Selects: Child Labor: Not Funny

Child labor is no laughing matter. Even though we've taken care of it in the USA (mostly), it's still an issue around the globe. Listen to this classic episode and learn! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Let's be real, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and yes, it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts

• 0:46Josh Clark?

  to feel off. Introducing Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio, hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our August 2021 episode on child labor. It's one of those rare episodes that contains a mention of an episode that we should do that we actually did, the Newsy Strike. So it's significant for that reason, and it is a fairly bleak episode, as you might

• 1:28Josh Clark?

  guess, but it also goes to show how far we've come.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W., Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's out there hovering around in the digital weird audio ether. And this is Stuff You Should Know. This is gonna be a good, uplifting, fun one, a bouncy, light one.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  I think so. And it's, you know, hot off the presses from our, uh, my daughter just wrote this episode for us.

• 2:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. In record time, too, I was impressed.

• 2:17Josh Clark?

  You didn't pay her, did you?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  No, but it's funny. I went to look up, you know, I've talked before about, you know, the fact that I started working when I was 13 at a barbecue restaurant. And minimum wage when I started working was $3.35 an hour.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Wow, how far we've come.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, not far. They've doubled it in the past, whatever, 40 years.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  Isn't that nuts, dude?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, we'll get to that, but I have a list of kind of where we ended up with minimum wage along the years. But yeah, JJ's Barbecue, $3.35 an hour, baby.

• 2:52Josh Clark?

  Wow, that's pretty great. My first job was even younger than that. I was like nine or 10 when I was a paper boy.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I couldn't have made more than, because I was only, it's not like I was working every night. I was working weekends. I probably made like less than $50 a week.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  Hmm, but I mean, you're 13. What were you spending it on? 13 in like a good, clean Christian kit. You weren't spending that on anything.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Archie Comics. That buys a lot of Archie Comics.

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it does. Yes, it does. Although they have a lot of variations. So you could easily spend $50 a week on Archie Comics.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Hell, back then, though, those things were cheap. I was living high on the hog.

• 3:31Josh Clark?

  But so.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  At 13.

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  So it sounds like it, man. So our buddy Dave helped us out with this one, Dave Ruse. And he makes a really good point that you and I sitting around talking about, you know, you made 50 bucks a week. I was a paper boy. Like whatever stresses and troubles that we ran into post, you know, 1970 something, as far as our first jobs go when we were younger, that does not qualify as child labor. That's, that's not really what we're talking about here today.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  It's called a kid having a job.

• 4:02Josh Clark?

  Exactly. It's called that you just stop your griping right now because there are actual kids out there who are like real deal child laborers who work in like dangerous conditions for little to no pay, who don't get to play, who may not socialize with other kids their age. They may live and work in a mining camp with nothing but adults and grownups. Like, like they're, they're, they would, they would kill for, you know, a JJ's barbecue job, basically.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is a good time to be talking about that in particular, because this is, 2021 is the international year for the elimination of child labor. And as you'll see throughout this episode, we've made a lot of strides here in the US. But like you said, it's not, not that way everywhere, and it should be.

• 4:52Josh Clark?

  And I should say, it's probably a little off the mark to say that a child laborer would kill for a better job. They would probably kill to just not have to work at all in general and just to get, get to be a kid. And I think ultimately, for people who are activists against child labor, that's the goal. It's to not like, get better working conditions for six-year-olds. It's to like, just make six-year-olds not have to work any longer. And we'll talk about how to solve that, how that, that international year for the elimination of child labor aims to do that. They have some pretty pragmatic ideas. And so hopefully, this, this episode will have a nice bow on the end. But we're gonna have to slog through some misery to get there, Chuck. Take it away.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  There's no better place to slog through misery than the founding of this country. Way back in the old days, when the new world was new, and settlers came over, and they very much believed in... Why did I think this was Ed? You said this is Dave?

• 5:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm almost positive it was Dave.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I thought it was Ed.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  It reads like a Dave to me, but, oh man, if it's Ed, I'm sorry. Sorry to both of you.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Well, sure. We need to get those guys together one day.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  I think the universe should collapse.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Or maybe we should keep them far apart.

• 6:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. They might, they might turn against us.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they believe very much that the idol's hands were the devil's workshop, that old saying. And, you know, this is one of those, it was kind of hard for me to, you know, let, let's just lop off, you know, developing nations today, which is clearly awful. I found myself as an adult, more and more, with the cultural relativism, thinking, like, obviously, five-year-olds shouldn't be working in factories. But when I read about like, 12 and 13-year-olds working hard back then, I was kind of like, it's not great, but it was, that's just kind of how it was at the time. If you had parents that were farmers... You're not gonna, you know, be just hanging out until your sweet 16th birthday,

• 6:55Speaker 02

  having a good time. You're gonna be working from a pretty young age. And I found myself more and more thinking like, you know, in certain situations, that wasn't the worst thing. But then you get to the industrial revolutions and, you know, that's when things really got bad. But kind of early on, that's really what we were talking about was a lot of kids working on the farms, a lot of boys working on the farm, uh, girls working in the house alongside their sisters and mom. And, you know, this kind of started when they were about 13 years old. They were sort of expected to either go work and get a job and work full time, or to become an apprentice, an unpaid apprentice, uh, to work for food and board and training.

• 7:37Josh Clark?

  And I think also, in addition to that Protestant work ethic of like, in, like, just completely in the fabric of America that was just coming out in you, it's also this idea of like, what else are you gonna do? It's not like you can sit around and play video games, or watch TV, or do almost anything else except just play outside.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:58Josh Clark?

