WEBVTT - American Child Labor, An Unceasing Horror 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.680 It's happening here. The thing that's happening here is fucking 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:12.840 child labor. I am. I am deeply angry this episode, 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:15.760 this is it could happen here. I'm your host, Mio 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:18.479 Wong and with me Sharen Hi Mia. 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.000 I'm so glad to join you on this really uplifting episode. 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.520 Yeah, it's gonna be great. So yes, all right, As 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:28.880 anyone who studied, like even a little bit of labor 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.720 history dos, the fight over child labor is very, very old. 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:34.479 It is. It's one of the first causes that sort 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.400 of liberal reformers to capitalism took up nearly eighteen hundreds. 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:40.120 Like it's like in the Communist Manifesto is one of 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:41.800 the things. It's actually it's one of the things people 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:43.600 point out. It's like, oh, we've done all the things 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.760 that was in the original comedist Manifesto, and it's like, no, no, 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.239 we never got rid of this, you know. It's it's 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:51.440 also one of the things that like you get these 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.080 sort of like capitalist triumphalist accounts that like, oh, we 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:56.160 eliminated child labor. This is like this has proof the 0:00:56.200 --> 0:01:00.160 system works. No, this, the battle over child labor or 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:02.720 is a battle that we are in the middle of losing. 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.920 We are losing it in worse and worse ways every day. 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:13.000 So okay, so why why why are we why are 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.600 we dealing with a new resurgence of child labor in 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.560 this country. There's there's a lot of reasons. One of 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.039 the big problems is that vast swaths of the US 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:26.319 sees child labor is morally good. You know, they see 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:28.080 something like, oh, this is like you teach your kids. 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:30.760 It's like how you like, how they grow up and 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:32.280 get responsible, and. 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:33.840 Yeah, and then this and this is true in a 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.280 lot of parts of the world. It's also completely and 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:42.120 absolutely bonkers. It is just it's just nuts, Like people 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.840 shouldn't think like this. It's incredibly weird. And the other 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:48.280 thing that you get a lot is like there's you know, 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:53.880 there's sort of like different versions of like more or 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.640 less socially acceptable child labor. Right, So, like I think 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.720 most people agree if you're not running the business that 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.880 like children shouldn't be working in like slaughterhouses or whatever. 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:06.600 But you know, there's like lots of things that people 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:08.359 are like, oh, no, kid working in a restaurant, like 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.560 that's completely fine, Like oh, it's like a like a 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.160 fourteen year old is like doing farm work on a farm, 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:16.639 Like that's fine, but. 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.680 It's a slippery slope, right because it's starting to farm 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:20.560 work and then. 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.160 Down. Also, like I would argue that that's also not fine, 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.280 because what's what's essentially happening here is that there's this 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:33.720 basically like this sort of family loophole to people's understanding 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.600 if child labor were like, as long as child labor 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.040 is being done by like the family as an economic 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:45.600 unit instead of like capitalists directly, yeah, it's fine. It's like, no, no, 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.520 it's not. It's actually not fine to be working people 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.000 like be a child and then working for a living 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.160 for your family, Like that's not kay. 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:56.440 I think there's a difference between. I think there's a 0:02:56.440 --> 0:03:00.520 difference between like child labor and like working in a 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.640 field for your family versus like a chore, you know 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.120 what I mean, Like, yeah, yeah, it's I think I 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.680 think that line gets blurred and people see their kids 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:11.560 as much more mature than they are and like able 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.840 to like no, I I I understand what you're saying, 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:15.720 and I think I agree. 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:20.080 I think I agree, yeah, and it's I don't know it. 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.280 It sucks. This has a lot of sort of knock 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:24.320 on effects. One of the big knock on effects his 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:25.560 Haus and this is this has been a thing for 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:27.400 like the entire history of child labor, right, is that 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.480 like capitalists use children as a way to write down 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:32.280 wages for everyone else. And this is you know, if 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:34.800 you ever listened to argue to someone about the minimum wage, right, 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.160 one of the big arguments about the minimum wage is 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.000 that like, oh well, it's like it's like kids get 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:42.440 the minimum wage, so like it's fine. It's like one, 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.520 it's not like children are not morally worth less and 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.280 their labor is also not worth less than an adult. 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.440 Like like if you if you're gonna explain them like this, like. 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.160 Yeah, things all are the same price for everybody. It's 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:55.440 not like less for a child. