Q:
You were speaking about child labor before and you said that it was a great error when it was abolished because the youth today have become wild and dangerous. I just want to point out that in the 1700’s, when children worked in factories, there was no security and safety. Children were sometimes burned to death at the age of three trying to work in chimneys.
A:
What’s your question? You’re asking about guaranteeing the safety of working children? Don’t forget that adults also worked under difficult conditions, and they also were burned alive many times in the factories. And not only in the factories; in their homes too. People were burned in their homes, so you want to tell me that people shouldn’t live in homes either?!
The answer is that after a while people discovered ways and means of safeguarding the homes and factories. They invented fire escapes and fire extinguishers and other means, other safety features, and therefore children can work in factories today that are sanitary and they can be safe. They can have excellent working conditions and they would come out at the end of the day with clean minds; they’ll be ready for a good night’s rest and they won’t get into harm. Children at work will never take drugs because they have no time for that – they have to go home and rest up for the next day. And children who work are not mean and not vicious. They’re not vandalists.
It’s when you have time to waste, so you bum around the streets and you pick up bad things. Working is one of the very best things that could be done for children today. Children today wouldn’t go into the factories of the 17th century anymore. They would go into modern factories and be safe.
Of course, I understand that people are against this idea because you’re impregnated with the modern literature; but trust me, work for children today would be a great blessing for the world! All these gentile boys, white boys, black boys, boys of all colors and all races, if you would take them into factories today and regimen them and let them work, they’d be so much happier. Do you know they’re making themselves unhappy by their idleness, by bumming around and by getting into trouble?
And everybody else will be happier too. The whole world would be a better world. It’s the work ethic that has to be restored. It was destroyed by liberals who foisted upon us liberal ideas. “No work,” they say. So they pushed the youth into the schools and colleges; and now there are so many incompetents who have no head for learning; people who are failures in learning. Of course there are better ones who can pass entrance examinations, but many many of the youth today would be far better off if they were working long hours in factories instead of going to school.
TAPE # 291 (January 1980)