  But Chuck, I, I went back and looked to see if it was always this way. And apparently, in medieval England, you played basically until you hit puberty. And then you started to get put to work.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  When you hit puberty at four.

• 8:13Josh Clark?

  Right. More like 14, but like, there was like a childhood, and it seems to have been somewhat wiped out by that Protestant work ethic that the Puritans brought over. Or at the very least, it was set back a little more, you know, age-wise, where you started working maybe a little sooner than you would have had you been in medieval England at the time.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Right. I think, I guess I'm just trying to draw a line between life in the 1640s and then life in 1938, when we eventually did something about it in the US.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, totally. And there is an enormous distinction between that, because it was- It was like widespread, but it just, it seemed like they were mostly working with their families. And it was just kind of the way that things were. That was how life was.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're trying to keep your family alive. It's not like,

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  you know, they were, they were trying to just all survive, basically.

• 9:05Josh Clark?

  Right. And that's actually the reason why it's still around in other parts of the world today. It's not, not even necessarily like a, like a work ethic where children should, should work because idle hands are the devil's playthings. Like the, the Puritans thought, it said, it's like, this is an extra worker. We can have, go out and make money to keep the rest of the family alive.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:26Josh Clark?

  We just don't have a choice in not doing that. And that's, that's what drives it still today.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Right. Uh, when the industrial revolution came around and we're talking about basically cotton factories in a big, big way. Uh, there were a lot of little kids working there and people like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton thought that was awesome.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. They did. And like, we're going to be skewered for even suggesting that Hamilton said this, but he did. He said that women and children in America would be, quote, rendered more useful by manufacturing establishments than they otherwise would be.

• 10:04Josh Clark?

  And I think what he was saying is like,

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  I'm not even going to paraphrase what he was saying. I think it's, it, you can understand it on its face.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's saying, well, you know, they're not doing much use for us, these kids. And he's mainly talking about kids here who would other, what, quote, who would otherwise be idle. Uh, this isn't Lin-Manuel Miranda saying this. We all love him.

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  No, this isn't, he didn't say this in a charming rap.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  No, this is the real Alexander Hamilton.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and again, it was just a different time. Um, but even way back then, in the early 1800s, not everyone thought this was a great thing. Uh, there was a future mayor of Boston named Josiah Quincy.

• 10:43Josh Clark?

  Diamond Joe Quimby.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Who toured a cotton factory, a cotton spinning factory, and they had, you know, four-year-olds working there, all the way to 10, maybe 10, 12 hours a day for anywhere from 12 to 25 cents a day, not an hour.

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  And he said, "Compassion calls us to pity these little creatures, plying in a contracted room among flyers and cogs at an age when nature requires for them air, space, and sports. There was a dull dejection in the countenance of all of them." And, you know, we'll get to some of these photos of some of these kids later on. When you look at them, they look like beaten-down miniature adults.

• 11:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah, they really do.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  They look like us.

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  Exactly. They look ready to retire. They look unhappy. They look, um, yeah, just beaten down. But they're miniature, and they're kids, they're children. And it's really upsetting to see that, a photograph of that. I'm sure it's even more upsetting to see it in real life. And that's actually how a lot of this, a lot of change came through, was just people being exposed to seeing that and kind of being shocked, having their conscience shocked. But as, as potentially like bad as it was for the children of colonial America who were forced to work, it got way, way worse when the second industrial revolution kicked off, the one powered by steam and steel and railroads.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  And little hands.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  And unbridled capitalism. When you inject unbridled capitalism into a, an economy that allows for child labor, you can imagine that things are gonna get much, much worse for the children before it finally gets better.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  That's right. And things did get worse. When you're, when all of a sudden you have a robust steel industry and coal mining industry, you have railroads that need this stuff in a big, big way. And they, you know, partially kind of ran out of workers and partially just saw what was right underneath their noses, which is these kids who, they, at this point, they had long known that they could work and farm and work hard. So they said, "You know what? A lot of these families in rural America, farming dried up a bit, so they moved to the city." A lot of it was immigrant labor, as millions of people came into the country from Europe, fleeting their poverty, famine-stricken countries.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  And no matter where they came from, it was all under the thumb of the robber barons, which was, I can't remember when we did it, it feels like a few, two or three years ago, but pretty good podcast on the robber barons.

• 13:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we also talked about them in our book. We talked about Keeping Up with the Joneses. They played a big role in that, too. But yeah, so like these, the robber barons got rich through innovation, through consolidation, through some pretty clever stuff. A lot of them invented new techniques or processes or procedures. So like, they definitely were doing something. They were being productive, but they also got to be filthy rich off of the backs of immigrant labor, child labor that they directly exploited. And it was basically like, there was just nobody looking out for anybody else at this time.

• 14:08Josh Clark?

  It was just such a period of such enormous economic insurgents that there weren't, there weren't anybody, or there wasn't anybody who was sitting there saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody, we need to stop and really think about this and do this in a much more directed, smarter, healthier way for our society. It was like, it was like, just go, go. Let's see where this takes us. And a lot of people got trampled underfoot, and that definitely included children laborers or child laborers.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  That's right. And I think that's a good time for a break. Yay?

• 14:38Josh Clark?

  Yay.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  That's two yays, any nays?

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Mm-mm.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  So we'll be back and we'll talk a little bit about what some of these jobs might have been in the late 19th century for these kids, right after this.

• 15:03Josh Clark?

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• 15:25Josh Clark?

