Part One
This Saturday morning I happened to catch a classic 1956 Warner Brothers cartoon — Yankee Dood It. I can’t remember having seen it as a child, but it was compelling enough to make me want to find out more. From the Wikipedia link:
Yankee Dood It was the last of three cartoons to be underwritten by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which also underwrote By Word of Mouse and Heir-Conditioned.[5] All three are available on the second disc of Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6. This cartoon is also one of the few cartoons where the character Sylvester the Cat has no speaking lines (except for "Ah-ha!" and "Sufferin' Succotash").
The cartoons are all just under 8 minutes in length. I was not able to find a way to embed the video for this one, but it can be seen at this website if you scroll down past the ads. It presents an idealized version of capitalism at work. The old shoemaker and the elves story is updated. The king of the elves — Elmer Fudd — explains to the shoemaker he needs to stop using elves and remake his business for 20th Century modern times. Attract investors, use their capital to buy shoe-making machines, increase production, lower prices, pay dividends — and boost the entire local economy.
Lather, rinse repeat. It’s a wonder these aren’t mandatory videos in Red State Schools.
It’s a wonderful picture of classic capitalism at work — with a number of things that don’t get mentioned: the role of unions to make sure workers get their share of the profits, environmental impacts, the problems of monopoly and market consolidation, the need for government regulation for things like safety, and the problems with the idea that growth is a never-ending process.
The second cartoon is the 1955 Heir-Conditioned. Sylvester the Cat inherits the entire fortune of his late owner. His alley cat friends want him to go on a spending spree, but his financial adviser Elmer Fudd explains that his “idle cash” if invested in good companies will support the development of new consumer goods, better paying jobs, and a higher standard of living… (Good companies like Enron? Sub-prime mortgages? You get the picture.)
While I wasn’t able to find a video to embed, it looks like it’s here if you scroll down to it.
The first cartoon in the series was released in 1954. By Word of Mouse (warning — this link is to the Foundation for Economic Education, a libertarian site.) tells the story of a visit by a mouse from “the Old Country” to his American cousin. He marvels at all the consumer goods on display in a visit to “Stacy’s” department store and can’t understand how it’s all possible.
His cousin tries to explain how it’s all made possible through mass production, mass consumption, and the power of competition to keep prices low — although he’s forced to call on a Mouse Professor to explain it (with interruptions from Sylvester.)
Again it can be found at this link if you scroll down — but it looks like I may have gotten it to embed.
Again, the power of mass production, mass consumption, and the power of competition promises ever more goods at ever lower prices — and a rising standard of living. (This is before out-sourcing and off-shoring, and the war on workers.)
The gag at the end of this cartoon is the mouse mother surrounded by a horde of children, yelling she’s a victim of mass production. It isn’t so funny now following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision on abortion…
Looking at these cartoons now, it’s easy to see why people think of the 1950s with nostalgia — as long as you were a straight white Christian male. It was all so simple then.
The mission of the Sloan Foundation, who commissioned these cartoons:
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors.
...During the initial years of Alfred P. Sloan’s presidency, the foundation devoted its resources almost exclusively to education in economics and business.[citation needed]Grants were made to develop materials to improve high school and college economics teaching; for preparation of and wide distribution of inexpensive pamphlets on the pressing economic and social issues of the day; for weekly radio airing of round table discussions on current topics in economics and related subjects; and for establishing a Tax Institute at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to interpret new taxes and new trends in public finance for the average citizen.[3]
Remember “What’s good for GM is good for America”? (The actual and very different quote here.) In this era of late stage capitalism, it’s useful to see these cartoons as a reminder of what capitalism is supposed to deliver, and how it has gone wrong.
Speaking of which...
Part Two
The NY Times editorial board has a commentary on disturbing moves by Republicans to weaken and overturn child labor laws — and to capitalize on immigrant children desperate for work.
In February, the Department of Labor announced that it had discovered 102 teenagers working in hazardous conditions for a company that cleans meatpacking equipment at factories around the country, a violation of federal standards. The minors, ages 13 to 17, were working with dangerous chemicals and cleaning brisket saws and head splitters; three of them suffered injuries, including one with caustic burns.
