WEBVTT NOTE 16. The Trouble With Child Labor Laws 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.280 Chapter 16, The Trouble with Child Labor Laws, February 11, 2008 2 00:00:09.280 --> 00:00:13.660 Let's say you want your computer fixed or your software explained. 3 00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:19.240 You can shell out big bucks to the geek squad, or you can ask, but you can't hire, a typical 4 00:00:19.240 --> 00:00:22.680 teenager or even a pre-teen. 5 00:00:22.680 --> 00:00:28.140 Their experience with computers and the online world is vastly superior to that of most people 6 00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:36.300 from the point of view of online technology, it is the young who rule, and yet they are 7 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:43.820 professionally powerless, they are forbidden by law from earning wages for their expertise. 8 00:00:43.820 --> 00:00:48.540 Might these folks have something to offer the workplace? And might the young benefit 9 00:00:48.540 --> 00:00:54.900 from a bit of early work experience, too? Perhaps, but we'll never know, thanks to 10 00:00:54.900 --> 00:01:01.160 and antiquated federal, state and local laws that make it a crime to hire a kid. 11 00:01:01.160 --> 00:01:06.600 Pop culture accepts these laws as a normal part of national life, a means to forestall 12 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:12.900 a Dickensian nightmare of sweatshops and the capitalist exploitation of children. 13 00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:19.120 It's time we rid ourselves of images of children tied to rug looms in the developing world. 14 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:24.500 The kids I'm talking about are one of the most courted of all consumer sectors. 15 00:01:24.500 --> 00:01:29.500 Money wants them to consume, but law forbids them to produce. 16 00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:34.700 You might be surprised to know that the laws against child labor do not date from the eighteenth 17 00:01:34.700 --> 00:01:40.220 century. Indeed, the national law against child labor didn't pass until the Great 18 00:01:40.220 --> 00:01:48.020 Depression in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was the same law that gave us a minimum 19 00:01:48.020 --> 00:01:53.520 from wage and defined what constitutes full-time and part-time work. 20 00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:59.020 It was a handy way to raise wages and lower the unemployment rate, simply to find whole 21 00:01:59.020 --> 00:02:03.520 sectors of the potential workforce as unemployable. 22 00:02:03.520 --> 00:02:09.440 By the time this legislation passed, however, it was mostly a symbol, a classic case of 23 00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:14.160 Washington chasing a trend in order to take credit for it. 24 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:20.240 Child labor was expected in the 17th and 18th centuries, even welcome, since remunerative 25 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:23.440 work opportunities were newly present. 26 00:02:23.440 --> 00:02:29.480 But as prosperity grew with the advance of commerce, more kids left the workforce. 27 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:37.000 By 1930, only 6.4% of kids between the ages of 10 and 15 were actually employed, and 3 28 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:40.000 out of 4 of those were in agriculture. 29 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:46.000 In wealthier urban industrialized areas, child labor was largely gone as more and more kids 30 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:52.080 were being schooled. Cultural factors were important here, but the most important consideration 31 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:59.080 was economic. More developed economies permit parents to purchase their children's education 32 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:03.640 out of the family's surplus income, if only by forgoing what would otherwise be their 33 00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:05.640 and Your Earnings. 34 00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:11.520 The law itself then forestalled no nightmare, nor did it impose one. 35 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:17.020 In those days, there was rising confidence that education was the key to saving the youth 36 00:03:17.020 --> 00:03:18.820 of America. 37 00:03:18.820 --> 00:03:23.980 Stay in school, get a degree or two, and you would be fixed up for life. 38 00:03:23.980 --> 00:03:29.720 Of course, that was before academic standards slipped further and further, and schools themselves 39 00:03:29.720 --> 00:03:33.720 Children began to function as a national child-sitting service. 40 00:03:33.720 --> 00:03:37.720 Today, we are far more likely to recognize the contribution 41 00:03:37.720 --> 00:03:41.720 that disciplined work makes to the formation of character. 42 00:03:41.720 --> 00:03:45.720 And yet, we are stuck with these laws, which are incredibly complicated 43 00:03:45.720 --> 00:03:49.720 once you factor in all state and local variations. 44 00:03:49.720 --> 00:03:53.720 Kids under the age of 16 are forbidden to earn income 45 00:03:53.720 --> 00:03:57.720 and remunerative employment outside of family business. 46 00:03:57.720 --> 00:04:03.120 If Dad is a blacksmith, you can learn to pound iron with the best of them. But if Dad works 47 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.840 for a law firm, you're out of luck. 48 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:13.700 From the outset, federal law made exceptions for kid movie stars and performers. Why? It 49 00:04:13.700 --> 00:04:19.560 probably has something to do with how Shirley Temple led box office receipts from 1934 to 50 00:04:19.560 --> 00:04:26.720 1938. She was one of the highest-earning stars of the period. If you are 14 or 15, you can 51 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:31.040 You can ask your public school for a waiver and work a limited number of hours when school 52 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:33.440 is not in session. 