"Child Labor" Topic

Are you less likely to collect historic toy soldiers, knowing that many of the figures back then were painted by child labor?

How would anyone know, or be able to prove that?

Were they paid for their work?
I mean, I cut grass as a child, and was paid for it. Well, paid for cutting other people's grass, not ours.

Me as well.

Children have to eat, so……

Refusing to collect them now because of a practice that was both legal and socially acceptable (in some circles) before the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) would be an empty gesture. It would do nothing to punish those who profited from child labor, nor would it help the children who were exploited by them.

How true, War Artisan! The same would be true of my early 19th century aquatints of battles from Jenkins' Martial Achievements.
In any case, children left school earlier and went out to work; my grandfather left school aged 13 and started as an office boy, worked his way up and retired as a factory manager.
I remember someone pointed out that many of the 'boys' who enlisted under age to fight in WWI didn't think of themselves as 'children'; they were already doing a man's work down the pit or in the foundry.

Should we also destroy the Parthenon of Athens because it was built with slave labor? The Coliseum?

No

I was paying into Social Security at 14, and missed working at Arby's as a meat slicer because I was too young for a food handler's permit. Should I discard any casting I painted then?

Be sure not to visit Washington DC and St Petersburg. Both areas were largely drained by unfree labor. And whatever you do, don't take up coin collecting: there were slaves in every ancient mint and mine.

Oh. And has TMP carded the workers churning out pre-painted castings in China today? Made sure they have a right to unionize and strike? (And, of course, turned down advertising revenue from companies until you've verified that their suppliers' labor practices are acceptable?)

If you have to drag modern politics into this, tell yourself that Wm Britains largely used female painters and that in buying early Britains you're promoting females in the professions.

Things I shouldn't have to put up with at 0600.

My father quit school at 13 and worked at unloading trucks. His father had died at an early age and there were 8 kids and his mother in the Italian family in Chicago back then.
He and the older brothers supported the family. Should I not use anything they unloaded back then?

Sounds like a rather silly idea.

As Doug says, I started full time work at age 15 and both my grandpas never finished Grade 6

I started delivering papers at 12. This required me to get up before dawn on weekends, and ride around on a bicycle during rush hour on weekdays, while avoiding unchained dogs and suffering whatever weather conditions were in place, including rain, snow, sleet, winter's chill and summer's heat. Everyone should stop reading anything published by Gannet or the New York Times, because they owned my local paper. [/snark]

By the way, I purchased my Atari, a motor scooter, and various RPG and tabletop gaming products with my earnings!

Now, if you can prove that forced child labor is responsible for products made today and sold within my nation, I will listen to the argument. But past is past. There is no civilized culture in the world today that did not at one time have rampant slavery, including of children, in its past. The difference is that some nations learned to behave differently, and both fought wars and passed laws to change themselves. In any case, how an item was made even a hundred years ago is of little importance today, as long as we are aware of the same and work to prevent such abuses today.

That wouldn't help the children then, and it wouldn't help children now. In fact, if you don't buy historic items because you believe they may have been made with exploited labor, you're just going to spend the same money on modern items that, you know, may have been produced with exploited labor.

In the larger view, we are fortunate to live in a society prosperous enough that we can send every kid to school and consider it criminal for kids to work. If you went back in time and made child labor illegal the result would only be deprivation: there would be no resources for schooling every kid, so they would play and then enter the same work force later, if they had enough food.

Banning child labor is a great thing to do once you have the productivity to do it. If a society has the resources to let kids learn and play longer before entering the workforce it is a moral imperative that they do. If a society can't afford this the preventing the kids from working, or preventing adults from working very long hours, is only limiting the income of struggling families. In other words, more of the kids are going to die. Is dying of malnutrition better than working?

Just for the sake of absolute clarity, before someone says I support child labor, if a society is productive enough that the kids don't have to work but the kids end up working instead of going to school just so someone else can have more or work less, that's immoral.

Judging the past by today's standards is sometimes appropriate and sometimes ignorant.

YouTube link

Sounds like a rather silly idea.

Agreed

I have used figures painted by my teenage son, does that count. I didn't pay him :-)

I'm not into 'virtue signaling' so, no, I'll keep collecting.

I paint my own figures regardless.

Can one really prove that children painted them?

Just like with large shoe companies, etc., setting up in 3d World nations, etc. Can there be real proof of such ?
I'm sure there are many documented cases of child labor in certain regions. But even the UN can't stop this.

I was plowing, working cattle and hauling hay when I was in sixth grade. I would have loved a job where all I had to do was paint toys.

How many of you who "had" to work as a child was kept out of school or any reasonable chance at self improvement to help feed the family?

I worked since I was legally able and paper routes before that (doesn't really count) and I wouldn't dare compare that to child labor.

Choctaw +1

Choctaw +1

I started working as a "bag boy" at 12, my mother intervened on my behalf with the employer who said he could not hire anyone under age 13. I had been working earlier doing chores for neighbors.

Besides, why buy painted figures? Takes half of the fun out of the hobby.

I don't collect historic toy soldiers, painted, or otherwise. I do buy modern Chinese products. I also buy drugs made by American companies who are raping my wallet, my insurance company, and millions of other customers' wallets who cannot live without their ridiculously over-priced drugs.

Life is full of "issues" which we can go to "war" over. I pick my battles carefully. Whomever is exploiting another person, is personally responsible for that exploitation -- not me. As I said, I am being exploited for financial gain, have been for decades. Not interested in buying weapons, or making bombs, to attack the exploiters. I just live my life as best I can. Their sins belong to them, and mine belong to me. Enough said. Cheers!