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• 15:41Speaker 03

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• 16:03Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 16:06Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  It was good to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 16:32Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the joint visitors to the world.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 16:48Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 16:52Speaker 04

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 16:55Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Hey everybody. The holidays are coming up, so let us throw this out there. Are you prepared to host friends or family, like really prepared? Because there's a difference between having people stay at your house and properly hosting them.

• 17:17Josh Clark?

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• 17:30Speaker 03

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• 17:40Josh Clark?

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• 17:52Speaker 03

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• 18:21Josh Clark?

  I wonder how many gallons of coffee everyone who has listened to this, this show since the beginning has heard me drink.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  I didn't even hear you drinking.

• 18:32Josh Clark?

  Oh, you didn't? When I said, uh-uh, I had a, I had a mouthful of café.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. I have no shirt on.

• 18:42Josh Clark?

  That's awesome, man. You just topped mine.

• 18:48Josh Clark?

  You said, no, that's not true. I think you should have left it mysterious, Chuck, because there were a few people out there who were about to email and say, I was offended that Chuck said he wasn't wearing a shirt.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I put it on right before we recorded. I had it off.

• 19:02Josh Clark?

  It's, it's a little hot.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  I felt like I needed to dress up, put the t-shirt back on.

• 19:06Josh Clark?

  Right. And do you, are you wearing one of those tuxedo shirt, t-shirts?

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Have you ever had one of those? Did you ever have one?

• 19:12Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  No, I didn't either.

• 19:14Josh Clark?

  You didn't? You didn't wear them with your rainbow suspenders?

• 19:17Speaker 03

  No, that's, that stuff was a little too cutesy even for me.

• 19:21Josh Clark?

  Gotcha. Okay. What about the one that looks like, I would wear it.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:28Josh Clark?

  What about one that looks like a, like a ripped, like, chest and abdomen? Have you worn a t-shirt like that?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  No, those are fun, though.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  For certain people.

• 19:38Josh Clark?

  They're fun. They're also, like, really good at boosting your ego quietly.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Sure. There's nothing like me looking in a mirror at my beer belly covered in spray painted abs.

• 19:50Josh Clark?

  It really works. Your brain, the brain is so dumb that it falls for it every time, I can attest.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  All right, so we were gonna talk about what some of these jobs might be, and it kinda really depended on where you were living. If you lived in the city, or if you lived in a company town where they had these factories, you were gonna be working in factories. Out in the rural areas, you can be working on farms.

• 20:13Josh Clark?

  And most, most Americans still lived on farms at the time, so

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 20:17Josh Clark?

  Most child labor took place on farms.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  But if you were on that farm, you're gonna be picking cotton and tobacco. You're gonna be picking a lot of stuff and doing all the sort of stuff that goes on after the picking, which is

• 20:32Josh Clark?

  Stemming, DCing.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. All that stuff, shucking.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  That's stuff I did when I was a kid. We had a big, big garden, and my mom took us to the canary.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  And it was awful. I hated it.

• 20:46Josh Clark?

  Took you to the canary, like, for a sightseeing trip or for work?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  To can.

• 20:52Josh Clark?

  So, like, there was a canary that your mom went to? You guys had so much stuff, you had to go to a second location to can it?

• 20:59Speaker 02

  There was a canary in DeKalb County. A, a sort of industrial canary for the people.

• 21:06Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  And we would take green beans and corn and we made preserves and all kinds of stuff, and they have, like, and, you know, you could can your own junk there.

• 21:17Josh Clark?

  Sounds like a socialist utopia.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  And, yeah, and we would, you know, put Sharpie, like, beans on the can, on Sharpie, and put it in the pantry.

• 21:27Josh Clark?

  That's really interesting.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Really interesting.

• 21:28Josh Clark?

  I had no idea that there was a canary in DeKalb County.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, not too far from where I live now, actually. It's, like, 15 minutes away, probably.

• 21:36Josh Clark?

  Do you shudder every time you pass it?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  I do a little, actually.

• 21:40Josh Clark?

  I'll bet you do.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  I don't pass it much, but it's over near the dog pound where you can go adopt a dog. And so I think we adopted Nico there. And I drove by the cannery and just like, ugh.

• 21:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'll bet.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  It was hot.

• 21:52Josh Clark?

  Well, you were lucky you weren't five or six and left there to work all day, every day, aren't you?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:57Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  For almost no money.

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pennies for a bucket of whatever you shucked or shelled or did whatever, peeled. Yeah, working at a cannery would probably not have been very fun. There were also furnace stoking jobs available, whether you wanted them or not. What else, Chuck?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Well, kids did work in canneries. They also worked in textile mills. They had bobbin boys and bobbin girls.

• 22:22Josh Clark?

  This one doesn't sound so bad to me, but I'm sure I'm missing something that makes it atrocious.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, they would climb up on the machine and remove the bobbins, the full bobbins, and replace them with empty ones. So I don't think that was like the worst job in the world, but when you're doing that for 10 or 12 hours a day and you're six, it's probably a bit of a buzzkill.

• 22:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. I have a problem inherently with child labor in general.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 22:49Josh Clark?

  Not like having a job like you or I had first job. They got no problem with that, but child, any kind of child labor, even if it is kind of cush comparatively.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  No, I agree. That one wasn't terrible. It may have been dangerous, though. I don't know.

• 23:01Josh Clark?

  There's no way.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  How high those bobbins were.

• 23:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's no way it wasn't dangerous. It had to have been dangerous. We're talking about the 19th century in industry. It was dangerous in some way.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  There was no OSHA.

• 23:12Josh Clark?

