From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: child labor and minimum wage.
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:02:24 GMT

In article <1jeo1oINNot7@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
}In article <1993Jan15.100945.16828@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>On the subject of such "stories," see "Child Labor and the Industrial
}>Revolution," by Clark Nardinelli.
}>
}>Children were often safest, best treated, highest paid, and best educated
}>while working in factories during the 19th-century.  They were often given
}>work breaks from mild tasks and read to.  They mostly monitored machines,
}>much easier than backbreaking agricultural labor.  Same goes for women.
}
}It's really amusing listening to libertarians glamorize conditions that were
}so distinctively unlibertarian.  Why a tear glistens in my eye as I read with
}joy that sometimes they were given breaks and sometimes they were read to.
}I'm sure that they all went on to be lawyers and doctors after that, and it
}certainly had to be much better than getting a public school education.
}(  :-( to the sarcasm impaired.)

There weren't any public schools.  That invention of Prussian Statism hadn't
invaded the USA yet in the 19th-century, much to the disliking of the
highbrows disturbed by the "populism" of the Jacksonian Revolution starting
soon after the War of 1812 and continuing until about 1840.  They would
have dearly loved to have begun social engineering experiments then, upon the
children of what they viewed as the lower classes, especially the Irish
and Italian Catholic immigrants, rather than having to wait until
the 1920s.

What did Fowles' narrator call sarcasm in "A Separate Peace," I can't
seem to recall - was it "the defense of the weak"?

}Children and women in that era didn't necessarily have either a choice in
}where or whether to work, what their wages were, nor were they entitled to
}keep their earnings.  In most states, they were effectively owned by
}husbands/fathers.
}
}These abuses (based on common law) were largely curtailed by government action.

Mike, you ought to know damn well that libertarians support full legal status
for women.  There's even something of a case to be made for extending it to
children as well, but I'm undecided about this issue.

You also ought to know damn well that I've never said that common law was
perfect - it also includes sodomy laws - and that libertarians support
statutory correction of this injustice just as we support it for the
serfs that were liberated during the 19th century.

}>Of course, the ruling class didn't like this, so they set their priests and
}>historians out to keep their subjects out of those "dark, satanic mills."
}
}Oh, yes, any history that doesn't agree with YOUR notions is a great
}conspiracy.   Uh huh.

If, by conspiracy, you mean central plan, then this is not my claim.  If
conspiracy is to be construed more broadly to include the natural tendencies
of humans faced with incentives to act predictably (etymologically, conspire
means "to breath together"), then this interpretation would be correct.

}Libertarians, in their eagerness to steamroll all human interactions into the
}mold of their simplistic notions of voluntary contract, seem incapable with
}dealing with the basic fact of human life that you start off DEPENDENT,
}with extensive needs which must be met to be able to compete well in society.

Nonsense.


Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire