“God Help Us…Everyone!”

With all due acknowledgment of my ‘liberal’ use of the original words of C. Dickens.  The proposals to eliminate the US child labor laws cited below are sadly not fiction, however:

Letter to the Editor of the Maine Sentinel

Dear Sirs:
First, my workforce asks for Christmas off – the entire day, mind you – and now I hear that there are opponents to the elimination of child labor law protections.  I can sit alone and silent no longer as the rights of job creators are infringed upon once again.

I write today to support Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed roll back of child labor laws in the state of Maine.  The proposal under consideration would allow employers to pay workers under 20 well below the minimum wage for their first 180 days on the job. The bills would also change labor laws to allow minors to work later at night, more hours per week, and eliminates "the maximum number of hours a minor 16 years of age or older can work on a school day and allows anyone under the age of 16 to labor for up to four hours on a school day during hours when classes are not in session."

I am quite pleased that these efforts are gaining traction, thanks to my like-thinking Republican cohorts.  There is a pending bill in Missouri to gut child labor protections, and a sitting U.S. Senator, Utah's Mike Lee (R), has argued that federal child-labor laws violate the Constitution and shouldn't even exist.  This kind of logic is long overdue, and I stand with these modern thinkers.  Before he passed, Marley told me to vote Republican, and he was always a man of good business.

No more lazy underage rabble listening to that incessant noise they call music.  My dear children under the age of 16, that is why they call it work – it is hard, unpleasant, and painful when done properly, regularly, and with minimal or no compensation.  Some may say that this adjustment to the laws will undermine wages for all workers, particularly older workers who will be unable to compete with those younger workers who could be paid less.  Some may say this is another attempt to create a permanent underclass in America and speed out descent into a Third World nation status.   To them I say, “Adam Smith will take care of everything, ye of little faith!”  More?  You want some more???  Everyone knows you can’t have any pudding until you eat your meat!

I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments (of charity) - they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.  If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.  The market must be allowed to work unfettered, and anything less is humbug, in my humble opinion.

 

Shall I ever understand this world? There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and yet, there is nothing it condemns with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.

Good day, sir.

Ebenezer S. (name withheld)

PS - If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘protect child labor laws’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!  Bah!