if you start with the belief that it is abusive for people to have to work hard for something they should be entitled to, then child labor looks like child abuse. Some feel that these photos of the child labor era are repulsive to look at because of what they represent. I contend that they do not represent the same thing to everybody, including the subjects that posed for them so long ago. I think what you see in the photos depends on your pre-existing viewpoints concerning principles such as entitlement, victimization, individual responsibility, etc.
Some regard the child labor era to have been as unspeakably horrible as the era of slavery. Some feel the photos are proof of the horror, and that they depict children as victims of it. I don’t see that in the photos. Sure there was an ugly side to child labor, as there was with many things, but I don’t think you can make that point by the photos alone.
The photos will confirm that if you already believe it, but objectively, the photos don’t convey it. Earlier, I said the photos generally portray the children as confident and content with their lot in life. If you believe that they could not have possibly been content because of your idea of what their life was like, then you will find it impossible to see them as content and confident.
This was posted earlier, but take another look at it. I was going to post this photo some time ago because I think it is interesting. It is an exceptionally high quality photo. As little Johnnie X strikes a pose with an ACL ventilator car, he looks quite confident and content to me.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4395?size=_original
Yardmaster01 Though I don't condone forcing children to do labor I am for letting them do it, with the understanding they can quit anytime they choose. I can't help thinking that the end of children being allowed to work led to the rise of the welfare entitlement syndrome gripping this country today. Today's kids have grown up with the belief that everyone owes them everything and then become enraged when they don't get what they want. These kids then grow up demanding free health care, a good paying job that requires no effort and a cushy retirement at a young age. They demand "someone" give them all of these things and that someone is usually the government. I'm sorry, but you can count me among the few who think people should work for what they want. Pat.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Greyhounds,(stated in an earlier post),"...Your point about capitalism creating the wealth to end child labor is an excellent counterpoint to the canned argument that child labor was one of the examples of the inherent evils of capitalism..."
Greyhounds (Further stated)
"...Finally, about the pictures of child workers. They're emotionally powerful. But you can't be ruled by emotion, you have to think and reason..." (added emphasis, mine,samfp)
"...What would those young girls have been doing if those clothing mills weren't there? Why would their parents send them to work like that? Would those girls otherwise have been enjoying a happy childhood in good health, well nourished, interrupted only by need to get a proper education?
Not likely. Children had been working since the beginning of mankind. The families simply could not afford to have non productive members. Everyone in the family had to earn their keep, and they had to earn it starting at an early age. The young girls would have been working at something else if the clothing mills weren't there. The clothing mills were simply the best option. It wasn't what we'd call a good option. But it was what was available.
My point was, and is, that the only time the average person has been able to escape this misery is when he/she is in a free market capitalist economy that creates enough wealth so that children are not required to work. And can have good health care to keep them alive.
That's what I'm saying. To avoid the misery shown in the photos the average person needs wealth. That wealth has to be created. It is created by commerce. Commerce works best in a free market economy. Some folks don't like that fact..."
Greyhounds made, I think what is a key statement in this quote:"...the pictures of child workers. They're emotionally powerful. But you can't be ruled by emotion, you have to think and reason..."
Further it was I think, Bucyrus who used the term " ruthless' to describe the period of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were ruthless times and it took brashness to control the raw country of the United States. The historical facts define what we were and were we came from and how far we had come.
Families had large numbers of children, Farmers literally grew their own family work forces. The death rate from diseases and health issues took their tole. I've seen cemetaries in East Tennessee where a family might have interred a half dozen siblings due to the lack of medicines and doctors, and the rough lifestyle of the times. The Clinchfield RR was purported by some to have been built over the bodies of countless men ( black, white, and immigrants) as it fought its way through the mountains. Wages were low, mostly due to the times. Basics were costly on the value of the then current wage structure. Railroad tickets were low compared to the miles traveled by rail. Child labor was used because parents needed the extra incomes those employed children brought in. Manufacturing and mining and factory work was dangerous and ill rewarded for the risks taken. Orphan children worked to survive, without parents.
In this day and time we are hard pressed to understand what was facing those individuals who were living in those times. My own experience was provided by an experience in St. Louis, Mo in 1970. I was delivering to Malinkrodt Chemical Co. and was present for the retirement of a gentleman who had started there when he was 7 years old. He was put to work carrying a water bucket and dipper for the workers to drink out of . He was retiring with fifty-five years service. He was moving to Florida for retirement. I was told he had gone to school at the Plant, he was taught by co-workers, and on retirement he was worth plenty. He had invested in St.Louis real Estate and owned several whole blocks in the Downtown area. Extreme example? You bet, but he had done what it took to realized the 'American Dream.'
Child Labor when viewed within our context of life experience is harsh, and ruthless, but it was what was done by folks during those times to survive. Slavery, both black and white (indentured servitude) was harsh, cruel and ruthless, but without it we could not have become a commercial power and survived. We fought the Civil War to settle that outcome, and we have grown and changed with time. American History is the experience of the harsh realities needed to survive in harsh times. One has to wonder what history will say in another one hundred and fifty years. How will current generations be judged by their following generations?
schlimm Burton W. Folsom is a history professor, yes. One should know, however, that he is a professor at the small ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, so it is understandable that he would engage in ahistorical revisionism, as opposed to the "canned history" and "hateful rhetoric of 'evil capitalist robber barons'."
