Where this ends and that begins
From Geoffrey Nunberg’s new book Talking Right page 134.
In the 1920s, the [Wall Street] Journal warned against the threats to freedom that were implicit in minimum wage laws [and] the child-labor amendment to the Constitution (“an assault upon the economic independence of the family…”)
I’ll get to my point, but first I’ll clear up a detail. I frowned in puzzlement when I read that, thinking ‘The – ? I didn’t know there was a child-labor amendment to the Constitution. Ignorant me.’ So I looked it up, and there isn’t; Nunberg apparently meant attempts to pass a child-labor amendment, which (no doubt with the help of the WSJ) failed.
But my point is that that is another example of the kind of thing I was talking about in that comment on Michael Bérubé’s book (What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts). It’s another example of tensions among the freedoms, entitlements, rights, wants, and needs of different people; another example of the fact that a protective law for one person may be an interference with the freedom of action of another person; and that this situation isn’t even all that rare or hard to find. We don’t think about the child labor example much in the US now, because even reactionaries mostly don’t want to defend child labor any more; like slavery, that idea is pretty dead. But there was a time when the WSJ framed child labor laws as an assault upon the economic independence of the family, which of course it is. And a good thing too, but not everyone thinks so and not everyone has always thought so.
Michael replied to my comment last week, at the end of a longer reply to a review by Jodi Dean. He found my point (cough) reasonable (that’s his cough, but I’ll cough too, because I might as well). We agree that it is a problem, indeed the problem.
But isn’t this all of a piece with J. Wells’ attack on the “liberal” consensus in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to History” – before he wrote the one about science and ID.
I’m prevented here from making the obvious comment on the latter work, but the former got a stinging rebuke in (I think) the NY Times, which characterised it as not incorrect, just wrong.
If you really want to see what is not even wrong about the one on science, try Pharyngula’s archives , and search for “PIGDID”
Yes, the noted Philosopher Terence Pratchett has something to say about this. He notes that to intervene to prevent a murder is to curtail the freedom of the potential murder, in discussing which he quotes Bouffant: ‘If any man is not free, then I too am a small pie made of chicken.’
Less seriously, the child labour issue is an anomaly in the legislative rights/freedoms debate as children are legally acknowledged not to have free agency. Thus child labour laws specifically may be defended on the grounds that they are preventing a curtailment of a child’s freedoms as where a child is made to work this is (generally and legally) not his or her free choice.
Adult labour laws, though they are also at the interface between rights and freedoms, are qualitatively different in that an adult may be assumed to have autonomy and thus to be able to choose whether or not to (say) work gruelling 18-hour days in near-total darkness and with a lack of adequate safety precautions. (Of course economic pressures mean that this choice is generally illusory, but whereas the principle of social responsibility for children is well-established the principle that adults should be protected at the expense of a free market is… somewhat controversial.)
And the prize for litotes of the day goes to… outeast!
… because even reactionaries mostly don’t want to defend child labor any more; like slavery, that idea is pretty dead.
Not with Right-Wing Bastard Cathal von und zu Copeland, it isn’t (I mean child labour isn’t dead, not slavery isn’t dead). And I don’t mean 5-year old chimneysweeps who die of emphysema by the age of 10. Yes I am all for a law against five-year olds being allowed to chimneysweep.
But what about a 10 year old kid waitering in the local taverna (often seen in modern Greece, BTW)? Or a 13 year old petrol pump attendant (if such exist)?
Surely it is better for a child to spend 25 hours a week moving its ass about than to spend 25 hours a week glued to the flat screen on obesity boulevard? That being the usual alternative in the modern family – not brushing up on integral calculus or studying the origins of the Second World War.
Just for the reactionary record.
I like you, Cathal. You’re fun.
If taverna or telly were the only choices, then your defence of child labour would have me convinced. However, the child who is prevented from working has the opportunity to work on their calculus; the child waiter doesn’t. Restrictions on child labour don’t guarantee that children spend their time wisely, but it does remove one excuse. There need to be other things in place: parents who are wealty enough to support them and responsible enough to make sure their offspring are healthy and doing their homework. There also needs to be an adequate school system. Otherwise, how are we going to produce the intelligent, hard-working adults who debate here?
English historical note – when the first health and safety laws were being discussed in parliament they were solely concerned with mines. The mine owners said that regulation and inspection would violate the privacy of the miners.