  No. No one even knew what that was.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  If you did live in the city and did work around factories, you would do that, but there were also plenty of other jobs. You could deliver, like be essentially, they call them telegraph boys, sort of delivering, you know, emails, basically, by hand to people all over town. You could shine shoes. You could sell newspapers like you did.

• 23:38Josh Clark?

  I didn't stand on a street corner. I was on a newsie, which we'll talk a little more about newsies in a second. I was a delivery boy. And not a really great one either. I frequently overslept and was not good at delivering papers. My mom and my oldest sister would have to do my route once in a while.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Was this a bike deal?

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:58Josh Clark?

  And the thing is, is like, they also make you shake down the people for their delinquent subscriptions. So I was like a strong arm guy too for the Toledo Blade as well.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  I want my $2.

• 24:10Josh Clark?

  Basically. That's exactly right. And that was right in my wheelhouse too. I was like, this hits a little too close to home for me to laugh at this kid. I know what he's going through. I've had to put my foot in somebody's door before to get their $2. Didn't ask for a dime.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I haven't seen that in a while. That was a good movie.

• 24:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Classic.

• 24:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  If you lived in the mountains of Appalachia, you might have been a breaker boy. Or a mule handler and breaker boys will get, I guess we can go ahead and tell everyone what that is.

• 24:41Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  You would sit around and, and break apart lumps of coal into uniform pieces all day long.

• 24:48Josh Clark?

  Yep. And break dance on your brakes.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, breaker boys.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  But that was it. And they wouldn't let you wear gloves while you were a breaker boy too, because they're like, no, no, you can't break these things as uniformly if you wear gloves, you stupid kid. So you, you have to basically absorb all of this coal dust into your skin, get all sorts of little cuts and calluses and all that by the time you're six, seven, eight. And just do this. This is your life now. Welcome to Pennsylvania.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Right. Then let's say you managed to escape all forms of formal jobs. Your parents, they didn't make you go to the factory. You did live in the city, so you didn't have to work on a farm. And you might think you just had it made in the shade. Not so, because there was plenty of jobs that you could do right there from your cruddy little tenement apartment. Like weaving baskets, or making paper flowers, or hand rolling cigars and cigarettes all day long and selling them.

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It was like, you know, your whole family worked on a farm, or if you lived in a tenement, your whole family worked, you know, in what are called tenement industries. So there was basically not a lot of escape. I get the impression that you basically had to have wealthy parents to not be forced into child labor at the time.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I might have mentioned this once before. My mom did a thing for a little while where We would make money doing like stuffing envelopes.

• 26:14Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Did you remember that stuff?

• 26:16Josh Clark?

  I do.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  And I don't even remember what it was for. I guess they were for companies.

• 26:20Josh Clark?

  Okay, I want to say Easter seals had people do that too, but I'm sure they didn't pay. They're notoriously cheap.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  So this would be like a company that would have like a packet they would send out that had like five things in it.

• 26:32Josh Clark?

  I gotcha.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  And we would be responsible for getting all that stuff in huge boxes, assembling it all into the envelopes that they could mail and we would get paid as a family to do that.

• 26:42Josh Clark?

  That's cute. That's super late seventies, early eighties. Like I can see your mom talking on the princess phone, making all the arrangements for them to ship that to her. And getting the instructions, you know, and then hanging up and that 50 foot long cord just kind of coils up on its own quietly on the floor.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I didn't mind that so much because I made a little money and I could, that's something I could do while I watch television.

• 27:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, totally. Totally.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Which is the perfect job, as we all know.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, not exactly a high pressure job, it sounds like. I wouldn't even know if that qualifies as a tenement industry, to tell you the truth.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  No, not in the 1970s.

• 27:17Josh Clark?

  No. You had a lot of jobs though, as a kid. Good for you.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  I always wanted my own money.

• 27:22Josh Clark?

  Protestant work ethic shining through like a city upon a hill.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Should we talk newsies?

• 27:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we should. And I think also the newsie strike that we're going to mention deserves its own episode, at least short stuff. If not its own episode. Okay, so yeah, let's just not talk about newsies.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  No, no, I thought the same thing. And the more I got into the strike, I was like, this is just too much. We got to do something. But the idea was that little boys would buy a stack of newspapers wholesale for about 50 cents per 100.

• 27:59Josh Clark?

  Girls too. I saw girls that did it too.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Oh, girls did it too? All right. And they sold them for a penny a piece. So they would make half a penny per paper. Selling in the big cities, especially New York City, of course. And then eventually in 1899, they did go on strike. And it was a big deal. It kind of ground. I mean, it didn't grind them to a complete halt, but it really disrupted their, their flow in getting newspapers into the hands of people.

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  Dude, their, their sales over this two week strike went down two thirds.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:31Josh Clark?

  Like they brought the, they brought Pulitzer, Pulitzer and Hearst to their knees, basically these newsies did. And they got some concessions too.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think the deal was, is that morning subscribers were generally subscribers. The morning paper was generally for subscribers, but it was that afternoon paper, that second edition that the newsies really raked it in on. Cause most people didn't subscribe to that.

• 28:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  And so they really weren't selling any second editions hardly. And the one big concession they got, which was huge, was they got them to agree to full buybacks on unsold papers, which is a really, really big deal.

• 29:12Josh Clark?

  But it also really kind of goes to show you how much the, the newspaper barons believed newsies were scrappy enough that they wouldn't just sit around and be like, I don't have to sell these, you know? I don't have to worry about this, you know? They'll, they'll be bought back anyway. I don't have to work to sell them.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Well, but buyback just means they give them back the money they paid for them. It's not like they would make any money. They would just, in fact, it incentivized them, I think, to take out more papers.