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:57.080 Yeah, it's not. It's not like it like a kid 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.800 is like somehow less of a human being than an adult. Right, 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:03.640 Like this is this is this sucks, but you know 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.800 it's used to sort of hold down wages directly through 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.520 things like like opposing mineral wage increases, used to hold 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.520 you know, hold down wages sort of indirectly because and 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.560 this is another reason like capitalists love child labor is 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.280 that children are, you know, like they're physically smaller than adults, 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:24.400 they're easier to control, they have less social power, and 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:27.080 because you know, because of that, you can pay them less. 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:32.080 And because of you know, because because people just in 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.279 our society don't fucking like kids, and because of that, 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.760 it's so it's it's just socially accessible to just pay 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:40.320 them less. 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.479 All those reasons you listed are absolutely terrifying, though, like, 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.839 oh they will listen. Oh they're smaller, Oh they're like 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.200 cheaper or whatever it is that they're all like terrible 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.119 reasons to justify child labor. 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:59.480 No, they're not good. They're not good. And yet, however, Comma, 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:04.240 it still persists. It has persisted. It's very old. I'm 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.200 gonna read something from the Bureau of Labor Statistics about 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:14.239 this fucking kid who was working in a mine. What okay? 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.279 This is from the early nineteen hundreds. One boy touchingly 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:21.240 recounted his attitude towards facing the day at the mine 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.360 this way, I'll always think of my poor blind father 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:26.880 and my mother at home, but I won't never play 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:29.559 with the boys at all, And then the cracker boss 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.440 won't have to beat me like he does the others 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.560 this boy was nine years old. While stories like these 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:37.560 produced outrage in many quarters, in the cold producing regions, 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.280 there is no such concern the view that quote the 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.280 little devils like it, as one cold boss put it, 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.480 seemed to be the prevailing sentiments. Child labor wasn't discussed 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.240 these regions because it wasn't seen as an issue. So 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.160 this is like nineteen hundreds of American view, like early 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.520 nieten hundreds of American view on this right, like people, my people, 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:59.000 I mean capitalists and also people who are incredibly desperate 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:01.160 and don't have enough money to give by like love 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.320 child labor. There's you know, it takes a long time 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.720 for like an actual series anti child labor campaign to 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.479 get started in the US. And of course the exact 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.239 people who you would expect to oppose banning child labor 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.320 oppose banning child labor. I'm going to read this from 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.720 the also from the barrel laborististics. The chairman of the 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.520 National Association of Manufacturers said about a law to abolish 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:28.440 child labor. Quote this union, this labor union plot against 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:32.760 the advancements and happiness of the American boy is a ploy. 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:36.680 Is also a ploy against individual industrial expansion. And prosperity 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:40.559 in this country. So this is what their thing is. 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:44.800 Their argument is that is that children don't oppose child labor. 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:47.640 This is this is being foisted upon them by outside 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.880 agitated labor unions. And also, if we're not allowed to 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:53.760 use child labor, if we're not allowed to have a 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.960 nine year old be put in a mine, the entire 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.760 American economy will collapse and every manufacturer will go broke. 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:04.000 It's like making you like being like child labor because patriotism, 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:05.599 Like that's basically what that means. 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.560 Yeah, it's it's it's s genu widely terrible, like I 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:13.240 I don't know, it's so goulish. Like companies today have 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.320 figured out how to do this pr thing of like, oh, 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.640 we don't condone child labor. We crack down on it 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.480 very seriously. We also hire children literally all the time. 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:23.520 But it's fine, We're just we're gonna like you know, 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:25.600 but back in like nine hundreds, they hadn't really figured 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:27.400 that out yet, and so you know, there's there's a 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.160 sort of reform movement that happens. And one of the 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.280 sort of key moments of this reform thing is Laurence 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.800 Textile Strike and This strike is probably most famous today 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.680 for popularizing the slogan we want bread and roses too, 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.720 which is, you know, like wrung down the halls of 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.239 labor and socialist histories, like the names of newspapers, songs, poems, 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:49.240 and also like being the namesake of a truly dogshit 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:54.080 DSA caucus. We're not going to talk about this strike enormously. 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.480 Here the short, the very very short version of this strike, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.320 and this this is a nineteen twelve strike. The short 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:01.920 version of it is that there's a law pass in 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.280 Massachusetts that would have reduced like the number of hours 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.000 that you could have women and children work from a 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.400 blistering fifty six hours to a leisurely fifty four hours 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:11.800 a week. 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:12.840 Oh my god. