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Child Labor: Not Funny · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's out
0:16
Speaker 1: there hovering around in the digital um weird audio ether
0:22
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. This is gonna
0:25
Speaker 1: be a good, uplifting, fun one and bouncy light one.
0:29
Speaker 1: I think so. And it's you know, hot off the
0:32
Speaker 1: presses from our My daughter just wrote this episode for us. Yeah, yeah,
0:38
Speaker 1: in record time too. I was impressed. He didn't pay her,
0:42
Speaker 1: did you no? But it's funny. I went to look up.
0:46
Speaker 1: You know, I've talked before about the end of the
0:48
Speaker 1: fact that I started working when I was thirteen at
0:50
Speaker 1: a barbecue restaurant and uh, minimum wage when I started
0:54
Speaker 1: working was three dollars and thirty five cents an hour. Wow,
0:58
Speaker 1: how far we've come at are they've doubled it whatever?
1:04
Speaker 1: Forty years? Isn't that nuts? Dude? Yeah, and you know
1:07
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. But I have a list of
1:09
Speaker 1: kind of where we ended up with minimum wage along
1:12
Speaker 1: the years. But yeah, JJ's barbecue three thirty five an hour, baby,
1:17
Speaker 1: that's pretty great. My first um uh job was even
1:21
Speaker 1: younger than that. I was like nine or ten when
1:23
Speaker 1: I was a paper boy. Yeah, I mean I couldn't
1:27
Speaker 1: have made more than because that was only It's not
1:29
Speaker 1: like I was working every units, working weekends. I probably
1:32
Speaker 1: made like less than fifty dollars a week. M hmm.
1:36
Speaker 1: But I mean your third teen, where were you spending
1:38
Speaker 1: on thirteen? And like a good clean Christian kid, you
1:40
Speaker 1: weren't spending that on anything. Archie comic except has a
1:43
Speaker 1: lot of Archie comics do, Yes, it does, although they
1:47
Speaker 1: have a lot of variations, so you could easily spend
1:49
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a week on Archie comics back then, though
1:53
Speaker 1: those those things were cheap. I was living high on
1:55
Speaker 1: the hog. But so it sounds like a man. It's
1:59
Speaker 1: so our buddy Dave helped us out with this one,
2:02
Speaker 1: Dave Ruse, and he makes a really good point that
2:05
Speaker 1: you and I sitting around talking about you know, you
2:07
Speaker 1: made fifty bucks a week. I was a paper boy.
2:10
Speaker 1: Like whatever stresses and troubles that we ran into post
2:14
Speaker 1: you know, seventies something, um, As far as our first
2:19
Speaker 1: jobs go when we were younger, that does not qualify
2:22
Speaker 1: as child labor. That's that's not really what we're talking
2:24
Speaker 1: about here. Today's exactly it's called you just stop your
2:29
Speaker 1: griping right now, because there are actual kids out there
2:32
Speaker 1: who are like real deal child laborers who work in
2:36
Speaker 1: like dangerous conditions for little to know pay, who don't
2:40
Speaker 1: get to play, who may not socialize with other kids
2:44
Speaker 1: their age. They may live and work in a mining
2:46
Speaker 1: camp with nothing but adults and grown ups, um like
2:51
Speaker 1: like the there there. They would they would kill for
2:53
Speaker 1: you know, a JJ's barbecue job. Basically, yeah, And this
2:58
Speaker 1: is a good time to be talking about that particular
3:01
Speaker 1: because this is is the International Year for the Elimination
3:05
Speaker 1: of child labor. And as you'll see throughout this episode,
3:09
Speaker 1: we've made a lot of strides here in the US,
3:11
Speaker 1: but like you said, it's not not that way everywhere,
3:15
Speaker 1: and it should and I should say it's probably a
3:19
Speaker 1: little off the mark to say that a child laborer
3:21
Speaker 1: would kill for a better job. They would probably kill
3:24
Speaker 1: the just not have to work at all in general,
3:26
Speaker 1: and just to get get to be a kid. And
3:28
Speaker 1: I think ultimately, for people who are activists against child labor,
3:32
Speaker 1: that's the goal. It's not like get better, better working
3:35
Speaker 1: conditions for six year olds it's to like just make
3:38
Speaker 1: six year olds not have to work any longer. And
3:41
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how to solve that, how that that
3:43
Speaker 1: UM International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor aims
3:47
Speaker 1: to do that. They have some pretty pragmatic ideas UM
3:52
Speaker 1: and so hopefully they'll this this episode of a nice
3:54
Speaker 1: bow on the end. But we're gonna have to slog
3:58
Speaker 1: through some misery to get there, Chuck, take it a way.
4:01
Speaker 1: There's no better place to slog through misery than the
4:04
Speaker 1: founding of this country, way back in the old days,
4:08
Speaker 1: when the New World was new and settlers came over,
4:14
Speaker 1: and they very much believed And why why did I
4:17
Speaker 1: think this was ed? You said, this is Dave. Yeah,
4:19
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive it was Dave. Was It reads like
4:22
Speaker 1: a Dave to me. But oh man, if it's dead,
4:25
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Sorry to both. Sure, you need to get
4:29
Speaker 1: those guys together one day. I think maybe we should
4:32
Speaker 1: keep them far apart exactly they might they might turn
4:35
Speaker 1: against us. Uh. Yeah, So they believe very much that
4:39
Speaker 1: the idol's hands were the Devil's workshop, that old saying.
4:43
Speaker 1: And you know, this is one of those It was
4:45
Speaker 1: kind of hard for me to you know, let's let's
4:47
Speaker 1: just lop off, you know, developing nations today, which is
4:50
Speaker 1: clearly awful. I found myself as an adult more and
4:54
Speaker 1: more with the cultural relativism, thinking like, obviously, five year
4:58
Speaker 1: old shouldn't be working in factory. But when I read
5:01
Speaker 1: about like twelve and thirteen year olds working hard back then,
5:06
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, it's not great, but it was.
5:09
Speaker 1: That's just kind of how it was at the time.
5:10
Speaker 1: If you had parents that were farmers, you're not gonna,
5:15
Speaker 1: you know, be just hanging out until your sweet sixteenth
5:18
Speaker 1: birthday having a good time. You're gonna be working from
5:21
Speaker 1: a pretty young age. And I found myself more and
5:24
Speaker 1: more thinking like, you know, in certain situations, that wasn't
5:28
Speaker 1: the worst thing, but then you get to the industrial revolutions,
5:31
Speaker 1: and you know, that's what things really got bad. But
5:34
Speaker 1: kind of early on, that's really what we were talking
5:36
Speaker 1: about was a lot of kids working on the farms,
5:40
Speaker 1: a lot of boys working on the farm, girls working
5:43
Speaker 1: in the house alongside their sisters and mom. And you know,
5:48
Speaker 1: this kind of started when they were about thirteen years old.
5:51
Speaker 1: They were sort of expected to either go work and
5:54
Speaker 1: get a job and work full time, or to become
5:56
Speaker 1: an apprentice and unpaid apprentice, uh to work for food
6:00
Speaker 1: and board and training. And I think also in addition
6:03
Speaker 1: to that Protestant work ethic of them, like in like
6:07
Speaker 1: just completely in the fabric of America that was just
6:10
Speaker 1: coming out in you, it's also this idea of like
6:13
Speaker 1: what else are you gonna do? It's not like you
6:15
Speaker 1: consider around and play video games or watch TV or
6:18
Speaker 1: do almost anything else except just play outside. Um But Chuck,
6:24
Speaker 1: I went back and looked to see if it was
6:26
Speaker 1: always this way, And apparently in medieval England you played
6:31
Speaker 1: basically until you hit puberty, and then you started to
6:34
Speaker 1: get put to work when you hit puberty at four right,
6:39
Speaker 1: more like fourteen. But like there was like a childhood,
6:42
Speaker 1: and it seems to have been somewhat wiped out by
6:45
Speaker 1: that Protestant work ethic that the Puritans brought over um.