• 29:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  And sell more papers because they knew they wouldn't be stuck with them.

• 29:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, totally. We'll probably edit that part out.

• 29:48Josh Clark?

  So one of the things you mentioned was making cigars, like in your family's one room apartment in, say, New York or something like that, right?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:58Josh Clark?

  That was apparently. Really bad in that not only did you work long hours for very little pay cramped working conditions with your family on top of everything else. You would frequently come down with nicotine poisoning as a little kid because you're rolling cured. Sometimes you're handling uncurved tobacco. And you're ingesting lots of nicotine through your skin at the like, you know, in a single day. And so you might be nauseated, you might be dizzy, you might just turn green. It can get worse than that, too. You actually can suffer respiratory distress as well. And apparently, this is a big problem still with child laborers in Zimbabwe.

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  Because I think about 20 years ago, that country doubled down on their tobacco production. And now it's like one of the biggest, the biggest exports of Zimbabwe. But it's also a very poor country, so they use child labor a lot. And so children are still to this day being exposed to tobacco. And they're rolling, they're handling tobacco, they're rolling stuff, they're rolling cigars, they're sorting it. They're just, the kids and tobacco should not be in the same room together, basically.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it never occurred to me that, that I guess it would be a transdermal ingestion, right?

• 31:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, totally.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  But sure, I mean, you put tobacco on bee stings and all kinds of things. So of course it's going to get into their skin.

• 31:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and having gotten myself sick on tobacco a time or two in my life, I can tell you it is not pleasant. And to do it against your will just because you're handling it for your job that you don't even want is, that sounds torturous, actually.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that story.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Should you retell it for people who haven't heard it?

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  Are you talking about eighth grade in the tree fort?

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Is that when you like smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and got sick?

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  It was more like a pack and a half.

• 31:55Josh Clark?

  It was right after I first started smoking and I was like,

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 31:58Josh Clark?

  I was like, I really like how this makes me feel. Let's see how like 30 of these things make me feel. And I was sitting there reading comic books up in a tree fort in the woods that my friends and I had built. And I just went too far, man. I felt so bad.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 32:16Josh Clark?

  Like green. Like I felt like I looked green. It was, it was bad news.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  That's one of those moments where you like, you really wish you could have like video footage.

• 32:26Josh Clark?

  Kind of.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Of what that looked like.

• 32:29Josh Clark?

  I kind of hope when, when I die, it's a little bit like defending your life so they can show. I'll be like, show me that one. We can go over the other stuff, but I really want to see that clip.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, Rip Torn will be there.

• 32:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The upside of this though is do not ever start smoking. I deeply regret ever having started smoking as a kid, as an adult, it doesn't matter. Like just don't ever start smoking and do yourself a real favor.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  You did a great job quitting though and you never looked back.

• 32:55Josh Clark?

  Nope, I didn't.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Good job.

• 32:57Josh Clark?

  It was surprisingly easy. Cause I was worried. Hold on, one more thing. I think if there are people out there who are considering smoking right now and are worried about the time they're gonna have. One of my big worries was that I was going to spend every day of the rest of my life wishing for a cigarette. And that's just not how it goes. Like you, you spend a week, two weeks, if it's really bad, maybe three weeks really longing for a cigarette. And then it starts to get easier and easier. And then eventually you're grossed out by the thought of cigarettes and people smoking cigarettes around you. And you don't ever want to see one again. So if that's what's keeping you from quitting, don't let it because that's not how it is.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I like that. Good PSA.

• 33:36Josh Clark?

  Thanks, man. Thanks.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Uh, I think before we break, maybe we'll just go over some of these final stats here. Uh, basically the peak and then about 1900. Um, by 1891, one out of every five kids under 16 was working. 1.7 million kids under 16 was 6% of the total workforce in the 1900 census. And that's just kids who were registered to work in these factories. Like, that does not include these kids rolling cigars in their house or the kids on the family farm. So it was much, much higher than that.

• 34:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because I think 2/3 of kids in general in the country worked in agriculture. So, yeah, if they were not counting agriculture, they missed out on a lot of kids in that number. And that's still a staggering number in and of itself, 1.7 million.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you're wondering back then what effect this had on education, just a snapshot from Philadelphia in 1900, 15% of 13-year-old boys had left school to work. And I think half of 15-year-old boys were not in school anymore because they were working.

• 34:49Josh Clark?

  Or the, and like a significant portion because they were naughty.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, and they just didn't want to do anything.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

  But get this, this is the staggering one to me. 17-year-old boys, only 10% of them were still in school in 1900 in Philadelphia. That is, that does not bode well for the future of a, of a, of an economy. And I think that actually is one reason why public education became so much more compulsory and one reason why people came around to anti-child labor laws is the idea that, no, there's a lot more that they could be doing than just working in a factory almost literally their entire lives. Like, we can do, we can do better and we can build a better, a better society and a better economy if we invest in their education instead of robbing them of it.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  All right, I guess we'll take a break and talk about when that started in earnest. And it wasn't just then when you mentioned it.

• 35:53Josh Clark?

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• 36:16Josh Clark?

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• 36:56Josh Clark?

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• 37:32Josh Clark?

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• 37:49Josh Clark?

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• 38:22Josh Clark?

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• 39:12Josh Clark?

  So Chuck.

• 39:15Josh Clark?