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.440 This prompted the local capitalist to get so mad that 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:22.080 they did this like massive like industrial speed up, so 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.800 they forced everyone to work faster and then also doctor 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.440 everyone's paid for it. And this this set off a strike, 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.440 which what's relevant for like our stories that the workers 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:34.840 at this plan. You know, there's lots of coverage of 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:36.640 the fact that like most of these workers are immigrant 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.720 women of like from a bunch of different places. The 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:41.199 part of it that's not talked about as much is 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.080 that another huge person of the workers were just fucking children. 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.480 And it seems to get glossed over. 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:51.959 Yeah yeah, And it's like, I, I, you know, I 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.240 don't know, maybe maybe we should go back and talking 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.600 about that part because it's really important for like the 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.000 stuff we're going to talk about later in this episode. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.360 That made me so angry. I was like physically punching 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:06.760 my pillow. What happens next is that the police cracked 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:09.040 down on the strike. It's more and more violence. And 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.560 as this goes on, the workers at like the adult 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.040 workers at this plant decide, Okay, we're gonna like send 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.040 the children, who are both like both the child workers 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.319 and also like just people's kids to New York to 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.320 keep them safe and also to make a political point. 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.880 But like, hey, look they're running our children out of town, 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:26.800 and this goes great. The first way is this go 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.280 great for the children. Like a bunch of people in 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:30.000 New York show up but are like, yay, hey, we'll 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:33.640 take care of these kids. Like and this makes like 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.040 the officials in Lawrence be like, you have to stop this. 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.120 It looks really bad for us. And so they they 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.760 like assembled outside of the next train that was trying 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.040 to leave and tried to stop them. Oh my god, 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.920 so she shouldn't be really mististics again. When the next 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.320 group of children prepared to depart the train station, they 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.199 were met by police and soldiers. The police refused to 0:09:57.280 --> 0:09:59.400 let them board the trains and launch an attack on 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:01.800 the group. A seven year old was given a black 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:03.680 eye when she was picked up and thrown into a 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.800 patty wagon by police. Another witness. Another witness testified to 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:12.840 children being thrown around like rags. Oh my wait god, 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.679 like yeah, thin blue live baby, let's fucking go. This 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:18.280 is this is the thing the cops or the thin 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:23.640 blue line ordering chaos. That seventy year old girls. Yeah's 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:26.760 not gonna throw herself around, right, Like someone has to 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.520 beat up this children. And for that there is the few, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:31.240 the proud, the American police. 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:33.199 But they were scared for their lives, you know what 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:34.840 I mean, Like there are seven year. 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.839 Olds that that seven year old girl looked at me 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:39.280 really aggressively. 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.880 Yeah, I was scared for my life, That's what they said. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.839 It's it's you know, it's this is bad. And like 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:49.520 you know, the the nineteen hundreds police can get away 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:51.920 with like nineteen hundred. Plice've talked about another episodes, like 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:54.360 they could get away with just like shooting people right, 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.839 like the like they could show up to like a 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.199 strike and just open fire into the crowd and it 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:04.760 doesn't do anything throwing around a bunch of children like rags. Finally, 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:07.000 it turned out was the thing that was bad enough 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:09.080 that it like started a congressional investigation. 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:11.120 Wow, I guess that's good and bad. 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:15.760 But yeah, so's a college launched this investigation. And there's 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.720 like this fourteen year old immigrant girl named Kamela Tielli 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:21.640 testifies about how she was working at the mill when 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.520 a machine caught her hair and tore her scalp off 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.319 the police promptly and this is going and okay that 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.079 the police promptly arrested her dad, didn't do anything to 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.480 the company, arrested her dad for lying about her age. 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:40.360 Oh my god, what now this hold that wood in 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.120 your fucking mind, because we're gonna come back to that shit, 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:43.880 do I have to? 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:44.560 Okay? 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:48.600 Unfortunately, because it's gonna get so much worse when Tyler's 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:52.559 episode is over. So the product of this is that 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.520 there starts to be like a really mainstream push against 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:57.240 child labor, which is, you know, a thing you would 0:11:57.280 --> 0:11:59.760 have thought would have started earlier, because again we're on 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.640 like century two of child labor in the US by 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:05.800 this point, right, like in the in an entity called 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:10.400 the United States. But you know, apparently it takes this 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:13.000 to actually make people go, wait, maybe this is bad. 