6:49
Speaker 1: Or at the very least it was set back a
6:51
Speaker 1: little more, you know, agewise, where you started working maybe
6:54
Speaker 1: a little sooner than you would have had you been
6:57
Speaker 1: in medieval England at the time. Right, I think, I
7:00
Speaker 1: guess I'm just trying to draw a line between life
7:04
Speaker 1: in the sixteen forties and then life in nineteen thirty
7:08
Speaker 1: eight when we eventually did something about it in the US. Yeah, no, totally.
7:11
Speaker 1: And there is an enormous distinction between that because it
7:13
Speaker 1: was it was like widespread, but it just it seemed
7:17
Speaker 1: like they were mostly working with their families and it
7:19
Speaker 1: was just kind of the way that things were. That
7:21
Speaker 1: was how life was. But able to try and like
7:24
Speaker 1: keep your family alive. It's not like you know, they were.
7:27
Speaker 1: They were trying to just all survive basically, right, And
7:30
Speaker 1: that's actually the reason why it's still around in other
7:33
Speaker 1: parts of the world today. It's not not even necessarily
7:36
Speaker 1: like a like a work ethic where children should should
7:39
Speaker 1: work because idle hands are the devil's playthings, like the
7:42
Speaker 1: Puritans thought. He said, it's like this is an extra
7:45
Speaker 1: worker we can have go out and make money to
7:48
Speaker 1: keep the rest of the family alive. We just don't
7:51
Speaker 1: have a choice in not doing that. And that's that's
7:53
Speaker 1: what drives it still today. Right. Uh. When the Industrial
7:58
Speaker 1: Revolution came around, and we're talking about basically cotton factories
8:04
Speaker 1: in a big, big way, Uh, there are a lot
8:06
Speaker 1: of little kids working there, and people like George Washington
8:08
Speaker 1: and Alexander Hamilton's thought that was awesome they did. And like,
8:13
Speaker 1: we're going to be skewered for even suggesting that Hamilton's
8:16
Speaker 1: said this, but he did. He said that women and
8:19
Speaker 1: children in America would be quote rendered more useful by
8:23
Speaker 1: manufacturing establishments than the otherwise would be. Um, and I
8:29
Speaker 1: think what are you're saying is like, I'm not even
8:33
Speaker 1: going to paraphrase what do you say? And I think
8:35
Speaker 1: it's it. You can understand it on its face. Yeah,
8:38
Speaker 1: he's saying, well, you know, they're not doing much use
8:41
Speaker 1: for us, these kids. And he's mainly talking about kids
8:43
Speaker 1: here who would other what quote, who would otherwise be idle? Uh,
8:47
Speaker 1: this isn't Lynde mal Manuel Miranda saying this we all
8:50
Speaker 1: love him. No, this isn't he didn't say this in
8:52
Speaker 1: a charming wrap. No, this is the real Alexander Hamilton's. Uh.
8:56
Speaker 1: And again it was just a different time. Um. But
8:59
Speaker 1: even way back then in the early eighteen hundreds, not
9:02
Speaker 1: everyone thought this was a great thing. Uh. There was
9:05
Speaker 1: a future mayor of Boston named Josiah Quincy who toured
9:13
Speaker 1: a cotton factory, a cotton spinning factory, and they had
9:16
Speaker 1: you know, four year old working there all the way
9:19
Speaker 1: to ten, uh, maybe ten twelve hours a day for
9:23
Speaker 1: anywhere from twelve to cents a day, not an hour.
9:28
Speaker 1: And he said, uh, compassion calls us to pity these
9:33
Speaker 1: little creatures plying in a contracted room among flyers and
9:37
Speaker 1: cogs at an age when nature requires for them air
9:40
Speaker 1: space and sports. There was a dull dejection and the
9:43
Speaker 1: countenance of all of them. And uh, you know, we'll
9:47
Speaker 1: get to some of these photos of some of these
9:49
Speaker 1: kids later on. When you look at them, they look
9:52
Speaker 1: like beaten down miniature adults. Yeah, they really do. They
9:58
Speaker 1: look like us exact. They look ready to retire, they
10:02
Speaker 1: look unhappy, they look um yeah, just beaten down. But
10:05
Speaker 1: their miniature and their kids, their children. And it's really
10:09
Speaker 1: upsetting to see that a photograph of that. I'm sure
10:12
Speaker 1: it's even more upsetting to see it in real life. Um.
10:15
Speaker 1: And that's actually how a lot of this, a lot
10:18
Speaker 1: of changes came through, was just people being exposed to
10:21
Speaker 1: seeing that and kind of being shocked, having their conscience shocked.
10:25
Speaker 1: But as as potentially like bad as it was for
10:29
Speaker 1: the children of colonial America who were forced to work, um,
10:34
Speaker 1: it got way way worse when the Second Industrial Revolution
10:37
Speaker 1: kicked off. The one powered by steam and steel and
10:40
Speaker 1: railroads and and unbridled capitalism. When you inject unbridled capitalism
10:46
Speaker 1: into uh a um an economy that allows for child labor,
10:50
Speaker 1: you can imagine that things are going to get much
10:52
Speaker 1: much worse for the children before it finally gets better.
10:56
Speaker 1: That's right. And things did get worse when you're when
10:59
Speaker 1: all those sudden you have a robust steel industry and
11:03
Speaker 1: coal mining industry, um you have railroads that need this
11:07
Speaker 1: stuff in a big, big way, and they uh, you know,
11:11
Speaker 1: partially kind of ran out of workers and partially just
11:13
Speaker 1: saw what was right underneath their noses, which is these
11:16
Speaker 1: kids who they at this point they had long known
11:19
Speaker 1: that they could work and farm and work hard. So
11:23
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, a lot of these families
11:25
Speaker 1: in rural America, farming dried up a bit, so they
11:27
Speaker 1: moved to the city. A lot of it was immigrant labor,
11:30
Speaker 1: as millions of people came into the country from Europe
11:35
Speaker 1: fleeting their poverty famine stricken countries, and no matter where
11:39
Speaker 1: they came from, it was all under the thumb of
11:42
Speaker 1: the robber barons, which was I can't remember when we did.
11:46
Speaker 1: It feels like a few two or three years ago,
11:48
Speaker 1: but pretty good podcast on the Robber Barons. Yeah, and
11:51
Speaker 1: we also talked about them, uh in our book keeping
11:55
Speaker 1: Up with the too. But yeah, so like these the
11:59
Speaker 1: robber Aaron's got rich through innovation, through consolidation, through some
12:04
Speaker 1: pretty clever stuff. A lot of them invented new techniques
12:08
Speaker 1: or processes or procedures, so like they definitely were doing something.
12:12
Speaker 1: They were being productive, but they also got to be
12:15
Speaker 1: filthy rich off of the backs of immigrant labor, child
12:20
Speaker 1: labor that they directly exploited. And um, it was basically
12:26
Speaker 1: like there was just nobody looking out for anybody else
12:30
Speaker 1: at this time. It was just such a period of
12:34
Speaker 1: such enormous economic insurgents that there weren't there weren't anybody,
12:39
Speaker 1: or there wasn't anybody who was sitting there saying like wha, everybody,
12:42
Speaker 1: we need to stop and really think about this and
12:44
Speaker 1: do this in a much more directed, smarter, healthier way
12:47
Speaker 1: for our society. It was like it was like just go, go,
12:51
Speaker 1: let's see where this takes us. And a lot of
12:53
Speaker 1: people got trampled underfoot, and that definitely included children labors
12:57
Speaker 1: or child laborers. That's right, And uh, I think that's
13:01
Speaker 1: a good time for a break. Ya ya, that's two
13:04
Speaker 1: yea's Anna's m So we'll be back and we'll talk
13:10
Speaker 1: a little bit about what some of these jobs might
13:12
Speaker 1: have been in the late nineteenth century for these kids.