  It turns out that there were, so the progressive era is one of my favorite eras. Or I should say, the people from the progressive era are some of my favorite people, like Frances Perkins. Although she was a second- or third-wave progressive reformer. But she was inspired by some of these earlier ones, who were working on things like fair wages, like a minimum wage, minimum or maximum workdays or working hours. And then they also trained their sites on things like ending child labor, or at the very least... Really restricting the amount of work a kid could do, especially in regards to them being in school, too. The idea was to put school first. And then, if the kid had the wherewithal, or their parents really needed the money

• 39:59Josh Clark?

  or something like that, they could let them work in addition to school, but the school needed to come first. And this is really radical. I mean, it seems radical. We had kids rolling cigars in their one-room apartment in New York their whole lives. And now, all of a sudden, some people are coming up to me like, no, no, no, kids should be in school and then maybe working, preferably not working. So how do we make that happen?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a very big deal. And most of these, or a lot of them, were women. People like Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop and Lilian Ward, anti-poverty measures. And this is stuff that, you know, they would also go on to champion women's rights and women's rights in the workforce and women's rights to vote. So it was, the whole progressive movement was kind of tied up in all these, you know, radical ideas about, you know, being fair and good, decent human beings.

• 40:51Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. Radical stuff.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  So, here's the problem, is you've got these robber barons and these factory owners and then these industrialists who are like, wait a minute, we got a good deal going because we don't have to pay these kids much. They're probably not going to unionize. Like, the Newsies thing was definitely an anomaly.

• 41:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  That didn't happen much. And he said, they were like, we got a, we got a good thing going, and so we're going to lobby against this as hard as we can.

• 41:20Josh Clark?

  But surely, they were unsuccessful, right?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  No, they were successful. They did. They blocked a lot of legislation early on for this kind of regulation federally. States, you know, it kind of depends on where it was, but states did establish child labor commissions. And some states had some minimum ages, minimum, or maximum hours and minimum wages.

• 41:44Josh Clark?

  It was, they were sparse. I couldn't find what states passed it, but for the most part, there was, there was a, there probably, for the most part, though, there was a, a lot of pushback and enough pushback among the states, the residents of the states, that not a lot got passed. So there was a progressive movement that started, say, in like the 1890s.

• 42:08Josh Clark?

  And it had to, it basically, like any progressive movement, it ran full steam ahead, hit a huge wall of industry, and then had to slowly just keep pushing and pushing and chugging and chugging and keeping at it for a few decades before it was successful. And one of the ways that it became successful, or the way that it kept pushing at it after it hit that wall of industry, is a group called the National Child Labor Committee formed. And I think they formed in, back in 1904. And they were basically, they became a lobbying group to lobby against the lobbying against child labor laws that ended child labor.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they had a pretty smart way to get attention. And that was in hiring a photographer named Louis Hine.

• 42:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  To go around and sneakily document what was going on with his camera.

• 42:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  He was, he worked as a sociologist and a teacher, and then later became a photographer, or was also a photographer. And I think he himself was a kid who was working 12, 13 hour days. So he was like, let me start taking pictures of these kids. And maybe that, because, you know, that's worth a thousand words, they say.

• 43:16Josh Clark?

  At least. And he took 5,000.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:20Josh Clark?

  So that means that he took 50,000 words.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  No.

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  Five, 5,000?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  I'm just kidding.

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  500? No, I know.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to undermine your confidence in your math.

• 43:32Josh Clark?

  It was totally wrong. It was purposefully wrong, though. Let me just do that real quick.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Do, do, do, carry the one.

• 43:38Josh Clark?

  He took 5 million words.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  That's a lot of words. And if you go back, you've probably seen a bunch of these pictures. If you've seen pictures of very unhappy kids outside of a coal mine, or standing on mountains of shucked oysters, or standing around factory machines, like little men sure adults, they were probably Louis Hine's photos.

• 44:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, 5,000 photos, all archived in the Library of Congress, from what I understand. And he had like a really great eye to begin with.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 44:11Josh Clark?

  So like, they're really great photographs in and of themselves. But, you know, you don't have to sit there and like, you know, try to really contemplate it. It just hits you immediately what you're looking at and how sad what you're looking at is. And so he and the National Child Labor Committee got these into newspapers. And like you said, he was very sneaky. He would pose as different things. Um, one of them made sense to me, the industrial machinery photographer. Okay.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  Got that. But what excuse would a Bible salesman have for taking photographs of the kids at the factory? I could not find that to save my life.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  I mean, the only thing I would could think is that got him in the door. And then maybe he was like, and I just love kids and can I take some pictures? But I don't know.

• 45:00Josh Clark?

  And this is a time before stranger danger, I guess. So they were like, sure.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:04Josh Clark?

  I mean, they're child laborers. I don't care about them.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, he also, um, he wore a special jacket where he had the buttons on the jacket aligned in known measurements. So if he went over and stood, like, he would take a kid's picture and he would ask, you know, they're documented like their names and their ages and stuff, uh, as best he could. But he would go stand next to them if he felt like he couldn't outright ask what their age was to kind of tip off that maybe he was not a Bible salesman.

• 45:31Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know, if the kid went up to the second or third button, he would know roughly how tall they were. Or no, he would know how tall they were than roughly how old they were.

• 45:40Josh Clark?

  Right. The other thing.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  They were giants.

• 45:43Josh Clark?

  Right. Right. Yeah, I'm sure, you know, he didn't get them all right, but you know, you can't win them all. But the other thing that made, um, that jacket special, Chuck, was that the lining was made of a T-shirt of a ripped chest and abdomen. And it would make him feel really good about himself when he put that jacket on.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Oh, that's good. Nice call, Ben.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  When did things finally change, though?

• 46:08Josh Clark?

