Child Labor

(Statistics: Manchausen and Hoople)

Gluttony, at least in the way it's practiced today, wasn't much concern to us. We would view it as repulsive and it didn't really occupy our thoughts. Generally it was depicted as a burlesque and what was an unenviable laugh then is now a standard.

We weren't a great factor in the economy other than the natural portion of needed or essential goods bought for us: clothes in particular and there wasn't a frantic emphasis on fashion that expected us to dictate our choices to adults.

Those involved in serious study would publish it and it would go somewhat unnoticed by a disinterested public. What did we know — or care — about economics and the distribution of marketable goods? I still don't know very much about it but I have a suspicion that the kids' world has a disproportionate share of economic clout and the effect of creating demands, with the kids as the aggressors, is a dangerous course. It puts a dependency upon a fickle base that gets out of control at the expense of available capital for the whole nation.

The investigator draws his diagrams. It's 1940.

He notes (fig 1) that 16% of the national income is spent on dependent children. To clarify his reasoning he breaks down that percentage into areas of expenditures (fig 2). The bulk, 63%, is for daily needs: clothing, food, school. A tiny portion of the pie, 3%, represents the child's contribution: allowance, income from part time work. Medical needs are 16%. Another 12% go to recreation and gifts: toys at Christmas, birthdays, camp and miscellaneous activities. The other 6% are what children spend from their pocket for candy, movies, other amusements. Gee, they're spending twice what they get. No matter, in time the world will catch up with them.

Fifty years later successor economists make another set of pies. We're child oriented now. The farmers are all dead. Industry has gone to all the countries we used to beat up. Small business, mom and pop stores, artisans, shops on the lane have evaporated. The population has almost doubled.

The investigator draws his diagrams:

These figures don't look right. Where's Star Wars? Where's foreign aid? Where's the mafia? Where's the Savings and Loans and congressional perks? Sixty one percent of America's wealth, its money in circulation is to go to or for kids? (fig. 3). The analyst breaks it down (fig. 4). Eleven percent for needs: clothing, food, and school where the parents have control. One percent for allowance from the parents. Medical needs and suicide control at 12%. Another 12% for recreation and gifts. Computers, drugs, cars and yachts and sneakers and concerts pull another 51%. Law enforcement directed at children: detention, psychologists, social workers, sex programs, abuse tests, agencies of all sorts absorb the remaining 13%.

Hidden away are overlaps (fig.5). Allowances may be 1% on fig. 4 but income is really 50% of the child's dynamics in the American economy and expenditures take it away. He's employing adults, those who supply him with skateboards, with entertainment and ads, with chemicals, with electronics and if we draw another circle (fig. 6, below), reportable and taxable income cannot be measured with any accuracy.

Considering the times, I don't think that I was ever underpaid for jobs that I had when I was a boy. Getting stiffed was another matter and that was wrong. But then that wasn't often. You learn fast and keep away from people who are abusive...and probably anyone who hangs out with them.

There were times that I thought I should have been paid a little better, but kids were thrown scraps. That's an economic reality. Things had to stay in balance. Afterall, kids didn't have to pay rent and feed families and be responsible for medical bills and education and debts. Shiny pennies were the introduction to purchasing power and for the most part adults were purchasing almost everything that kids needed and much of what they wanted. Shiny pennies were often gifts from uncles and grandmothers. They had more interest and derived far greater pleasure in passing shiny pennies into our hands than old John Rockefeller ever did when he handed out shiny dimes to the depressed. Was he an example to the Baptists of his day?

The Snoyer girls taught us a new value that played against uncles and grandmothers who introduced us to welfare. The girls had us work for shiny pennies and when I was five I would sit on their steps and read a page from a book for their pleasure (and for their practice as soon-to-be teachers). If I read well I would be given a shiny penny. I had entered the economy.

There were ways to augment the nickels and dimes parents handed out weekly and they called it allowance. But it was more than that. Make your bed, dry the dishes, sweep the basement, mow the lawn, shovel the snow, take the trash out; these were the duties of little helpers and the "allowance" kept quality workmanship fairly even. If that was the carrot the stick was for recalcitrant bums.

When I shoveled the snow from our steps and the sidewalk it was considered part of the obligation that went with living at home. Needless to say, there was no alternative roof to sleep under. Older ladies contracted us to shovel theirs on a storm to storm basis and that work might be worth a quarter or a half-dollar. Opposition at home was empty-headed: do our walk before you go up the street and opportunity was lost because another kid with a shovel would win the day — and the money. Still, the same demand would arise at the next snow and it was hard to explain off. The retort was a snappy end to dialogue: "Don't you talk back to me."

Pop bottles could be returned to stores and deposits would be handed over: two cents for little bottles, a nickel for quart empties. Storeowners got back more bottles that they sold. When the guy from Canada Dry or Coca Cola arrived with a new supply of bubbly he'd take away crates of empties that were involved in a complicated series of transactions involving the movement of glass. It became an annoyance and someone came up with the idea of throw-away bottles and the public used that as an example in disposing of a lot of other things from diapers to mattresses and tires and almost everything else.

The soda pop bottles would arrive at stores. Quarts sold for 18 cents. Smaller amounts cost a nickel. Add deposits to the purchase. Even with expense (deposit) and incentive (return) a lot of bottles ended up at the side of the road. Smart kids would seek them out, retrieve them and take them to their local grocer for 2 cent and 5 cent refunds. Smart grocers had temptation foodstuff: pretzels, marshmallows, Tastykakes, popsicles that kids might buy with their refund funds. The grocer was a middle man who paid kids and re-collected from the delivery man in exchange for giving back empties.

We (kids) had an undeclared working relationship with street cleaners because we could collect bottles and other junk and take it to those places that paid pennies and were attractive to our spending habits. What we didn't take was swept up by the street cleaners and they were paid anyway. The engineers who were intrigued with throw-away packaging turned America into a land of slobs, and they took away an economic base from kids and put a lot of people out of work. Eventually the street-cleaners in Philadelphia disappeared too. The streets aren't broomed anymore. Throw-away stuff is valueless.

Eventually, kids will find the kind of work that will cancel out allowances. The chores remain and evolution moves his condition to paying — in a little of the salary gotten elsewhere toward the mangement of the house. But that was a good lesson in itself. Most pay for working in drug-stores or gas-stations or food-markets was untaxed salary so the "room-and-board" assessment at home was really the same thing. In later life, tax from the paycheck wouldn't be such a jolt and so confusing.