13:15
Speaker 1: Right after this. I wonder how many gallons of coffee
13:43
Speaker 1: everyone who has listened to this this show since the
13:46
Speaker 1: beginning has heard me drink. I didn't even hear you drinking.
13:52
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't. When I said I had, I had
13:54
Speaker 1: a mouthful of cafe. Oh interesting, I have no shirt on. Nice.
14:01
Speaker 1: That's awesome, man, you just top mine. True. I think
14:10
Speaker 1: you should have left it mysterious, Chuck, because there were
14:12
Speaker 1: a few people out there who were about the email
14:14
Speaker 1: and say I was offended that Chuck said he wasn't
14:16
Speaker 1: wearing a shirt. Yeah. Now, I put it on right
14:19
Speaker 1: before we recorded. I had it off. It's it's a
14:21
Speaker 1: little hot. I felt like I needed to dress up.
14:24
Speaker 1: But the teacher, right, I do you are you worried
14:27
Speaker 1: one of those tuxedo shirt? You ever had one of those?
14:31
Speaker 1: Did you ever know? I didn't know. I didn't either.
14:33
Speaker 1: You didn't. You didn't wear them with your rainbow suspenders.
14:36
Speaker 1: Now that's that stuff was a little too cute cee
14:39
Speaker 1: even for me. Okay, what about the one that looks
14:44
Speaker 1: like I would wear it? What about one that looks
14:48
Speaker 1: like a like a ripped like chest and abdomen? Have
14:52
Speaker 1: you warrn T shirt like that? No? Those are fun,
14:54
Speaker 1: though I think for certain people they're fun. They're also
14:58
Speaker 1: like really good at boost your ego. Quietly sure, there's
15:03
Speaker 1: nothing like me looking in a mirror at my beer
15:06
Speaker 1: belly covered in spray painted abs. It really works your brain.
15:11
Speaker 1: The brain is so dumb that it falls for it
15:13
Speaker 1: every time I can attest um. All right, So we
15:16
Speaker 1: were gonna talk about what some of these jobs might be,
15:19
Speaker 1: and it kind of really depended on where you were living. Um,
15:23
Speaker 1: if you lived in the city or if you lived
15:26
Speaker 1: in a company town where they have these factories, you
15:28
Speaker 1: were gonna be working in factories flipped out. In the
15:31
Speaker 1: rural areas, you gonna be working on farms. And most
15:33
Speaker 1: most Americans still lived on farms at the time, so
15:36
Speaker 1: most child labor took place on farms. But if you
15:40
Speaker 1: were on that farm, you're gonna be picking cotton and tobacco.
15:44
Speaker 1: You're gonna be picking a lot of stuff and doing
15:46
Speaker 1: all the sort of stuff that goes on after the picking,
15:51
Speaker 1: which is semming d C. And all that stuff shucking
15:57
Speaker 1: and stuff I did. When I was a kid, we
15:58
Speaker 1: had a big, big garden and my mom took us
16:01
Speaker 1: to the canary. Uh and it was awful. I hated it.
16:06
Speaker 1: Took you to the canary to like for a sight
16:08
Speaker 1: seeing trip or for work too. Can so like there
16:12
Speaker 1: was a canary that your mom went to. You guys
16:15
Speaker 1: had so much stuff you had to go to a
16:16
Speaker 1: second location to cannon. That was a cannary in Decab County,
16:21
Speaker 1: a sort of industrial cannary for the people. And we
16:26
Speaker 1: would take green beans and corn and uh, we made
16:31
Speaker 1: preserves and all kinds of stuff. And they had like
16:34
Speaker 1: and you know, you could can your own junk there.
16:36
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of utopia. And yeah, and
16:40
Speaker 1: we would you know, put sharpie, like beans on the
16:43
Speaker 1: can on sharpie put it in the bandary. That's really
16:47
Speaker 1: really interesting. I had no idea that there was a
16:49
Speaker 1: canary in de Cab County. Yeah, not too far from
16:53
Speaker 1: where I live now. Actually it's like fifteen minutes away.
16:55
Speaker 1: Probably do you shudder every time you pass it? I
16:58
Speaker 1: do a little actually, bit I don't pass it much.
17:01
Speaker 1: But it's over near the dog pound where you can
17:04
Speaker 1: go adopt a dog, And so I think we adopted
17:06
Speaker 1: Niko there and I drove by the canary and just like, yeah,
17:10
Speaker 1: it was hot. Well, you were lucky you weren't five
17:13
Speaker 1: or six and left there to work all day every day,
17:15
Speaker 1: aren't you. Yes, for almost no money. Yeah, pennies for
17:19
Speaker 1: a bucket of whatever you shucked or shelled or did
17:22
Speaker 1: whatever peeled. Um. Yeah, working at a canary would probably
17:26
Speaker 1: not have been very fun. Um. They were also furnace
17:30
Speaker 1: stoking jobs available, whether you wanted them or not. What else, chuck? Uh, Well,
17:37
Speaker 1: kids did work in canaries. They also worked in textile mills.
17:40
Speaker 1: They had bob and boys and bob and girls. This
17:42
Speaker 1: one doesn't sound so bad to me, but I'm sure
17:43
Speaker 1: I'm missing something that makes it atrocious. Well, I mean
17:46
Speaker 1: they would climb up on the machine and remove the bobbin's,
17:50
Speaker 1: the full bobbin's and replacing them with empty ones. So
17:53
Speaker 1: I don't think that was like the worst job in
17:56
Speaker 1: the world, But when you're doing that for ten or
17:59
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day in your six it's probably a
18:02
Speaker 1: bit of a buzz skill. Yeah, yeah, I have a
18:04
Speaker 1: problem inherently with child labor in general. Not like having
18:09
Speaker 1: a job like you or I had first they're got
18:11
Speaker 1: a problem with that, but child child, any kind of
18:13
Speaker 1: child labor, even if it is kind of cush comparatively. No,
18:17
Speaker 1: I agree that one wasn't terrible. It may have been dangerous.
18:20
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's no Yeah, there's no way it
18:23
Speaker 1: wasn't dangerous. It had to have been dangerous. We're talking
18:26
Speaker 1: about the nineteenth century and industry. It was dangerous in
18:29
Speaker 1: some way. There was no osha no, if that was
18:35
Speaker 1: if you did live in the city and did work
18:39
Speaker 1: around factories, Um, you would do that. But there were
18:42
Speaker 1: also plenty of other jobs you could deliver, like the
18:45
Speaker 1: essentially they call them telegraph boys, sort of delivering you know,
18:49
Speaker 1: emails basically by hand to people all over town. You
18:53
Speaker 1: could shine shoes, You could sell newspapers like you did.
18:57
Speaker 1: I didn't stand on a street corner. I was in
18:59
Speaker 1: a newsy. We'll talk a little more about news is
19:01
Speaker 1: in a second. I was a delivery boy, and not
19:05
Speaker 1: a not a really great one either. I frequently overslapped,
19:07
Speaker 1: and um, it was not good at delivering papers. My
19:10
Speaker 1: mom and my oldest sister would have to do my
19:12
Speaker 1: route once in a while. Yes, um, and uh. The
19:19
Speaker 1: thing is is like they also make you shake down
19:21
Speaker 1: the people for their delinquent subscriptions. So I was like
19:24
Speaker 1: a strong arm guy too for the Toledo blade as well.
19:28
Speaker 1: I want my two dollars. Basically, that's exactly right, and
19:31
Speaker 1: that was right in my wheelhouse too. I was like,
19:33
Speaker 1: this hits a little too close to home for me.
19:35
Speaker 1: Laugh at the kid. I know what he's going through.
19:38
Speaker 1: I've had to put my foot in somebody's door before
19:41
Speaker 1: to get there two dollars. I didn't ask for a time.
