Some things that sound so good often turn out to be bad. Do you know anything that sounded good that turned out to be bad? I know you did and so do you. If that is the case, why is it that when we see something that looks or sounds good that we become blinded to how it could turn out to be bad? I guess it is just one of the factors that makes many people "one movers". Remember "one movers"? These are the simple minded people who can not see beyond the present. You know them. They are those fat people who eat too much or the drunk that drinks too much. When they were eating or drinking, they felt happy and good, so how could that have been all wrong? You know the answer. The point of this blog is to point out how something that looked or sounded good could in the end turn out to be very bad. I am not going to get into our National Debit, I think you must know how our over spending on all those good things is going to turn out.
First, child labor laws. If you read Dickens' stories about 1800 th century England, you are preconditioned that all child labor was bad and that civilized people had to "fix" the problem by passing harsh child labor laws. How could anyone be against something that was so good? For someone to participate in a debate about the subject, they first need to know something about child labor and 99% of people do not. What they know is what they have read in school, such as the writings by Dickens. Was there ever a debate in school about how extensive the child labor that Dickens described was in the world and what the alternatives were? I don't think so. How many of you have ever seen an industrial loom? That is the machine that weaves cloth for the cloths that we all wear. Prior to the steam or water powered looms, all cloths was woven by hand looms. I don't know the actual %, but a very large portion of the world's workforce were hand weavers. There was little labor left over to make or build other things that would raise the quality of life. It was a very bad time.
Think of all the threads it takes to make a piece of cloth and how small those threads are? The small and weak threads were easily broken in the process of weaving. When this happened, someone had to re thread the loom. It was a little like threading a common needle and you know how difficult that can be. As it turned out, it required good eyesight and nimble fingers to re thread the loom and this could be done best by the younger workers. We all know that as we get older, our eyesight tends to fade and our fingers do not work so well. That is the main reason that younger worker were hired to operate the looms. What was the alternative?
The children could have stayed at home and produced nothing of value while their older parents tried to do a job that they were not qualified for. In this case the children were "more" valuable than their parents. That is a fact. Given this situation, how do you think that a family should go about trying to maximize their quality of life? Well, it is not by passing a minimum wage law. If they were to have done that, there would no longer be any looms in England or the cost of clothing would be more than people out of work could afford. I once visited the headquarters of Draper Looms, who at the time was the largest loom builder in the world. They are now out of business. At one time there were looms powered by water up and down our East Coast, but not any more. Did you ever hear of the "Fall Line". On our East Coast, the rivers run from the mountains East, down to the sea. Before they get to the sea, they pass thru and area that is almost flat. The "Fall Line" is the point where the rivers stop flowing fast and enter the slow tidal zone. It is at this "Fall Line" where the original water wheels were located and thus this was where the looms were located. It is interesting how few years it took for almost all the looms on our East Coast to go out of business and the main reason was our child labor laws. When the looms went so did the economy of most of the states on the East Coast. It is only recently that many of the Southern states have bounced back and why is that? Most of those states are "right to work" states. The point is that harsh child labor laws that appear good can kill jobs and the quality of life for many families including those same kids that the law was supposed to help. Interesting.
As a kid from age about 7 on, I worked at some kind of job every chance that I had. In 1947, I had saved over $100 in my Bank of America savings account. Here is a good way to look at child labor as I knew it. Let's say that I had a choice between staying home and playing with a bunch of kids my own age from 7 to 12 or working picking cotton or picking potatoes or prunes. Which of these two choices do you think is the most healthy for my physical and mental development? Which one do you think would best prepare me to deal with my life in the future? If I stay home and watch TV and play with kids my own age, how mentally stimulating do you think that will be? What kinds of things do you think I would pick up from young peers? Compare that with me working at a job with others who are also working. I would be working with some my own age, but most would be older and more mature. Which group do you think I would learn more from? Most of these older workers would have skills that I could learn and thus make myself more valuable and productive. What do you think I would lean from playing with a bunch of kids my own age? No contest.
What has happened is that our kids now develop in a younger and younger peer group with less and less contact with more mature models. The result is a bunch of young adults who are much less qualified to deal with the responsibility of mature life and are less willing to work for what they get. If you look at kids today who grow up on farms, they are better educated than those in cities. The average farmer has a higher income than the average city person. Didn't know that did you? I think that the bottom line is that rural kids spend less time with kids their own age as compared to city kids and more time with older more mature adults. I could say the same for home schooled kids too. They do much better in school, on average, than kids who go to public schools. That is also a fact!
Rather than trying to get our kids better "socialized" by hanging around with kids their own age more, I think that what we need to do is to figure out ways for them to spend "less" time with young peer groups or doing mind numbing things like watching TV or video games. Keeping busy is important, but how you do that is even more important.
