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