19:46
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that in a while. That was a
19:48
Speaker 1: good movie classic. Uh, if you lived in the mountains
19:51
Speaker 1: of Appalachia, you might have been a breaker boy um
19:56
Speaker 1: or a mule handler. And breaker boys will get I
19:58
Speaker 1: guess we can go ahead and tell everyone that is
20:00
Speaker 1: you would sit around and and break apart lumps of
20:04
Speaker 1: coal into uniform pieces all day long and break dance
20:09
Speaker 1: on your brakes. Yeah, break your boys. But that was it.
20:13
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't let you wear gloves while you were
20:15
Speaker 1: a break your boy too, because they're like, no, no,
20:17
Speaker 1: you can't break these things as uniformly if you wear gloves,
20:20
Speaker 1: you stupid kid. So you you have to basically absorb
20:24
Speaker 1: all of this coal dust into your skin, get all
20:27
Speaker 1: sorts of little cuts and callouses and all that by
20:29
Speaker 1: the time you're six seven eight, um, and just do this.
20:33
Speaker 1: This is your life. Now, Welcome to Pennsylvania. Right. Uh. Then,
20:38
Speaker 1: let's say you managed to escape all forms of formal
20:41
Speaker 1: jobs your parents that they didn't make you go to
20:44
Speaker 1: the factory. You did live in the city, so you
20:45
Speaker 1: didn't have to work on a farm, and you might
20:48
Speaker 1: think you just had it made in the shade. Not so,
20:52
Speaker 1: because there was plenty of jobs that you could do
20:54
Speaker 1: right there from your cretty little tenement apartment, like weaving
20:59
Speaker 1: baskets or making paper flowers, or hand rolling cigars and
21:03
Speaker 1: cigarettes all day long and selling them. Yeah, it was like,
21:06
Speaker 1: you know, your whole family worked on a farm, or
21:08
Speaker 1: if you live in a tenement, your whole family worked,
21:10
Speaker 1: you know, in what are called tenement industries. So there
21:13
Speaker 1: was basically not a lot of escape. I get the
21:16
Speaker 1: impression that you basically had to have wealthy parents to
21:19
Speaker 1: not be forced into child labor at the time. Yeah,
21:23
Speaker 1: and I might have mentioned this once before my mom
21:25
Speaker 1: did a thing for a little while where, uh, we
21:29
Speaker 1: would make money doing like stuffing envelopes. Did you remember
21:35
Speaker 1: that stuff? I do? And I don't remember what it
21:38
Speaker 1: was four. I guess they were for companies. Okay, I
21:41
Speaker 1: want to say Easter Seals had people do that too,
21:43
Speaker 1: but I'm sure they didn't pay. So this would be
21:48
Speaker 1: like a company that would have like a packet they
21:50
Speaker 1: would send out to had like five things in it,
21:53
Speaker 1: and we would be responsible for getting all that stuff
21:55
Speaker 1: in huge boxes, assembling it all into the envelopes that
21:58
Speaker 1: they could mail, and we would get paid as a
22:00
Speaker 1: family to do that. That's cute. That's super late seventies
22:03
Speaker 1: early eighties. Like I can see your mom talking on
22:06
Speaker 1: the princess phone making all the arrangements for them to
22:08
Speaker 1: ship that tour and getting the instructions, you know, and
22:11
Speaker 1: then hanging up in that fifty ft long cord just
22:14
Speaker 1: kind of coils up on its own quietly on the floor. Yeah.
22:18
Speaker 1: And I didn't mind that so much because I made
22:20
Speaker 1: a little money and I could That's something I could
22:22
Speaker 1: do while I watched television. Yeah, totally. It's just the
22:26
Speaker 1: perfect job, as we all know. Yeah, not exactly a
22:28
Speaker 1: high pressure job. It sounds like I wouldn't even know
22:31
Speaker 1: if that qualifies as a tenement industry, to tell you
22:33
Speaker 1: the truth. No, not in the seventies. No, you had
22:37
Speaker 1: a lot of jobs. So as a kid, good for
22:39
Speaker 1: you that protests wanted my own money, Protestant work ethic
22:43
Speaker 1: shining through like a city upon a hill. Should we
22:47
Speaker 1: talk newsies? Yeah we should. And I think also the
22:50
Speaker 1: newsy Um strike that we're going to mention deserves its
22:54
Speaker 1: own episode, at least short, if not its own episode. Okay,
22:58
Speaker 1: so yeah, let's just not talk about newsies. No. Now,
23:03
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing, And the more I got
23:05
Speaker 1: into the strike, I was like, this is just too much.
23:07
Speaker 1: We gotta do something. But the idea was that little
23:11
Speaker 1: boys would buy a stack of newspapers wholesale for about
23:16
Speaker 1: fifty cents per girls too, I saw girls that did
23:19
Speaker 1: it too. Oh, girls did it too, all right, and
23:21
Speaker 1: they sold them for a penny a piece. That they
23:23
Speaker 1: would make half a penny per paper. Uh, selling in
23:27
Speaker 1: the big cities, especially New York City of course. And
23:29
Speaker 1: then eventually in they did go on strike and it
23:34
Speaker 1: was a big deal. It kind of ground I mean,
23:37
Speaker 1: it didn't grind them to a complete halt. But it
23:39
Speaker 1: really disrupted their their flow in getting newspapers into the
23:44
Speaker 1: hands of people. Dude. The their sales over this two
23:47
Speaker 1: weeks strike went down two thirds. Yeah, like they brought
23:51
Speaker 1: the They brought Pulitzer, Pulitzer and um Herst to their knees,
23:56
Speaker 1: basically these newsies did. And they got some concessions too. Yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: And I think the deal was is that morning subscribers
24:04
Speaker 1: were generally subscribers, or the morning paper was generally for subscribers,
24:08
Speaker 1: but it was that afternoon paper, that second edition that
24:12
Speaker 1: the news he's really raked it in on because most
24:14
Speaker 1: people didn't subscribe to that, and so they really weren't
24:17
Speaker 1: selling any second editions hardly. And the one big concession
24:21
Speaker 1: they got, which was huge, was they got them to
24:25
Speaker 1: agree to full buy backs on unsold papers, which is
24:29
Speaker 1: a really really big deal. But it also really kind
24:32
Speaker 1: of goes to show you how much the newspaper barons
24:36
Speaker 1: believed news these were scrappy enough that they wouldn't just
24:39
Speaker 1: sit around and be like, I don't have to sell these,
24:41
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have to worry about this. You know,
24:43
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be bought back anyway. I don't have to
24:46
Speaker 1: work to sell them. Well, but buyback just means they
24:49
Speaker 1: give them back the money they paid for him. It's
24:51
Speaker 1: not like they would make any money. They would just
24:55
Speaker 1: in fact, it incentivize them, I think, to take out
24:58
Speaker 1: more papers and some more papers because any of they
25:01
Speaker 1: wouldn't be stuck with them. Yeah, totally, we'll probably edit
25:04
Speaker 1: that part out. So. Um, one of the things you
25:09
Speaker 1: mentioned was making cigars like in your family's one room
25:13
Speaker 1: apartment in say New York or something like that, right, Yeah,
25:17
Speaker 1: And that was apparently really bad and that not only
25:22
Speaker 1: did you work long hours for very little pay in
25:25
Speaker 1: cramped working conditions with with your family on top of
25:28
Speaker 1: everything else. Um, you would frequently come down with nicotine
25:32
Speaker 1: poisoning as a little kid because you're rolling cured sometimes
25:36
Speaker 1: you're handling uncured tobacco, um, and you're ingesting lots of
25:41
Speaker 1: nicotine through your skin. At that's like you know, in
25:44
Speaker 1: a single day, and so you might be nauseated, you
25:47
Speaker 1: might be dizzy, you might just turn green. Um. It
25:50
Speaker 1: can get worse than that too. You actually can suffer
25:52
Speaker 1: respiratory distress as well. And apparently this is a big
25:55
Speaker 1: problem still with child laborers in Zimbabwe, because I think
26:00
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago that country doubled down on their
26:02
Speaker 1: tobacco production and now it's like one of the biggest,
26:05
Speaker 1: um the biggest exports of Zimbabwe. But it's also a
26:10
Speaker 1: very poor country, so they use child labor a lot,
26:13
Speaker 1: and so children are still to this day being exposed
26:16
Speaker 1: to tobacco and they're rolling, uh, they're handling tobacco, they're
26:20
Speaker 1: rolling stuff, they're rolling cigars, they're sorting it. Um, they're
26:25
Speaker 1: just the kids in tobacco should not be in the
26:27
Speaker 1: same room together, basically. Yeah, you know, it never occurred
26:31
Speaker 1: to me that that. I guess it would be a
26:34
Speaker 1: transdermal ingestion, right, but sure, I mean you put tobacco
26:40
Speaker 1: on be stings and all kinds of things, so of
26:42
Speaker 1: course it's going to get into their skin. Yeah. And
26:44
Speaker 1: having gotten myself sick on tobacco a time or two
26:47
Speaker 1: in my life, I can tell you it is not pleasant.
