Happy Labor Day, Kids

I am not proud to admit that some of the most fun I had teaching was doing the lessons about the Industrial Revolution - especially the ones involving child labor. I love reminding the students that if they lived back in those times that they would be crawling into dangerous machines to retrieve the fingers of the last kid who got caught in an automatic loom. Or the worse job which involved only the smallest children. They would sit in a hole in the mine wall with a candle to keep light for the other kids digging out coal.

 

I share these pictures with all you Hillbillies who think Unions and labor laws get in the way of pure unrestrained capitalism. If you know how many tiny hands around the world make the devices you and I couldn't live without, it would break your heart.