“The mine owners said that regulation and inspection would violate the privacy of the miners.”
Really?! That’s a great one. And of course one can see their point – mines are so lovely and dark and enclosed and private – much as in Marvell’s ‘the grave’s a fine and private place’. Of course inspection would be a dreadful violation of that privacy.
“He notes that to intervene to prevent a murder is to curtail the freedom of the potential murder[er]”
Just so. I think I’ve noted that myself quite a few times. It is of course entirely true. Our freedoms are curtailed in all sorts of ways like that. Those overwhelming impulses to slap people that arise several hundred times a day – alas our freedom to indulge them is sharply curtailed, as we know from experience: those nights in the county jail finally conveyed the message.
“But what about a 10 year old kid waitering in the local taverna (often seen in modern Greece, BTW)?”
Of course it’s often seen in modern Greece, and in modern India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Phillippines, Angola, Zimbabwe, etcetera. There children are free to work their lives away, parents are free to make them work their lives away, and all is joy and prosperity, yes?
“Thus child labour laws specifically may be defended on the grounds that they are preventing a curtailment of a child’s freedoms as where a child is made to work this is (generally and legally) not his or her free choice.”
Sure. But the point relevant to this business of the irreconcilable conflict is that often parents (or fathers) consider it their right to decide what the child does and any infringement of that putative right as an outrageous intrusion on The Family. The putative rights of the child tend not to come into it: the salient right is the right of The Family which means the right of The Father. And this applies equally to women’s rights. Women’s rights don’t come into it: the salient right is the right of The Family, meaning, The Man. So there is no way to make a case for rights of children or married women (or women under the control of a father or other male relative) without coming into conflict with people who think there are no such rights, there is only The Family.
I find myself agreeing with Cathal. If it happens again I may have to resign from the LibDems.
The regulations in the UK are that once a child is thirteen they can put in 12 hours a week term-time, 25 in the holidays, with sensible restrictions on when and where. Seems eminently reasonable to me. In my day the most onerous job was tatty howkin’ – but it paid well (for a fourteen year old). The reason we have long school holidays was originally so kids could work on the land in the busy time.
But even if we are talking specifically of kids being taken out of school altogether and working full time; undesirable and any society where that is common is a society which needs to recognise that as a flaw and seek to remedy it.
However, outright banning will have a negative effect if the work is to feed a family that would otherwise starve. The alternatives are begging, prostitution and crime. Unfortunately, in much, even most, of the world childhood is not an option.
Because children are vulnerable and the world is full of bastards we need enforced regulation. We also need to scrutinise and hold to account companies that outsource production. But in some circumstances, even full time industrial child labour is a least-worst option.
Kaushik Basu on The Economics of Child Labor: “If controlling child labor is not an end in itself but an instrument for enabling children to grow up into productive and happy individuals, then policies have to be evaluated against this larger yardstick and not just the immediate one of whether it halts child labor. In the poorest regions, society may in fact have to permit children to work a few hours each day. Studies in Peru and Brazil have shown that children’s labor is often the only way they can finance schooling for themselves or their siblings and thereby ensure an eventual escape from poverty for their progeny. Such findings raise troubling moral questions, but if policy is to be effective, it must account for the reality of people’s lives.
In other words, sometimes child labor is an unfortunate necessity. The post doesn’t say otherwise. But that’s not the same thing as saying it’s inherently desirable.
It’s actually quite common for teenagers in the US, and at least some educationists think that is a major factor in the mediocre to bad performance of US teenagers in school. In other developed countries, adolescents are expected to concentrate on school much more than they are in the US, and the results are what one would expect.
There is also a school of thought that says that ‘school’ in the diploma-factory sense is far from the best place for adolescents to while away their daylight hours, and that for many, from the age of 14, say, some form of apprenticeship involving real meaningful work and training would be better. But that isn’t ‘child labour’ in the ‘ban it!’ sense, of course…
It does raise the point that if you do prohibit children from working, you have to at once insure some means of preventing them either, in one set of circumstance, starving, or in another, vegetating…
Yeh. And I thought of adding but didn’t but should have that I (and Nunberg) said child labor, and as you say, that doesn’t generally refer to post-14(ish), at least I don’t think it does. Grey area, I suppose; heap; is the teenager bald, or not.