26:49
Speaker 1: And to do it against your will just because you're
26:52
Speaker 1: handling it for your job that you don't even want,
26:55
Speaker 1: is that sounds torturous? Actually? Yeah, I love that's Uh,
27:03
Speaker 1: should you retell it for people haven't heard it? Are
27:05
Speaker 1: you talking about eighth grade in the tree fort is
27:08
Speaker 1: that when you like smoked a whole pack of cigarettes
27:09
Speaker 1: and got sick. It was more like a pack and
27:11
Speaker 1: a half. Okay, it was right after I first started smoking,
27:16
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was like, I really like
27:19
Speaker 1: how this makes me feel. Let's see how like thirty
27:22
Speaker 1: of these things make me feel. And I was saying
27:24
Speaker 1: reading comic books up in the tree fort in the
27:27
Speaker 1: woods that my friends and I had built, and uh,
27:31
Speaker 1: I just went too far. Man. I felt so bad. Man,
27:35
Speaker 1: Like like I felt like I looked green. It was.
27:39
Speaker 1: It was bad news. That's one of those moments where
27:42
Speaker 1: you like, you really wish you could have like video
27:45
Speaker 1: footage kind of what I look like. I kind of
27:49
Speaker 1: hope when when I die, it's a little bit like
27:51
Speaker 1: defending your life so they can shoot. I'll be like,
27:53
Speaker 1: show me that one. Well, we can go over the
27:55
Speaker 1: other stuff. I really want to see that clip. Yeah,
27:57
Speaker 1: ripped torn will be there. Yeah. The upside of this, though,
28:00
Speaker 1: is do not ever start smoking. I deeply regret ever
28:04
Speaker 1: having started smoking as a kid. As an adult, it
28:07
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, Like, just don't ever start smoking and do
28:10
Speaker 1: yourself a real favor. You did a great job quitting, though,
28:13
Speaker 1: and you never looked back. Nope, I didn't. Good job
28:16
Speaker 1: it was. It was surprisingly easy because I was like
28:21
Speaker 1: one one more thing. I think, if there are people
28:23
Speaker 1: out there who are considering smoking right now and are
28:25
Speaker 1: worried about the time they're going to have, one of
28:27
Speaker 1: my big worries was that I was going to spend
28:29
Speaker 1: every day of the rest of my life wishing for
28:31
Speaker 1: a cigarette. And that's just not how it goes. Like
28:34
Speaker 1: you spend a week, two weeks if it's really bad,
28:38
Speaker 1: maybe three weeks really longing for a cigarette, and then
28:40
Speaker 1: it starts to get easier and easier, and then eventually
28:43
Speaker 1: you're grossed out by the thought of cigarettes and people
28:46
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes around you, and you don't ever want to
28:48
Speaker 1: see one again. So if that's what's keeping you from quitting,
28:51
Speaker 1: don't let it, because that's not how it is. I
28:54
Speaker 1: like that. Good Thanks man. Thanks. I think before we break,
28:58
Speaker 1: maybe we'll just go over some of the final stats here.
29:02
Speaker 1: Uh at the basically the peak and about nineteen hundred
29:07
Speaker 1: UM by eighteen ninety one out of every five kids
29:10
Speaker 1: under sixteen was working. UM one point seven million kids
29:15
Speaker 1: under sixteen was six percent of the total workforce in
29:20
Speaker 1: the nine hundred census, and that's just kids who were
29:25
Speaker 1: registered to work in these factories, like that does not
29:28
Speaker 1: include these kids rolling scars in their house or the
29:31
Speaker 1: kids on the family farm. So it was much much
29:33
Speaker 1: higher than that. Yeah, because I think two thirds of
29:36
Speaker 1: kids um in general in the in the country worked
29:40
Speaker 1: in agriculture. So yeah, if they were not counting agriculture,
29:43
Speaker 1: they missed out on a lot of kids in that number.
29:45
Speaker 1: And that's still a staggering number in and of itself,
29:48
Speaker 1: one point seven million. Yeah. And if you're wondering back
29:51
Speaker 1: then what effect this had on education, just a snapshot
29:54
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia in nineteen hundred, fifteen percent of thirteen year
29:59
Speaker 1: old boys had less school to work. And I think
30:03
Speaker 1: half a fifteen year old boys were not in school
30:06
Speaker 1: anymore because they were working or the and like a
30:09
Speaker 1: significant portion because they were naughty, right, yeah, and they
30:13
Speaker 1: just didn't want to do anything. But get this, this
30:15
Speaker 1: is the staggering one to me, seventeen year old boys
30:19
Speaker 1: only ten percent of them were still in school in
30:21
Speaker 1: nine in Philadelphia. That is that does not bode well
30:25
Speaker 1: for the future um of a of a of a
30:29
Speaker 1: an economy. And I think that actually is one reason
30:32
Speaker 1: why public education became so much more compulsory, and one
30:35
Speaker 1: reason why people came around to anti child labor laws
30:39
Speaker 1: is the idea that, no, there's a lot more that
30:42
Speaker 1: they could be doing than just working in a factory,
30:45
Speaker 1: almost literally their entire lives, Like, we can do we
30:47
Speaker 1: can do better, and we can build a better a
30:49
Speaker 1: better society and a better economy if we invest in
30:52
Speaker 1: their education instead of robbing them of it. All right,
30:56
Speaker 1: I guess we'll take a break and talk about when
30:58
Speaker 1: that started in earnest and it was just then when
31:00
Speaker 1: you mentioned it, so Chuck Um, it turns out that
31:31
Speaker 1: there were so the progressive error is one of my
31:33
Speaker 1: favorite errors, or I should say the people from the
31:35
Speaker 1: progressive error, or some of my favorite people like Francis Perkins,
31:38
Speaker 1: although she was a second or third wave progressive performer,
31:41
Speaker 1: but she was inspired by some of these earlier ones
31:44
Speaker 1: who were working on things like UM fair wages like
31:48
Speaker 1: a minimum wage, minimum or maximum work days or working
31:53
Speaker 1: hours UM. And then they also trained their sights on
31:56
Speaker 1: things like ending child labor or at the very least
32:00
Speaker 1: really restricting the amount of work a kid could do,
32:03
Speaker 1: especially UM in regards to them being in school too.