  Uh, well, they started to kind of change, like these, these pictures shocked the conscience of the nation when they, when they saw them, when they made them into newspapers and they were accompanied by muckraking articles about how bad these conditions were and, you know, shame on you, America, for turning a blind eye to this kind of thing. But it wasn't like an instantaneous switch was thrown. It still took decades. I think the first proposal for anti-child labor, um, legislation came in 1906. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, um, was the first to propose it, got taken up.

• 46:44Josh Clark?

  In 1916 by the Keating Act that was actually passed, but the Supreme Court shut it down. And then there was some more legislation that there was a constitutional amendment, actually, that got passed but wasn't ratified by the states. And then it wasn't until the Great Depression and the New Deal that it finally got passed. And I think if it were just the New Deal, it wouldn't have gotten passed. But the Great Depression changed things socially enough that it opened the door for an end to child labor in America.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like ironically, I think massive unemployment with so many adults out of work, they couldn't turn around and just hire kids to do these jobs for lower wages. It was, I mean, even at a time when a bad look didn't really matter as much as it does today, they even knew that that was a really bad look and that they probably couldn't do something like that. So eventually the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, thank you Francis Perkins, our old buddy.

• 47:45Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Among others. This finally set a national minimum wage for the very first time, maximum number of hours for workers and then child labor limitations, notably that if you are under 16, you cannot work in manufacturing and you cannot work in coal mining at all because they're just too dangerous. Another couple of things it did, it established overtime, time and a half.

• 48:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  So if you went over 40 hours a week, you could only work up to 44, but you could work four hours at time and a half. And that very first minimum wage was 25 cents an hour.

• 48:24Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  1939, it went up to 30, 45, it went up to 40. In 1956, it finally reached a dollar.

• 48:33Josh Clark?

  Ka-ching.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  And it didn't crack $6 until 2008.

• 48:38Josh Clark?

  I know, dude, it's just shameful.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Isn't that nuts?

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  We definitely need to do a minimum wage episode 2 because it's just not as cut and dried as, yeah, just raise the minimum wage. Like, there's just, like, there's a lot to it and I really want to do one on that.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hadn't really kept up with it because I, before I got salary jobs, I worked as a waiter for. Fifteen or twenty years or something. So, or as a P A on movie sets and T V sets. And that's not a hourly thing either. So like I hadn't had an hourly rate job since college. So I didn't really know, you know, kind of how it changed over the years. I did not know it was two thousand eight when they cracked six dollars. That's really low.

• 49:21Josh Clark?

  It really is. It's very, it's, that's just not okay. And it's still at seven something right now.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  I think it's seven seventy five?

• 49:29Josh Clark?

  Uh, no, it's seven twenty five, actually.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  I think it, yeah, that's the national minimum wage, right?

• 49:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, again, some of the states are, are raising stuff slowly but surely. But that's the federal ones still.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Boy, this is Alabama doesn't have a minimum wage. Is that right? Is that possible?

• 49:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's possible, man.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna have to look into that. That's on the fly.

• 49:51Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, we'll do a whole one on minimum wage for sure coming up. But, um, you said that the, the Fair Labor Standards Act was, um, uh, passed in nineteen thirty eight. And it's still basically governs child labor. And one of the things that it does, Chuck, is it, it divides, uh, child labor into agricultural and non-agricultural jobs. And with agriculture or non-agricultural jobs, there's like a, a pretty decent amount of protections, like kids can't work in hazardous stuff until they're eighteen. Things like blasting, mining, forest firefighting, that kind of stuff. That if you're under sixteen, you can only work a maximum of three hours a day during

• 50:36Josh Clark?

  the school year. There's some exemptions. Did you see the thing about home-based wreath making?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you cannot, non-agriculatively, you cannot work if you're under fourteen at all. Like, I could not have worked as a busboy at thirteen.

• 50:50Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Uh, supposedly, but I still did.

• 50:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Unless that was passed since then, because this thing's been ratified a million times, or, uh, not ratified, but amended. Uh, but yeah, it, the, if you're a child actor, you can work if you're under fourteen, obviously. If you're a newsie, you can still deliver newspapers if you're under fourteen. And home-based wreath makers.

• 51:12Josh Clark?

  Dude.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  So weird.

• 51:14Josh Clark?

  It is weird. And not only is it home-based wreath making is exempted from child labor laws in the United States, it has to be a specific kind of wreath. It has to be mostly evergreen wreaths.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 51:26Josh Clark?

  So if you're making wreaths, and it has to be at home, if you're having your kid make wreaths at home, and they're not mostly evergreen, that's illegal. And if they're making things out of evergreen that are not wreaths, like say garland, that's illegal. Specifically homemade wreaths that are mostly evergreen.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  It's really, really interesting.

• 51:47Josh Clark?

  It's one of the most bizarre facts we've ever talked about on this episode, on this show.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna keep that one in my pocket.

• 51:54Josh Clark?

  Totally. But agricultural, though, they have like very little protection, like almost shamefully little protections.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're 16 years old and you live on your family farm, they can work you, um, there's no limit on how many hours they can work you. Uh, you can work jobs that the Department of Labor considers hazardous. I think 14-year-olds also can work unlimited hours if it's outside the school day. And then kids as young as 12, I think actually 12 and younger, can work with parental consent.

• 52:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, yeah, basically unlimited hours, uh, or at least up to 72 hours, and that's during the school year as well.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  And as a result of this, uh, 55% of child farm workers graduate from high school here in, you know, the 2020-ish.

• 52:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, in the United States we're talking about, and 100,000 of them are injured on the job every year, child farm laborers.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they're trying to get all this changed.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they're basically saying like, look, just, just take these things that we apply to non-agricultural jobs and apply it to agricultural problem solved. And that would solve a lot of problems. I'm sure it would create a lot of problems that you and I are unaware of, not being farm folk. But it would solve a lot of the, um, child labor problems that child labor activists have issues with. It would do nothing for the, the, the much more rampant problems that are endemic around the world with child labor, where a lot of it resembles basically, uh, how America was with child labor at the, at the, you know, during the Gilded Age.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, 158 million kids are, uh, estimated to be the victims of child labor around the world. Uh, the good news is that's down 30% from 20 years ago. But the bad news is, is that's a lot of kids. And, uh, I think 71% of those are in agriculture.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Harvesting, fishing, herding, stuff like that. But there are a lot of kids around the world that still like work in coal mines.

• 53:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like that's too narrow for an adult, it's too dangerous. You go in there and do it instead. And they'll work with like, they'll work at Wildcat Gold Mines. So they're having to like separate gold with mercury. So they're getting mercury poisoning at a young age, which really messes with you developmentally. On tobacco farms in places like Zimbabwe, not only are they having to get, you know, nicotine poisoning, they're also being poisoned by toxic pesticides that are used on the crops and stuff too. So like, these kids are working in like deplorable working conditions. And there's just some really basic stuff that needs to change that would

• 54:39Josh Clark?

  just free the children of the world, the world around, from what is essentially like indentured servitude right now.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's four kind of basic things that the ILO says we can do around the country. And they, like you said at the very beginning, they're very pragmatic, they all make sense. And they would really make a difference. And the first is expand access to education, get kids in school. And get rid of fees to be in school. And put them, if they're in a school situation, they're way less likely to join the workforce.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  That's what our friends at COED do. They're like helping get kids off of family farms and into schools by removing any barriers between them and in school.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yep, it's all through education. It's a great, great organization.

• 55:27Josh Clark?

  Yep. What else?

• 55:29Speaker 02

  And that's, by the way, the cooperative, I always say that word wrong, cooperative for education.

• 55:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Look them up, we've championed them for years. And we got a little, a little fun thing coming up that we're doing with them that you guys might be interested in. So stay tuned for that.

• 55:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Let me see, what's the next one? Help families meet basic needs. This could be a universal basic income, it could be monthly stipend. But basically, so families don't have to send their kids out to work to provide at the, you know, most basic level.

• 56:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and a way that you can help that is through Kiva. By lending, making microloans to people so that they can, they have the capital to grow from initially.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:12Josh Clark?

  There's also, like, if you make sure that adults are getting better wages and pay and their rights are protected, it makes their children less likely to be forced into the workplace to begin with. Because it's not, again, there's not like adults to World Brown saying, you know, our kids need to be working because they're lazy. Like, their kids need to be working because the adults aren't getting paid enough. And if you make sure that you're, you know, if you're a Western company and you make sure that you're paying everybody a fair wage, there's a good chance that you can eradicate child labor from your supply chain.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the last thing is just enforcement. They can put all the laws that they want on the books, but unless someone's gonna actually work on enforcement, then it really doesn't matter much. So that's really sort of the last step is funding for enforcement.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And Germany actually just passed a law recently that, that demands that its companies examine, do due diligence and examine their supply chains to see if there's child labor involved and to do something about it. It doesn't have like as much teeth as Human Rights Watch was saying that they wish it had, but it's a good first step and hopefully the way that, that, you know, progressive nations will start moving.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 57:29Josh Clark?

  Two things. Big shout out, I can't remember his name, but the young listener who was mowing the lawn for his dad and wrote in to request this episode.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right.

• 57:40Josh Clark?

  I think he prompted this episode, so hats off to you, young sir. I hope you can kick up your heels for a little while. And then also, this was indeed a Dave Ruse joint. So thanks again to Dave for this one.

• 57:53Josh Clark?

  Right?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 57:54Josh Clark?

  Since Chuck said that's right, everybody, it means it's time for listener mail.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  I'm gonna call this, uh, I think it's just thanks. Uh, hey, guys, writing in from Louisville, Kentucky to say how much I love the show, even though Josh said the KFC Center was in Lexington.

• 58:10Josh Clark?

  I'll never live that down.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Uh, your correction put a smile on my face, knowing that there are other stuff you should know fans near me. Uh, I work in long-term care and use your podcast in many different ways. I help people with cognitive impairments set up their tablets and such for enrichment, socialization, and stimulation. And one of the first activities I show them is how to access entertainment with an educational podcast. Everyone can find something they want to learn about on Stuff You Should Know. I also help people find ways of remembering new information and use your short stuff episodes for those with shorter attention spans. And finally, my own enjoyment is a factor. I listen to many different podcasts during my drive to and from work, but only Stuff You Should Know has the ability to get me into a different headspace. Uh, I attribute that to Josh and Chuck.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  None of these topics would be nearly as interesting without you guys. I've cried and laughed, sometimes both, all in all of your episodes, even the really mathy ones.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I feel you on that one, Chuck and Josh. Yeah.

• 59:09Josh Clark?

  Aw, that was a dig.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Wasn't a dig. Are you a math guy?

• 59:14Josh Clark?

  No, no, but I like to think I am.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Okay, sorry about that. Uh, the episode on snake handling is a personal favorite. I appreciate an episode. I love the show and everyone that works on it. Thanks for keeping it going. I hope to see y'all in Kentucky. And that is from Ellie.

• 59:28Josh Clark?

  Well, thanks again, Ellie. And, uh, if you want to get in touch with us like Ellie did, you can write us an email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 59:57Josh Clark?

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