53 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:39.400 And if you are in private school or home school, you must ask your local social service agency. 54 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:42.400 Not exactly the most welcoming bunch. 55 00:04:42.400 --> 00:04:47.080 The public school itself is also permitted to run work programs. 56 00:04:47.080 --> 00:04:51.960 This point about approved labor is an interesting one if you think about it. 57 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:56.240 The government doesn't seem to mind so much if a kid spends all non-school hours away 58 00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:01.760 from Home, Family and Church, but it forbids them from engaging in private sector work 59 00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:06.000 during the time when they would otherwise be in public school, drinking from the well 60 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:07.600 of civic culture. 61 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:13.980 A legal exemption is also made for delivering newspapers, as if bicycles rather than cars 62 00:05:13.980 --> 00:05:17.360 were still the norm for this activity. 63 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:20.320 Here is another strange exemption. 64 00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:26.560 Ruth working at home, in the making of wreath, composed of natural holly, pine, cedar or 65 00:05:26.560 --> 00:05:31.560 other evergreens, including the harvesting of the evergreens. 66 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:36.560 Perhaps the wreath lobby was more powerful during the Great Depression than in our own 67 00:05:36.560 --> 00:05:37.560 time. 68 00:05:37.560 --> 00:05:43.800 Oh, and there is one final exemption, as incredible as it may be. 69 00:05:43.800 --> 00:05:48.880 Federal law allows states to allow kids to work for a state or local government at any 70 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:57.520 Any Age, and there are no hourly restrictions. Virginia, for example, allows this. The exceptions 71 00:05:57.520 --> 00:06:03.400 cut against the dominant theory of the law that it is somehow evil to commodify the labor 72 00:06:03.400 --> 00:06:09.520 of kids. If it is wonderful to be a child movie star, congressional page, or home base 73 00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:15.920 wreath-maker, why is it wrong to be a teenage software fixer, a grocery bagger, or ice-cream 74 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:22.840 Cooper. It makes no sense. Once you get past the exceptions, the bottom 75 00:06:22.840 --> 00:06:29.100 line is clear. Full-time work in the private sector for hours of their own choosing is 76 00:06:29.100 --> 00:06:35.020 permitted only for those children who are eighteen and older, by which time a child 77 00:06:35.020 --> 00:06:41.180 has already passed the age where he can be influenced toward a solid work ethic. 78 00:06:41.180 --> 00:06:44.060 What is lost in the bargain? 79 00:06:44.060 --> 00:06:47.940 Kids no longer have a choice to work for money. 80 00:06:47.940 --> 00:06:53.980 Parents who believe that their children would benefit from the experience are at a loss. 81 00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:58.340 Consumers who would today benefit from our teens' technological know-how have no commercial 82 00:06:58.340 --> 00:07:00.580 way to do so. 83 00:07:00.580 --> 00:07:05.700 Kids have been forcibly excluded from the matrix of exchange. 84 00:07:05.700 --> 00:07:09.380 There is a social-cultural point, too. 85 00:07:09.380 --> 00:07:13.740 Others will tell you that most kids coming out of college are radically unprepared for 86 00:07:13.740 --> 00:07:15.740 a regular job. 87 00:07:15.740 --> 00:07:20.360 It's not so much that they lack skills or that they can't be trained, it's that they 88 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:25.600 don't understand what it means to serve others in a workplace setting. 89 00:07:25.600 --> 00:07:31.600 They resent being told what to do, tend not to follow through, and work by the clock instead 90 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:33.540 of the task. 91 00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:38.380 In other words, they are not socialized into how the labor market works. 92 00:07:38.380 --> 00:07:44.780 Indeed, if we perceive a culture of sloth, irresponsibility and entitlement among today's 93 00:07:44.780 --> 00:07:50.020 young, perhaps we ought to look here for a contributing factor. 94 00:07:50.020 --> 00:07:55.620 The law is rarely questioned today, but it is a fact that child labor laws didn't come 95 00:07:55.620 --> 00:07:57.260 about easily. 96 00:07:57.260 --> 00:08:00.260 It took more than a hundred years of wrangling. 97 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:04.700 The first advocates of keeping kids out of factories were women's labor unions, who 98 00:08:04.700 --> 00:08:08.180 didn't appreciate the low-wage competition. 99 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:13.780 And true to form, labor unions have been reliable exclusionists ever since. 100 00:08:13.780 --> 00:08:18.940 Opposition did not consist of mining companies looking for cheap labor, but rather parents 101 00:08:18.940 --> 00:08:25.180 and clergy alarmed that a law against child labor would be a blow against freedom. 