32:07
Speaker 1: The idea was to put school first and then if
32:11
Speaker 1: the kid had the wherewithal or their parents really needed
32:13
Speaker 1: the money or something like that, they could let them
32:15
Speaker 1: work in addition to school. But the school needed to
32:19
Speaker 1: come first. And this is really radical because I mean
32:22
Speaker 1: it seems radical. We had kids rolling cigars in their
32:25
Speaker 1: one room apartment in New York, their whole lives, and
32:28
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden some people are coming up
32:30
Speaker 1: and be like, no, no, no, it should be in
32:32
Speaker 1: school and then maybe working, preferably not working. So how
32:35
Speaker 1: do we make that happen? Yeah, it was a very
32:38
Speaker 1: big deal. And most of these or a lot of
32:40
Speaker 1: them were women, people like Jane Adams and Julia Lathrop
32:44
Speaker 1: and Lillian ward Um anti poverty measures and this is
32:49
Speaker 1: stuff that you know. They would also go on to
32:52
Speaker 1: champion uh, women's rights and women's rights and the workforce
32:56
Speaker 1: and women's rights to vote. So it was the whole
32:58
Speaker 1: progressive movement was kind of tied up and all these
33:00
Speaker 1: you know, radical ideas about you know, being fair and
33:03
Speaker 1: good decent human being, right. Radical? Um, So, uh, here's
33:11
Speaker 1: the problem is, you've got these robber barons and these
33:13
Speaker 1: factory owners. And then these industrialists who are like, wait
33:16
Speaker 1: a minute, we got a good deal going. Because we
33:19
Speaker 1: don't have to pay these kids much, they're probably not
33:21
Speaker 1: going to unionize. Like the newsies thing was definitely an
33:24
Speaker 1: anomaly that didn't happen much. And he said, they were like,
33:29
Speaker 1: we gotta we got a good thing going, and uh
33:32
Speaker 1: so we're gonna lobby against this as hard as we can.
33:34
Speaker 1: But surely they were unsuccessful. Right, No, they were successful.
33:39
Speaker 1: They did. They blocked a log of legislation early on
33:42
Speaker 1: for this kind of regulation. Um, federally states, Uh, you know,
33:47
Speaker 1: it kind of depends on where it was, but states
33:49
Speaker 1: did establish child labor commissions in some states had some
33:54
Speaker 1: minimum ages, minimum or maximum hours and minimum wages. It
33:58
Speaker 1: was they were sparse. I couldn't find what states passed it.
34:02
Speaker 1: But um, for the most part, there were there was
34:05
Speaker 1: a probably for the most part, though, there was a
34:08
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback and enough pushback among the states,
34:12
Speaker 1: um the residents of the states that that not a
34:15
Speaker 1: lot got passed. So there was a progressive movement that
34:18
Speaker 1: started saying like the eighteen nineties and it had to
34:24
Speaker 1: it basically like any progressive movement, it ran full steam ahead,
34:28
Speaker 1: hit a huge wall of industry and then had to
34:30
Speaker 1: slowly just keep pushing and pushing and chugging and chugging
34:33
Speaker 1: and keeping at it for a few decades before it
34:35
Speaker 1: was successful. Um. And one of the ways that it
34:38
Speaker 1: became successful with the way that it kept pushing at
34:40
Speaker 1: it after it hit that wall of industry is UM
34:43
Speaker 1: a group called the National Child Labor Committee formed and
34:47
Speaker 1: I think they formed in back in nineteen o four,
34:50
Speaker 1: and they were basically they became a lobbying group to
34:53
Speaker 1: lobby against the lobbying against child labor laws that ended
34:58
Speaker 1: child labor. Yeah, and they had a pretty smart way
35:02
Speaker 1: to get attention, and uh that was in hiring a
35:05
Speaker 1: photographer named Lewis Hine to go around and sneakily document
35:10
Speaker 1: what was going on with his camera. Yeah, he was
35:12
Speaker 1: He worked as a sociologist and a teacher and then
35:15
Speaker 1: later became a photographer. Was also a photographer, and uh,
35:20
Speaker 1: I think he himself was a kid who was working
35:23
Speaker 1: twelve thirteen hour days, so he was like, let me
35:26
Speaker 1: start taking pictures of these kids and maybe that because
35:29
Speaker 1: you know, that's worth a thousand words, they say at
35:31
Speaker 1: least five thousand, So that means that he took fifty
35:36
Speaker 1: thousand words, No, five five thousand. I'm just kidding your confidence.
35:46
Speaker 1: It was totally wrong. It was purposefully wrong. Though. Let
35:49
Speaker 1: me just do that real quick, to do carry the one.
35:53
Speaker 1: He took five million words. That's a lot of words. Um.
35:58
Speaker 1: And if you go back, you probably seen a bunch
36:00
Speaker 1: of these pictures. Have you seen pictures of very unhappy
36:05
Speaker 1: kids outside of a coal mine, or standing on the
36:07
Speaker 1: mountains of shucked oysters, or standing around factory machines like
36:12
Speaker 1: little mensture adults? They were probably Lewis Hynes photos. Yeah,
36:16
Speaker 1: I mean five thousand photos, all archived in the Library
36:19
Speaker 1: of Congress. Um, from what I understand. Um. And he
36:22
Speaker 1: had like a really great eye to begin with. Like
36:25
Speaker 1: they're really great photographs in and of themselves. But you know,
36:29
Speaker 1: you don't have to sit there and like, you know,
36:32
Speaker 1: try to really contemplate it. It just hits you immediately
36:35
Speaker 1: what you're looking at and how sad what you're looking
36:37
Speaker 1: at is. And so he and the National Child Labor
36:40
Speaker 1: Committee got these into newspapers. Um. And like you said, uh,
36:44
Speaker 1: he was very sneaky. He would poses different things. Um.
36:49
Speaker 1: One of them made sense to me. The industrial machinery photographer. Okay,
36:54
Speaker 1: got that, but what excuse what a Bible salesman have
36:59
Speaker 1: for taking photographs of the kids at the factory. I
37:03
Speaker 1: could not find that save my life. I mean the
37:06
Speaker 1: only thing I could think is that got him in
37:08
Speaker 1: the door. And then maybe he was like, and I
37:11
Speaker 1: just love kids, and can I take some pictures? But
37:13
Speaker 1: I don't know. And this is a time before stranger danger,
37:16
Speaker 1: I guess. So they were like, sure, I mean they're
37:18
Speaker 1: child labors. I don't care about him. Yeah, he also
37:21
Speaker 1: um he wore a special jacket where he had the
37:25
Speaker 1: buttons on the jacket aligned in known measurements. So if
37:29
Speaker 1: he went over and stood like he would take a
37:31
Speaker 1: kid's picture, and he would ask, you know, they're documented
37:33
Speaker 1: like their names and their ages and stuff as best
37:36
Speaker 1: he could. But he would go stand next to them
37:39
Speaker 1: if he felt like he couldn't outright ask what their
37:41
Speaker 1: age was, to kind of tip off that maybe he
37:44
Speaker 1: was not a Bible salesman. Uh. And you know, if
37:47
Speaker 1: the kid went up to the second or third button,
37:49
Speaker 1: he would know roughly how tall they were, or no,
37:52
Speaker 1: he would know how tall they were then roughly how
37:54
Speaker 1: old they were. The other thing were giants, right right. Yeah,
37:58
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know he didn't get him all right,
38:00
Speaker 1: but you know, you can't win them all. But the
38:03
Speaker 1: other thing that made it, um, that jacket special, chuck,
38:06
Speaker 1: was that the lining was made of a t shirt
38:08
Speaker 1: of a ripped chest and abdomen. And it would make
38:11
Speaker 1: him feel really good about himself when he put that
38:14
Speaker 1: jacket on. Oh that's good, let's call it. Uh When
38:20
Speaker 1: did things finally changed though? Uh, well, they started to
38:24
Speaker 1: kind of change like these These pictures shocked the conscience
38:27
Speaker 1: of the nation when they when they saw them, when
38:29
Speaker 1: they made them in the newspapers, and they were accompanied
38:31
Speaker 1: by muckra getting articles about how bad these conditions were.
38:34
Speaker 1: And you know, shame on you, America for turning a
38:37
Speaker 1: blind eye to this kind of thing. Um. But it
38:40
Speaker 1: wasn't like an instantaneous switch was thrown. It still took decades.
38:43
Speaker 1: I think. The first proposal for anti child labor um
38:49
Speaker 1: legislation came in nineteen oh six. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana,
38:55
Speaker 1: UM was the first to propose. It got taken up
38:58
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen by the Key Eating Act that was
39:00
Speaker 1: actually passed, but the Supreme Court shut it down. Um.