Ten of those children worked in Arkansas, including six at a factory owned by the state’s second-largest private employer, Tyson Foods. Rather than taking immediate action to tighten standards and prevent further exploitation of children, Arkansas went the opposite direction. Earlier this month, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed legislation that would actually make it easier for companies to put children to work. The bill eliminated a requirement that children under 16 get a state work permit before being employed, a process that required them to verify their age and get the permission of a parent or guardian.
Arkansas is at the vanguard of a concerted effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations that have been in place for decades to protect children from abuse. Echoing that philosophy, bills are moving through at least nine other state legislatures that would expand work hours for children, lift restrictions on hazardous occupations, allow them to work in locations that serve alcohol, or lower the state minimum wage for minors. The Labor Department says there has been a 69 percent increase since 2018 in the illegal employment of children.
The response in these states is not to protect those children from exploitation, but instead to make it legal. Voters in these states may support deregulation, but they may not know that businesses can use these bills to work children harder, cut their wages and put them in danger. There is time for them to persuade lawmakers to say no to these abuses.
emphasis added
Who is supplying Republicans with the resources and the urge to drive this? Besides the major companies engaged in this:
One of the principal lobbying organizations pushing these bills in several states is the National Federation of Independent Business, a conservative group that supports Republican candidates and has long opposed most forms of regulation, as well as the Affordable Care Act. It has issued news releases praising lawmakers for passing bills that let businesses hire more minors for longer hours, and taking credit for supporting these efforts.
As for those illegals:
The real target of these rollbacks is not after-school jobs at the corner hardware store; they will have a much bigger effect on a labor force that includes many unaccompanied migrant children who work long hours to make or package products sold by big companies like General Mills, J. Crew, Target, Whole Foods and PepsiCo. As a recent New York Times investigation documented, children are being widely employed across the country in exhausting and often dangerous jobs working for some of the biggest names in American retailing and manufacturing.
emphasis added
(Several of those companies later told The Times that they would investigate any illegal practices and try to end them.)
Try to end them? There is no “try” — there’s only shareholder value which must always be increased.
Read the whole thing, The “Party of Life” is backing things like this:
One of the worst bills, introduced by Republicans in Iowa, would allow 14-year-olds to work in industrial freezers, meat coolers and industrial laundries, and 15-year-olds to lift heavy items onto shelves. It is backed by, among others, the independent business federation, the Iowa Grocery Industry Association, and Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group backed by Charles Koch, the industrialist who supported many national efforts to deregulate businesses.
The “Party of Life” claim is just another Republican Big Lie. They are the Party of Death.
How many MAGA types swear up and down that “People just don’t want to work”? It’s not that big a step to arguing that kids need the ‘discipline’ of work — and when you are talking about vulnerable populations, it can go all the way to “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free). This is Nazi stuff.
It also partially explains why the right wing is in a panic over a declining birth rate and is pushing mandatory pregnancy. (Also Nazi stuff.) Capitalism needs a steady supply of worker drones to keep wages down and provide cannon fodder for the next war of choice. Rich people like Charles Koch might end up less rich otherwise.
That’s all folks!
And it may really be all if this goes on...
UPDATE: Charles P. Pierce has more on the GOP drive to make child labor legal again. He begins with this observation:
During one of the 2012 presidential debates, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney engaged in a spirited debate about tariffs, I remember being struck by the fact that they were debating an issue I had previously only read about in books. What was next, I wondered, hammer-and-tongs over the free coinage of silver?
It struck me then that an entire political industry had been built up to re-litigate issues I had thought long settled. In the judiciary, this entailed chipping away piecemeal at landmark decisions. The legislature then used the judiciary’s work to craft laws to render what remained of those landmark decisions impractical in real life.
The process only accelerated as movement conservatism increased in strength, and the rollbacks picked up speed as they went back through time, increasingly flattening the achievements of the gay rights movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the Warren Court, the Square Deal, the New Deal, and finally the Progressive reforms of the early 20th Century. And now, across the country—or at least in those parts where Republicans are in charge—we have come at last to the revival of child labor.
Forward into the past, back to the late 1800s.