Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Shock and Awe

Oh, give it a rest.
TB — (archived)

I wasn't defending child labor of that sort and you know it.

I was pointing out, in response to some of your standard Joe Hill riffs, that the picture is a bit bigger than what you get from socialist poets. At that time factory work was often a step up from where they had been in a hard-knock agrarian and more primitive society, similar to what's going on in the Third World now. That doesn't mean it was a desirable end point, any more than a sweatshop is in the Third World.

My distant ancestors grew up on old-style farms (not in this country), and got put to work almost the minute they could do anything useful. No unions, no safety rules, no limits on hours or seasons, and no prim maidens writing poetry with hankies under their noses. At that time, any indoor work that paid actual money, regardless of the weather, might have looked pretty good. Today, a farm kid can get an education and never have to do manual labor again. I have yet to meet any farmer who thinks this is a bad thing. My grandparents considered it fantastic that their son would be a college man, and not a farmer.

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