39:04
Speaker 1: And then there was some more legislation that there was
39:07
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment actually that got passed but wasn't ratified
39:11
Speaker 1: by the States. And then it wasn't until the Great
39:13
Speaker 1: Depression and the New Deal that it finally got passed.
39:16
Speaker 1: And I think if it were just the New Deal,
39:19
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have gotten passed. But the Great Depression changed
39:22
Speaker 1: things socially enough that it opened the door for an
39:27
Speaker 1: end to child labor in America. Yeah, Like, ironically, I
39:30
Speaker 1: think massive unemployment with so many adults out of work,
39:34
Speaker 1: they couldn't turn around and just hire kids to do
39:36
Speaker 1: these jobs for lower wages. It was I mean, even
39:40
Speaker 1: at a time when its a bad look didn't really
39:43
Speaker 1: matter as much as as it does today, they even
39:47
Speaker 1: knew that that was a really bad look and that
39:49
Speaker 1: they probably couldn't do something like that. So eventually the
39:53
Speaker 1: Fair Labors Fair Labor Standards Act of Thank You Francis
39:58
Speaker 1: Perkins or old Buddy, that's right, among others UM, this
40:02
Speaker 1: finally set a national minimum wage for the very first time,
40:07
Speaker 1: maximum number of hours for workers, and then child labor limitations,
40:12
Speaker 1: notably that if you are under sixteen, you cannot work
40:16
Speaker 1: in manufacturing and you cannot work in coal mining at
40:19
Speaker 1: all because they're just too dangerous. Another couple of things
40:22
Speaker 1: that did it established over time time and a half.
40:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so if you went over forty hours a week,
40:29
Speaker 1: you could only work up to forty four, but you
40:31
Speaker 1: could work four hours at time and a half. And
40:33
Speaker 1: that very first minimum wage was twenty five cents an hour.
40:38
Speaker 1: Man uhe went up to thirty forty five, it went
40:42
Speaker 1: up to forty. Uh in nineteen fifty six, it finally
40:45
Speaker 1: reached a dollar kitching and it didn't crack six dollars
40:50
Speaker 1: until two thousand eight. I know, dude, it's just shameful,
40:54
Speaker 1: isn't that nuts? We definitely need to do a minimum
40:57
Speaker 1: wage episode two because it's just not as cut and
41:00
Speaker 1: dried as Yeah, it's raised a minimum wage, like there's
41:04
Speaker 1: just it's like there's a lot to it. I really
41:07
Speaker 1: want to do one on that. Yeah. I hadn't really
41:09
Speaker 1: kept up with it because I before I got salary jobs,
41:13
Speaker 1: I worked as a waiter for fifteen or twenty years
41:17
Speaker 1: or something so or as a p A on movie
41:20
Speaker 1: sets and TV sets, and that's not an hourly thing either,
41:24
Speaker 1: So like I hadn't had an hourly rate job since college,
41:28
Speaker 1: so I didn't really know, you know, kind of how
41:30
Speaker 1: it changed over the years. I did not know it
41:33
Speaker 1: was two thousand and eight when they cracked six dollars.
41:35
Speaker 1: That's really low, it really is. It's very it's it's
41:38
Speaker 1: just not okay, and it's still it's seven something right now.
41:41
Speaker 1: It's no, it's seven five, actually I think it's yeah,
41:46
Speaker 1: that's the national minimum wage. Right. Yeah. Again, some of
41:50
Speaker 1: the states are are raising stuff slowly but surely, but
41:53
Speaker 1: that's the federal one. Still, this is Alabama doesn't have
41:56
Speaker 1: a minimum wage. Is that right? Is that possible? Yeah,
42:00
Speaker 1: that's possible. Man doesn't have to look into that. That's
42:03
Speaker 1: on the fly. So, um yeah, we'll do a whole
42:06
Speaker 1: one on minimum wage for sure coming up. But um,
42:10
Speaker 1: you said that. The the Fair Labor Standards Act was
42:15
Speaker 1: um past in night and it's still basically governs child
42:20
Speaker 1: labor um And one of the things that it does, Chuck,
42:23
Speaker 1: is it it divides uh, child labor into agricultural and
42:28
Speaker 1: non agricultural jobs. And with agriculture or non agricultural jobs,
42:32
Speaker 1: there's like a pretty decent amount of protections, like kids
42:36
Speaker 1: can't work in hazardous stuff until they're eighteen, things like blasting, mining,
42:41
Speaker 1: forest firefighting, that kind of stuff. Um that if you're
42:46
Speaker 1: under sixteen, you can only work a maximum of three
42:49
Speaker 1: hours a day during the school year. Um, there's some exemptions.
42:53
Speaker 1: Did you see the thing about home based wreathmaking. Yeah,
42:57
Speaker 1: so you cannot non agriculturally, you cannot work if you're
43:00
Speaker 1: under fourteen at all. Like I could not have worked
43:02
Speaker 1: as a bus boy at thirteen, supposedly, but I still did.
43:07
Speaker 1: Um unless that was passed since then, because this thing
43:10
Speaker 1: has been ratified a million times or not ratified but amended.
43:15
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you're a child actor, you can work
43:17
Speaker 1: if you're under fourteen. Obviously, if you're a newsy you
43:21
Speaker 1: can still deliver newspapers if you're under fourteen. And home
43:24
Speaker 1: based wreathmaker, it's so weird. It is weird. And not
43:29
Speaker 1: only is it, home based wreathmaking is exempted from child
43:32
Speaker 1: labor laws in the United States. It has to be
43:35
Speaker 1: a specific kind of reath that has to be mostly
43:38
Speaker 1: evergreen wreaths. So if you're making reads and it has
43:42
Speaker 1: to be at home. If you're having your kid make
43:44
Speaker 1: reads at home and they're not mostly evergreen, that's illegal.