This has reminded me of a poem I read many years ago, can’t remember by whom and google is no help;
The golf course lies so near the mill,
That almost every day,
The little children can look out,
And see the men at play.
Anyone know it?
Don’t know it. One possible narrowing guess is that it’s UK not US, because ‘mill’ wouldn’t be understood the right way here – it wouldn’t be understood to mean factory now, though it would in the 19th century. It sort of has to be UK to work – which is kind of interesting.
Outeast writes:
Adult labour laws, though they are also at the interface between rights and freedoms, are qualitatively different in that an adult may be assumed to have autonomy ..
Spot on. Amazing how many liberals just don’t get it though. Often they don’t understand the economics either — can’t see how minimum wage laws may increase unemployment, for example.
Known as unintended consequences.
It’s such a bore having to repeat this stuff, though.
I spin my alphanumerical wheels of fortune (wheel I: A-Z, wheel II: 1-100). Whizz!
There we are: J, 023. From now on (i.e. in future contibutions to N&C) this point is my argument J-023, in my total range from A-001 to Z-100 (total of 2600 arguments — impressive, innit?)
Just to save bandwidth.
Cathal, you’re hammering on an open door again. We’ve already agreed that ‘it depends’ about child labor.
And would you please look at this and think again?
“Ophelia writes:
‘So there is no way to make a case for rights of children or married women (or women under the control of a father or other male relative) without coming into conflict with people who think there are no such rights, there is only The Family.’
Oh dear – back we are to one of those slopes that are slippery in two directions at once. The last century saw a number of government systems whose fundamental principle was that the family had no rights at all, that all were to be subservient to the State.”
The conflict is exactly what I’m pointing out, obviously, so what slippery slope are you talking about? And no we’re not unaware that minimum wages may increase unemployment (though not by much).
You really don’t need to repeat this stuff. Really, you don’t. We already know it. Take a break; go play poker with the butler or something.
Cathal wrote: “Often they don’t understand the economics either — can’t see how minimum wage laws may increase unemployment, for example.”
I don’t want to drive this thread too far off the topic of children and famlies, but I have to make this sally:
As a social democrat, I can see that minimum wages alone could increase unemployment, but it isn’t the only factor in employment levels. Skills, infrastucture, and political stability also play their part in boosting employment. There’s a reason why there’s no McDonalds in Iraq. I also see it as a way of ensuring that bad wage-payers don’t drive out the good – a view I share with that other left-wing radical, Winston Churchill, who set up the wage councils in 1909.
OB,
Tracked down that poet. I’m going to have to read more.
http://bailey.uvm.edu:6336/dynaweb/findingaids/cleghorn/@Generic__BookTextView/128;cs=default;ts=default;pt=54
Yeah, what Andy said, and furthermore many economists point out that the unemployment effects are generally quite small. As long as we’re in the pointing out the obvious game, as Cathal hints, it’s worth pointing out that employers have a financial interest in claiming that minimum wages are a bad idea. They’d claim minimum wages cause hives if they could get away with it. Caution recommended.
Great, Don! Frustrating not to know.
Oh – I was wrong – US. But late 19th C, so not wrong. For some reason I assumed it was contemporary.
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn. Live and learn.
The tension between the freedoms and wants of different people is a pervasive issue, and child labour is an interesting example. I think more direct is the tension in the case of Prohibition, and its successors in the ‘public good activist sector’ like environmentalism and gun control.
The continued existence of bullets and chemicals despite the most persuasive moral preenings of activists is an indictment of the way that the wants of some people overwhelm the essential moral perfection of others.
“Yeah, what Andy said, and furthermore many economists point out that the unemployment effects are generally quite small. “
That’s true, but they affect the poorest and most vulnerable disproportionately. The question is whether the benefits that the minimum wage confers, if any, outweigh the disbenefits felt by the most desparate and needy, bearing in mind that any benfits accrue to people who are, relatively speaking, already prospering.
I posted a point before, but it seems never to have arrived. The notion of ‘not understanding the economics’, and the way it was used there, struck me as interesting, and I wonder in what sense it is qualitatively different [if any], from saying that an opponent ‘doesn’t grasp the lessons of Marx [or Freud]’ on a subject?
p.s. saying ‘economics is a science and Marxism is nonsense’ obviously doesn’t count…