Burton W. Folsom is a history professor, yes. One should know, however, that he is a professor at the small ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, so it is understandable that he would engage in ahistorical revisionism, as opposed to the "canned history" and "hateful rhetoric of 'evil capitalist robber barons'."
Yes, here it is. If you can't deal with the facts, attack the source. What did Folsom write that was incorrect? You don't say. Out of context? You don't deal with that either. You do throw labels around such as "Ultra-Conservative" along with unsubstantiated allegations such as "Ahistorical (is that a word?) Revisionism."
I suggested people should read the book and think about it. That apparently upsets you. "The Myth of the Robber Barons" by Folsom is available on Amazon for around $10.00. If someone is interested enough in this subject they can buy and read the book. Then they can think about it. Why does that upset you?
Moving on to other responses to my post, I expressed a great admiration for a great American, John D. Rockefeller. John D. "Refined Oil For the Poor Man." He literally gave the average American good light at night by making kerosene for lamps available at affordable prices. Before him it was candles. He did a lot of good with his money. He donated it to such things as medical research, establishing the University of Chicago, education for African Americans, etc. You can look it up.
A response to this was to cite the incident in Ludlow, CO. Innocent people died there and the incident is inexcusable. But it was John D. Rockefeller Jr. who was involved. (Remotely) By then he was the grown son of the man I expressed admiration for. Using the actions, however remote, of a grown man to smear and discredit his father is a reach. Probably a desperate reach.
Here are some thoughts on John D. Jr. from PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_rock_jjr.html
Finally, about the pictures of child workers. They're emotionally powerful. But you can't be ruled by emotion, you have to think and reason.
What would those young girls have been doing if those clothing mills weren't there? Why would their parents send them to work like that? Would those girls otherwise have been enjoying a happy childhood in good health, well nourished, interrupted only by need to get a proper education?
That's what I'm saying. To avoid the misery shown in the photos the average person needs wealth. That wealth has to be created. It is created by commerce. Commerce works best in a free market economy. Some folks don't like that fact.
They get very upset if I suggest you read a book and think about it.
The idea to build a tunnel from south Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan first surfaced in the late 1920s, but if Robert Moses had his way there wouldn't have been a tunnel at all. Moses originally wanted to build a bridge in the area but the idea was dismissed after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt objected, saying a bridge would ruin views and destroy parkland.
http://www.mta.info/mta/news/releases/?agency=bandt&en=100519-BT13
Would Elanor Roosevelt build a tunnel instead of a bridge for the intercontinental railroad?
Well said, MC!! If 100 people looked at those photos, it is hard to imagine that more than 1-2 would conclude those children are "confident" and "content with their lot in life." Makes one wonder what observation B would make if the picture were of slave children picking cotton? And I wonder if revisionists such as G or B would think that the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation were necessary to have ended slavery, or could the "market" have accomplished that task, much the same way that Sen. Rand thought the Civil Rights Laws were unnecessary?
[quote user="Bucyrus"
The lesson that has been framed around this issue is that repressive and dangerous working conditions are a natural consequence of capitalism unless unions and/or government prevents capitalism from inflicting these horrors upon society.
The photos are meant to portray the horrors of child labor, but they fail to communicate that message. The children in the photos appear to be confident and content with their lot in life.
[/quote]
I have listed some of Bucyrus' thoughts....and I'll just make a few comments to them:
In the first paragraph, I agree with the statement but I must add "possible" in place of the "natural" wording.
In the photos....I don't take the "confident and content" wording as to what I see in the children shown.
Knowing some of the history, and considering that, I see a child in each photo thinking of getting home, and wondering what he / she might have to eat....and no thought of having fun, just regimented to this awlful routine....Later, he / she might start to think, if it will ever get better....
Well, let me state what I think the lesson is that is being implied in this thread:
That is one way of looking at it. The other way is that capitalism offered employment with its risks, and anyone was free to take it or leave it. The fact that children took jobs and were deprived of a carefree childhood may be seen as unfortunate. Likewise, the fact that men took jobs on the railroads and were exposed to great physical danger may be seen as unfortunate. On the plus side, children matured quicker when they took employment. This has always been somewhat of a hedge against the all too easy outcome of maturing too slowly. The children also added to the family’s standard of living. The photos are meant to portray the horrors of child labor, but they fail to communicate that message. The children in the photos appear to be confident and content with their lot in life.
As Greyhounds mentioned, child labor ended with a law. But I do not believe that it is a proven fact that it would return if the law were repealed, as is implied by the agenda that capitalism naturally produces evils such as child labor, dangerous working conditions, and robber barons. Capitalism is not just a one-way street that sacrifices all the good of their employees to save cost. Saving cost does add to profit, but unhappy employees reduces profit.
So there are two ways of looking at this. Which way is correct? Or is the truth somewhere in between? That is why I asked what the lesson was.
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