43:49
Speaker 1: And if they're making things out of Evergreen that are
43:52
Speaker 1: not reads like say Garland that's illegal, specifically homemade reads
43:58
Speaker 1: that are mostly Evergreen. It's really really interesting. It's one
44:02
Speaker 1: of the most bizarre facts we've ever talked about on
44:04
Speaker 1: this episode. Yes show. Yeah, we're going to keep that
44:07
Speaker 1: one in my pocket totally. But agricultural though, they have
44:11
Speaker 1: like very little protection, like almost shamefully little protections. Yeah,
44:16
Speaker 1: if you're sixteen years old and you live on your
44:18
Speaker 1: family farm, they can work you. Um, there's no living
44:22
Speaker 1: on how many hours they can work you. You can
44:24
Speaker 1: work jobs at the Department of Labor considers hazardous. I
44:28
Speaker 1: think fourteen year olds also can work unlimited hours if
44:31
Speaker 1: it's outside the school day, and then the kids as
44:34
Speaker 1: young as twelve I think actually twelve and younger can
44:38
Speaker 1: work with parental consent. Yeah, yeah, basically unlimited hours or
44:45
Speaker 1: at least up to seventy two hours, and that's during
44:47
Speaker 1: the school year as well. And as a result of this,
44:52
Speaker 1: of child farm workers graduate from high school here and
44:56
Speaker 1: you know the in the United States we're talking about,
45:01
Speaker 1: and the hundred thousand of them are injured on the
45:03
Speaker 1: job every year. Child farm laborers and a lot of
45:07
Speaker 1: trying to get changed. Yeah, they're basically saying, like, look,
45:10
Speaker 1: just just take these things that we apply to non
45:12
Speaker 1: agricultural jobs and apply to agricultural problems solved, and that
45:16
Speaker 1: would solve a lot of problems. I'm sure it would
45:18
Speaker 1: create a lot of problems that you and I are
45:20
Speaker 1: unaware of, not being farm folk. Um, But it would
45:23
Speaker 1: solve a lot of the child labor problems that child
45:25
Speaker 1: labor activists have issues with. It would do nothing for
45:29
Speaker 1: the the much more rampant problems that are endemic around
45:35
Speaker 1: the world with child labor, where a lot of it
45:38
Speaker 1: resembles basically how America was with child labor at the
45:42
Speaker 1: at the you know, during the Gilded Age. Yeah, hundred
45:45
Speaker 1: and fifty eight million kids are estimated to be the
45:49
Speaker 1: victims of child labor around the world. The good news
45:52
Speaker 1: is that's down from twenty years ago. Um. But the
45:57
Speaker 1: bad news is is that's a lot of kids. And
46:01
Speaker 1: I think those are in agriculture, harvesting, fishing, herding, stuff
46:06
Speaker 1: like that, But there are a lot of kids around
46:09
Speaker 1: the world. It's still like work in coal mines. Yeah,
46:12
Speaker 1: like that's too narrow for an adults, too dangerous. You
46:16
Speaker 1: go in there and do it instead UM, and they'll
46:19
Speaker 1: work with like they'll work at wildcat gold mines, so
46:21
Speaker 1: they're having to like separate gold with mercury. So they're
46:24
Speaker 1: getting mercury poisoning at a young age, which really messes
46:27
Speaker 1: with your developmentally. UM. On tobacco farms in places like Zimbabwe,
46:32
Speaker 1: not only are they having to get um, you know,
46:35
Speaker 1: nicotine poisoning, they're also being poisoned by UM toxic pesticides
46:40
Speaker 1: that are used on the crops and stuff too. So
46:43
Speaker 1: like these kids are working in like deplorable working conditions
46:47
Speaker 1: and UM there's just some really basic stuff that needs
46:52
Speaker 1: to change that would just free the children of the
46:55
Speaker 1: world the world around from um what is essentially like
47:00
Speaker 1: indentured servitude right now. Yeah, and there's four kind of
47:03
Speaker 1: basic things that the i ll O says we can
47:06
Speaker 1: do around the country and they, like you said at
47:09
Speaker 1: the very beginning, they're very pragmatic. They all make sense
47:12
Speaker 1: and they would really make a difference. And the first
47:14
Speaker 1: is expand access to education. Get kids in school and
47:20
Speaker 1: um get rid of fees to be in school and
47:24
Speaker 1: uh put them. If they're in a school situation, they're
47:27
Speaker 1: way less likely to join the workforce. That's that's what
47:30
Speaker 1: our friends at CODE do. They they're like helping get
47:33
Speaker 1: kids off of family farms and into schools by removing
47:36
Speaker 1: any barriers between them and in school. Yep, it's all
47:39
Speaker 1: through education. It's a great, great organization. What else. Uh,
47:44
Speaker 1: and that's, by the way, the cooperative I always say
47:47
Speaker 1: that word wrong, cooperative for education. Yeah, look them up.
47:51
Speaker 1: We've championed them for years and we got a little uh,
47:54
Speaker 1: a little uh fun thing coming up that we're doing
47:56
Speaker 1: with them that you guys might be interested in. So
47:58
Speaker 1: stay tuned for that. Yeah. Uh, let me see what's
48:01
Speaker 1: the next one? Help families meet basic needs. Uh. This
48:04
Speaker 1: could be a universal basic income, it could be a
48:06
Speaker 1: monthly stipend, but basically so families don't have to send
48:10
Speaker 1: their kids out to work to provide at the most
48:13
Speaker 1: basic level. Yeah. In a way that you can help
48:16
Speaker 1: that is through Kiva, UM, by blending making micro loans
48:20
Speaker 1: to people so that they can they have the capital
48:23
Speaker 1: to grow from uh initially. Um. There's also like, if
48:27
Speaker 1: you make sure that adults are getting better wages and
48:30
Speaker 1: pay and um, their rights are protected, it makes their
48:34
Speaker 1: children less likely to be forced into the workplace to
48:37
Speaker 1: begin with, because it's not again, there's not like adults
48:40
Speaker 1: the world ground saying, you know, our kids need to
48:43
Speaker 1: be working because they're lazy, like their kids need to
48:45
Speaker 1: be working because the adults aren't getting paid enough. And
48:49
Speaker 1: if you, um, make sure that you're you know, if
48:52
Speaker 1: you're a Western company and you make sure that you're
48:55
Speaker 1: paying everybody a fair wage, um, there's a good chance
48:58
Speaker 1: that you can erradic eight child labor from your supply chain.
49:04
Speaker 1: And then the last thing is just enforcement. They can
49:07
Speaker 1: put all the laws that they want on the books,
49:09
Speaker 1: but unless someone's gonna actually work on enforcement, than it
49:12
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter much. So uh, that's really sort of
49:15
Speaker 1: the last step is uh funding for enforcement. Yeah, and
49:20
Speaker 1: Germany actually just passed the law recently that that demands
49:24
Speaker 1: that it's companies examined, do due diligence and examine their
49:28
Speaker 1: supply chains to see if there's um child labor involved
49:31
Speaker 1: and to do something about it. That doesn't have like
49:33
Speaker 1: as much teeth as Human Rights Watch was saying that
49:36
Speaker 1: they wish it had, but it's a good first step
49:38
Speaker 1: and hopefully the way that that you know, progressive nations
49:41
Speaker 1: will start moving. That's right. Um, Two things big shout out.
49:45
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, but the young listener who
49:49
Speaker 1: was mowing the law and for his dad and rode
49:51
Speaker 1: into request this episode. I think that's right. I think
49:54
Speaker 1: he prompted this episode. So hats off to you, young sir.
49:58
Speaker 1: I hope you can kick up your heels for a
50:00
Speaker 1: little while. And then also, this was indeed a Dave
50:03
Speaker 1: Ru's joint, so thanks again to Dave for this one. Right,
50:08
Speaker 1: that's right. Since Chuck said that's right, everybody means it's
50:10
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this. Uh,
50:16
Speaker 1: I think it's just thanks. Hey, guys, running in from Louisville, Kentucky.
50:19
Speaker 1: He say how much I love the show, even though
50:22
Speaker 1: Josh said the k of C M center was in Lexington.
50:25
Speaker 1: I'll never live that down. Your correction put a smile
50:28
Speaker 1: on my face, knowing that there are other stuff you
50:30
Speaker 1: should know fans near me. I work in long term
50:32
Speaker 1: care and use your podcasts in many different ways. I
50:35
Speaker 1: help people with cognitive impairments set up their tablets and
50:38
Speaker 1: such for enrichment, socialization, and stimulation. One of the first
50:42
Speaker 1: activities I showed them is how to access entertainment With
50:44
Speaker 1: the educational podcast. Everyone can find something they want to
50:48
Speaker 1: learn about on Stuff you Should Know. Also help people
50:50
Speaker 1: find ways of remembering new information, and use your short
50:53
Speaker 1: stuff episodes for those with shorter attention spans. And finally,
50:57
Speaker 1: my own enjoyment is a factor. I listen to many
51:00
Speaker 1: different podcasts during my drive to and from work, but
51:02
Speaker 1: only Stuff you Should Know has the ability to get
51:04
Speaker 1: me into a different headspace. I attribute that to Josh
51:08
Speaker 1: and Chuck. None of these topics would be nearly as
51:10
Speaker 1: interesting without you, guys. Grid and laughed sometimes both all
51:14
Speaker 1: in all of your episodes, even the really Matthey ones,
51:19
Speaker 1: I feel you on that one. Chuck and Josh, Yeah
51:24
Speaker 1: that was a dig. Wasn't a dig? Be math guy? No, No,
51:29
Speaker 1: but I'd like to think I am okay, sorry about that. Uh.
51:33
Speaker 1: The episode on snake handling is a personal favorite. I
51:35
Speaker 1: appreciate an episode. I love the show and everyone that
51:37
Speaker 1: works on it. Thanks for keeping it going. I hope
51:39
Speaker 1: see y'all in Kentucky. That is from Ellie. Well, thanks again, Ellie,
51:43
Speaker 1: and Uh. If you want to get in touch with this,
51:46
Speaker 1: like Ellie did, you can write us an email send
51:48
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51:55
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