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