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.600 And the product of this is you get this thing 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.160 called the Kenning Owen Child Labor Act nineteen sixteen. Now, 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.280 as we sort of talked about earlier, right, the weakness 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.160 of this law is that it, you know, it allows 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.800 kids to be used as laborers, like inside of the 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:29.800 family unit. So like if you're on a family you know, 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:32.360 and this is a very very broad category, right, so 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:34.320 it's you know, you can you can force your child 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.880 to work as long as like you're their parents, right 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:38.560 and you're the one making the money off of them 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.400 and not like a capitalist. But even this, even this 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.600 is considered too strong of a law, and in nineteen eighteen, 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.760 the Supreme Court rules that it's unconstitutional to ban child labor. 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:57.560 Wait what they do with the uiple times? Multiple times, 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:00.520 And we really cannot emphasize this enough on this show. 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.679 The Supreme Court is and has always been just one 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:05.400 of history's greatest monsters. 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.400 Like, yeah, there, wait, I was right, then child labor 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.320 does equal patriotism. That's basically what I'm saying. 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.960 So eventually FDR gets into this giant fight with Supreme Court, 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:19.679 and the first child labor law we get in federal 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:24.600 child labor law that gets that sticks, I like doesn't 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.520 happen till nineteen thirty eight when FDR threatens to pack 0:13:28.600 --> 0:13:32.600 the court if the Court refuses to fucking stop stop 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:34.800 saying that that that the state that the state doesn't 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.160 have the government doesn't have the power to regulate child labor. 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.360 Wow, it's like literally less than a century ago. That 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.599 is like yesterday, you know. 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:44.920 But but but you know, and this actually works, right, 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.800 but but and this is a real problem. And this 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:49.400 is a problem that we're gonna we're gonna talk about 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:52.760 later in this fucking episode. In the modern day, those 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:57.160 child labor laws don't get enforced. It doesn't act that 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.480 actual The nineteen thirty eight Fair Labor Act like basically 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.120 doesn't actually do shit to like reduce the amount of 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.280 child labor in the country. And here's the thing, Like, 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.719 even now, even before all the horror show stuff that 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.679 we're about to get to that's happening right now, like 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.120 not kids, Like we never actually dealt with child labor 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:21.240 through like the law, Like we just basically outsourced, you know, Okay, 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.640 we we had to find someone whose labor is cheaper 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.720 than like an American child, and we did. It's either 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:32.360 like mechanization other immigrants who like don't have legal citizenship status, 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.880 or just outsourcing. And then you know, our kids still 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.680 fucking do work, you know, like are like they're like 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:41.680 it's very common for ten and twelve year olds to work. 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.480 It's just that it's usually like babysitting or like bowing lawns. 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:47.520 And we've we've decided that like, no, this is actually fine, 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:49.720 Like it is actually fine to fucking put twelve year 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:50.680 olds in a labor market. 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:54.960 Yeah. I mean I think most people today anyway, I 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.640 think the common person thinks that child labor happens like 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.720 in other countries over there, you know what I mean. 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:06.000 I don't think they think America is still that archaic 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:06.600 and stupid. 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.800 Yeah, and oh my god, yeah, so we need to 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.120 take an ad break. And then I'm not even gonna 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.960 make a joke about our sponsors and child labor because 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.680 like Jesus fucking Christ. This is good about to be 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:34.040 it's so bad. But yeah, here's some ads. Okay, So 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:38.360 you know, we never really got rid of child labor, right, 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:43.840 what we did basically was, to some extent we've been 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:47.560 able to successfully decrease the severity of it. And you know, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.000 in the last twenty years there'd been a decline in 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.280 what economists and I really cannot emphasize enough, this is 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:57.000 the actual phrase they use, is child participation in the 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.320 labor markets. Wow. 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.120 Yeah, vanilla of a way to say that. 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.000 So return to present day, present day. The thing that's 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.400 been happening in the last few months is that in 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:14.280 a five week span in this country, three children died 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.400 or I you know, I would actually argue we're killed 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:21.840 by their employers on the job. Well, five children in 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:26.600 three children in five weeks. So sixteen these there, these 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.880 kids were all sixteen. Sixteen year old Duvn Thomas Perez 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:33.560 got killed by machiinery get a conveyor belt. Sixteen year 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.200 old Will Hampton died working at a landfill, and sixteen 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:39.120 year old Michael Schulz died working for a logging company. 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.240 There have been other child labor deaths recently, those are 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.680 just sort of the most recent ones. And I want 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:51.920 to get in to the shit that's been happening because 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:56.320 in the last really in the last been under like 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.920 eight years, things have gotten you know, like the Charlie 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:01.760 situation in the US was never good, and we'll talk 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.720 about that later, but like things have gotten so much worse. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:10.399 There's been almost a factor of four increase since twenty 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.280 fifteen in kids working illegally and hazardous jobs. It's actually 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.159 probably well, it's unclear to me whether the numbers are 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.160 actually worse than that. I don't know, because I think 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.800 almost all of this these districts are being undercounted, like 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:27.040 dramatically because those numbers are just violations that are caught. 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:31.320 And go into that a bit later. But meanwhile, like 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:35.639 right now, Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:37.800 have already passed laws in the last two years that 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.440 weaken restrictions on child labor, and bills are appearing like 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.040 across the country to do fucking more of the same stuff, 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:45.720 like they want to allow fourteen year olds to serve 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:51.600 alcohol in bars. It's you know, it is, it is 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.720 truly horrific, and it's being driven by restaurant business associations 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.359 across the country who want to, you know, use child labor, 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.359 and that's bad. The fact there's more stuff that you 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:05.280 know is on the horizon is not good. But for 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.720 an enormous number of people, regardless of what the law says, 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:13.280 the situation is absolutely intolerable. Here's from the New York Times. 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.280 In many parts of the country, middle and high school 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.520 teachers in English language larner programs say it is now 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.400 common for nearly all of their students to rush off 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.960 to long shift after their classes end. They should not 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:29.920 be working twelve hour days, but it's happening here, said 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.720 Valeria Lindsay, an Arts language arts teacher at Homestead Middle 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.440 School near Miami. For the past three years, almost every 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.280 eighth grader in her English learner program, about one hundred students, 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:48.800 was also carrying an adult workload. So there's been a 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:54.240 massive surge since twenty twenty one in unaccompanied minors entering 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:59.920 the US. And this has been driven by a law 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:01.879 of sort of you know, it's been driven by sort 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.440 of pandemic driven poverty, a massive obsertion of violence in 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:07.639 a bunch of countries in Central America, a lot of 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.119 which has to do with like, you know, the the 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:16.560 US back to Cunel Salvador about a decade ago. You know, 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:18.760 there's a lot of stuff going on. It's all very 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.399 bad and it's been pushing people here. But you know, 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.640 like the the situation for immigrants getting into the US 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.560 is never good, but Biden specifically has managed to make 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:35.080 it worse because Biden's sort of like Biden's immigration policy 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:38.119 has been has been resting on getting kids out of 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.280 shelters as fast as humanly possible and just like throwing 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:44.199 them at literally anyone who claims to be a sponsor, right, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.239 And you know, this has gone about as well as 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:51.359 you would expect it would when someone like starts to 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:53.560 you know, one of the I think it was The 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:55.760 New York Times was talking about this woman who's working, 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:59.359 you quit working in a health human services like office 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:01.200 because they had a quota of getting rid of twenty 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.480 percent of their kids a week and if they didn't 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.080 do it, they would get digged. Yeah, they had a 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.080 quota for we need to get twenty percent of the 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.240 kids out of the shelter every week. Wow. In the 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.160 last two years they have lost track of a third 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:16.520 of the kids they send out, which is again, in 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.080 the last two years alone, at least eighty five thousand 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.520 children they've just lost. I don't fucking know where they are. 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.080 Here's some New York Times Again, it's getting to be 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.280 a business for some of these sponsors. And yet Pasilaqua, 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:32.760 who left her job as a caseworker in Central Florida 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.280 last year. Miss Pasilochua said she saw so many children 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.000 put to work and found law enforcement officials so unwilling 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:43.880 to investigate these cases that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead, 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.239 she settled for explaining to the children that they were 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:48.280 entitled to lunch breaks in overtime. 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:54.399 Wow. Wow, And you know, I. 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.920 Want to make really clear what we're talking about here, right, 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.639 This is not you know, like I don't think like, 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.840 you know, whatever your position is on like whether like 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.240 a twelve year old or a fourteen year old should 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.000 be working any job at all. We are talking about 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.640 twelve year olds working on factories. We were talking about 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.920 thirteen year olds cleaning up the floors of slaughter the 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:21.639 kill floors of slaughterhouses. We are talking about like, we 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.600 are talking about fourteen year olds who are like literally 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:32.000