102 00:08:25.180 --> 00:08:29.780 They predicted that it would amount to the nationalization of children, which is to say 103 00:08:29.780 --> 00:08:35.220 say that the government rather than the parents or the child would emerge as the final authority 104 00:08:35.220 --> 00:08:38.340 and locus of decision-making. 105 00:08:38.340 --> 00:08:44.300 To give you a flavor of the opposition, consider this funny fiatitude, read by Congressman 106 00:08:44.300 --> 00:08:51.140 Fritz G. Lanham of Texas on the House floor in 1924, as a point of opposition to a child 107 00:08:51.140 --> 00:08:55.200 labor ban then being considered. 108 00:08:55.200 --> 00:09:24.040 What are the Federal agent in the field? He toils not, nor does he spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his populous household was not arrayed with powers like one of these. Children, obey your agents from Washington, for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, for the Government has created them but a little lower than the Federal agent. Love, honor, and disobey them. 109 00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:28.920 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, tell it to thy father and mother, and let them do 110 00:09:28.920 --> 00:09:35.200 it. Six days shalt thou do all thy rest, and on the seventh day thy parents shall rest 111 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:44.600 with thee. Go to the bureau officer thou sluggard, consider his ways and be idle. Toil thou farmer's 112 00:09:44.600 --> 00:09:51.640 wife, thou shalt have no servant in thy house, nor let thy children help thee. And all thy 113 00:09:51.640 --> 00:09:56.520 Thy children shall be taught of the Federal Agent, and great shall be the peace of thy 114 00:09:56.520 --> 00:09:58.660 children. 115 00:09:58.660 --> 00:10:04.040 Thy children shall rise up and call the Federal Agent blessed. 116 00:10:04.040 --> 00:10:07.600 In every way, the opponents were right. 117 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:12.860 Child labor laws were and are a blow against the freedom to work and a boost in government 118 00:10:12.860 --> 00:10:15.460 authority over the family. 119 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:21.100 The political class thinks nothing of legislating on behalf of the children, as if they are 120 00:10:21.100 --> 00:10:24.420 are the first owners of all kids. 121 00:10:24.420 --> 00:10:30.020 Child labor laws were the first big step in this direction, and the rest follows. 122 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:35.580 If the state can dictate to parents and kids the terms under which teens can be paid, there 123 00:10:35.580 --> 00:10:38.980 is essentially nothing they cannot control. 124 00:10:38.980 --> 00:10:43.140 There is no sense in arguing about the details of the law. 125 00:10:43.140 --> 00:10:48.900 The critical question concerns the locus of decision-making, family or state, private 126 00:10:48.900 --> 00:10:52.120 Market or Public Sector. 127 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:56.800 In so many ways, child labor laws are an anachronism. 128 00:10:56.800 --> 00:11:02.640 There is no sense speaking of exploitation as if this were the early years of the Industrial 129 00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:04.640 Revolution. 130 00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:09.840 Kids as young as ten can surely contribute their labor in some tasks and ways that would 131 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:15.680 help them come to grips with the relationship between work and reward. 132 00:11:15.680 --> 00:11:21.640 They will better learn to respect private forms of social authority outside the home. 133 00:11:21.640 --> 00:11:26.860 They will come to understand that some things are expected of them in life. 134 00:11:26.860 --> 00:11:32.000 And after they finish college and enter the workforce, it won't come as such a shock 135 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:37.480 the first time they are asked to do something that may not be their first choice. 136 00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:42.620 We know the glorious lessons that are imparted from productive work. 137 00:11:42.620 --> 00:11:46.820 What lesson do we impart with child labor laws? 138 00:11:46.820 --> 00:11:54.060 We establish early on who is in charge, not individuals, not parents, but the state. 139 00:11:54.060 --> 00:11:59.540 We tell the youth that they are better off being mall rats than fruitful workers. 140 00:11:59.540 --> 00:12:04.800 We tell them that they have nothing to offer society until they are eighteen or so. 141 00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:11.940 We convey the impression that work is a form of exploitation from which they must be protected. 142 00:12:11.940 --> 00:12:17.880 We drive a huge social wedge between parents and children and lead kids to believe that 143 00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:22.100 they have nothing to learn from their parents' experience. 144 00:12:22.100 --> 00:12:27.260 We rob them of what might otherwise be the most valuable early experience of their young 145 00:12:27.260 --> 00:12:29.580 adulthood. 146 00:12:29.580 --> 00:12:35.020 In the end, the most compelling case for getting rid of child labor laws comes down to one 147 00:12:35.020 --> 00:12:36.980 central issue. 148 00:12:36.980 --> 00:12:40.220 The freedom to make a choice. 149 00:12:40.220 --> 00:12:44.940 Those who think young teens should do nothing but language in classrooms in the day and 150 00:12:44.940 --> 00:12:48.340 play Wii at night will be no worse off. 151 00:12:48.340 --> 00:12:53.400 But those who see that remunerative work is great experience for everyone will cheer to 152 00:12:53.400 --> 00:12:57.540 see this antique regulation toppled. 153 00:12:57.540 --> 00:13:02.220 Maybe then the kids of America can put their computer skills to use doing more than playing 154 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:03.660 and World of Warcraft.