The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day,
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
~ Sarah N. Cleghorn
This 1904 poem, Golf Links, captured the American public's attention which resulted in the first attempt at child labor laws. Struck down by the US Supreme court as unconstitutional, effective child labor laws were not passed until the 1930s long after Ms. Cleghorn had died. Even then, these laws were not passed as a public good but as an effort to preserve scarce jobs for adults.
The most recent regressive push by GOP politicians is the ultimate in Right to Work thinking. Most egregiously, these rich white (likely golf-playing) men reveal their attitude towards America's children as the newest pool of cheap labor rather than our nation's future. All this talk about a minimum wage that actually approaches a living wage has regressive politicians scrambling to provide their corporate masters with new sources of ever cheaper more powerless labor.
Hourly earnings are, so far, up 0.2% for the year and the average work-week for "employed" people is 34.5 hours and that's GOOD news for Corporation, who are spending 15% less per worker than they did in 2005...
…Labor costs were, in fact, rising in 2007 but "accidentally" wrecking the economy wiped out over 12M jobs and, at an average of 125,000 jobs a month added since Obama took over in Jan, 2009, we've now added back 6M of them – leaving plenty of people still scrambling for work – so many, in fact, that Congress wisely decided that they are just lazy and cut off their unemployment benefits.
Phil’s Stock World
The at-risk high school students I taught were often falling asleep at their desks. I asked why and learned that they had to get up before dawn for their paper routes or had been required to close fast food restaurants at midnight. The theft of my students' sleep and education was secondary to the real harm done to them. While I was trying to inspire them to embrace higher expectations, their employers were meeting with much more success molding their minds to accept their eventual lot of low-wage servitude much as 18th century textile machines deformed laboring children's bodies.
The excesses of the American Industrial Revolution are still with us, evident in every fast food drive-up window and high school dropout statistic. Only by public outrage and vigorous opposition can we keep these cruel market forces from further destroying what greatness our nation still might possess.