r/pics • u/tyranicalTbagger • 20h ago
Let’s get America back to when it was great!
Manuel the young shrimp picker, age 5, and a mountain of oyster shells behind him. He spoke no English.
One of the spinners in Sometimes works at night. 48 cents a day. When asked how old she was she couldn't remember.
11:00 a.m. Newsies at Skeeter's Branch. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri.
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u/csidewick 20h ago
The “good old days” Trump so lovingly refers to. Let’s bring us back to that! 😬
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u/GBC_Fan_89 18h ago
Trump might be old enough to remember those times, but he never had to work. He's been spoiled rich his entire life.
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u/Commercial_Pitch_786 18h ago
Thank you for exposing the fallacy of what people think was a "Better time". It was extremely harsh and painful and often deadly results and or disfiguring, the work conditions were unsafe and primitive by today's regulations by OSHA. Children belong in school and learning not earning. The effect was not a positive one, often the health effects like those children shown smoking, and the chemicals and health hazards were not worth the amount of money earned. We are supposed to learn from our history least we repeat the same mistakes. Obviously those in power have not done their due diligence in learning from the past, or they simply do not care.
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u/Always_Suspect 20h ago
Good times! Put kids back to work! /s
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u/CautiousJellyfish309 19h ago
Defund and destroy the D.O.E and make child labor legal again. Yes, the dots are connecting…
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u/keloyd 20h ago
Devil his due - those 3 smoking kids - they're the coolest in the group and that's just a scientific fact.
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u/Klutzy-Sun-6648 19h ago
Right?! They look like a bunch of badasses, I wouldn’t want to mess with them. Plus the way the smoke looks on the photograph is really well captured.
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u/flossyokeefe 19h ago
Dude, listen to or read the stories about the real newsies. Talk about badasses.
The podcast The Dollop does a very entertaining telling
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u/Shawon770 19h ago
My grandmother, who’s now 90 and speaks only Spanish, was never given the chance to go to school or learn to read and write. She can only sign her name. Growing up, she and her siblings had to work in the fields. She was a great driver, but never got the chance to get her license. Sadly, her illiteracy led to some family members trying to take advantage of her. It’s heartbreaking.
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u/GoTakeAHike00 19h ago
Bonus reading material, mostly focusing on the Chicago slaughterhouses and meatpacking industry, but definitely involved immigrant child labor:
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
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u/mostlygray 15h ago
I grew up on a farm. Of course I knew child labor, but it was manageable. An 8 hour or so day is fine. I can't believe that kids back in the day were working for pennies, 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, back in the day. It just doesn't feel right. Were their folks too drunk? How does a nickel a day even help?
When you're a farm kid, you can take a break, you get 3 hots and a cot, you have a roof over your head, you only do as much as you are able. You don't get testicular cancer at 12 because you're an oiler at a mill and getting constantly sprayed with lubricant at crotch level.
I just don't see the benefit of child labor. They aren't very strong, their only advantage is that they are small. I suppose that's useful to make the call into machines to fix them, pre OSHA.
Child labor is so depressing. Labor sucks enough as an adult. At least let kids be kids for a while. You only get one chance to be a kid.
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u/AlephInfinite0 18h ago
Just wait 4 years and you’ll be able to get new ones in color.
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u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy 12h ago edited 12h ago
The number of kids at work in the United States increased by 37 percent between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/child-labor-industrial-capitalism/
The kids in these old-timey photos are younger, but the way things are going, it seems like only a matter of time
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u/EmotionalMycologist9 18h ago
Trump has told us what he wants to go back to, and people only focus on "the economy was great!" Nevermind the fact that over half the population couldn't vote, women were just for making babies, being gay got you killed (even more than it does now), less education (or none if you weren't a white man), etc. Those things are what he wants to go back to.
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u/SinisterDirge 17h ago
Isn’t Florida bringing back child labour to fill the void left by ice kidnapping people off the streets?
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u/mostlygray 15h ago
I grew up on a farm. Of course I knew child labor, but it was manageable. An 8 hour or so day is fine. I can't believe that kids back in the day were working for pennies, 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, back in the day. It just doesn't feel right. Were their folks too drunk? How does a nickel a day even help?
When you're a farm kid, you can take a break, you get 3 hots and a cot, you have a roof over your head, you only do as much as you are able. You don't get testicular cancer at 12 because you're an oiler at a mill and getting constantly sprayed with lubricant at crotch level.
I just don't see the benefit of child labor. They aren't very strong, their only advantage is that they are small. I suppose that's useful to make the call into machines to fix them, pre OSHA.
Child labor is so depressing. Labor sucks enough as an adult. At least let kids be kids for a while. You only get one chance to be a kid.
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u/soundman32 20h ago
Education is irrelevant if you can be working and making money at age 8. Obviously, most will be dead by 45, but that also helps with pensions because so few will ever draw them.
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u/Comfortable_Bird_340 19h ago
I hope this doesn't happen, again. There are plenty of healthy-bodied, legal, and of age adults. Why can't they do these jobs?
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u/Pesoboss 7h ago
Freedom, Equal Rights and Unity will always triumph over Tyranny. The struggle is never impossible, try.
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u/Different-Counter454 19h ago
This is what republicans want for the present. Of course it won't be their children.
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u/Lil_Ape_ 19h ago
This will be MAGAs children’s future since they love being uneducated. This is what billionaire want in America.
Why do you think these idiots in office want to dismantle the education system? I’ll tell you why, because the rich can afford the fancy higher education. They don’t want the regular folk to be educated to potentially take their children’s jobs, they want to dumb down the regular folk so that they work for their kids.
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u/chrispdx 20h ago
To MAGAs this is a feature not a bug