Mining Would Be Exciting For Kids: Trumps Secretary Of Education Wants Legal Child Labor

I am not fighting anymore. My grandfather was at Ludlow, met mother Jones and fought like hell to unionize because people were dying. Let the Republicans do what they will. We have forgotten and it only took a generation.

Don't these Trump voters in the Rust belt know that it wasn't only the manufacturing jobs but the unions that gave them a middle class lifestyle complete with pensions for when they retired? So discouraging.

In the old days, if one union struck, they ALL struck. They sold out. Trump is going to screw them over bad.

appointing to his cabinet. Like John Cleese said, "it's like he is assembling the crew of a pirate ship".

Trump supporters have nothing to fear.

. . . and crippled by bad education and nonsensical notions that make them effectively unemployable -- even in industries that have long since disappeared.

HOLY!
SHIT!

I can't even begin to formulate a reasonable response to this woman. I read her comments to my entire family and they can't believe it.

Pretty soon, everything we hold dear will be privatized,
corrupted, and unaffordable for most.

Labor unions -- forget them.

Social Security and Medicare -- privatized

Healthcare -- no longer affordable for most

Workers' rights -- think zero

Civil and human rights -- think zero again

And now privatized schools and child labor!

We are losing everything our ancestors fought
and died for!

I hate where this country is going, just to make
the Trumps and their minions rich!

Here are some photos of kids at the coal mine "being valued for what they do, which is to say being valued as people. They are earning money."
And as they say over at the DeVos-funded thinktank, "Whatever else you want to say about this, it’s an exciting life."
They also aren't being deprived of "dignity, meaning, freedom, virtue, creativity, character, and neighbor love." (not sure WTF "neighbor love" is)
In sum, we must resist the temptation to coddle kids and refer to child labor as "a gift too dangerous for kids".
I mean, look at the happy faces of freedom!1!1!

http://www.shorpy.com/shorpy

December 1910. "Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars."

A view of the Pennsylvania Breaker. “Breaker Boys” remove rocks and other debris from the coal by hand as it passes beneath them. The dust is so dense at times as to obscure the view and penetrates the utmost recesses of the boys’ lungs. South Pittston, Pennsylvania.

He came to mind as soon as I saw this thread. I knew a DUer would post pictures of him and other kids and there you were.

No women voting, plenty of child labor, fewer regulations....a hellscape to most is their idea of utopia.
hi: :

He started in the mines at age 13. He eventually died of black lung disease.

Trump will give us headlines like "60 children killed in mine collapse!"

So of course they should be given it!

Let's repeal 100 year old Child Labor laws and go back to the Gilded Robber baron years.

that the poor kids could be put to work as janitors in the public schools instead of the unionized janitors:


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/newt-gingrich-thinks-school-children-should-work-as-janitors/248837/

but hey..It's one more way to eliminate unions, right?

They fund ALEC which lets them pass laws killing unions, think tanks and Astroturf groups designed to fool average Americans to do what they want to screw the 99% and further enrich themselves!

Welcome to fascism!!!

" In March 2011, as protests over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposal to effectively end public sector collective bargaining continued to grow in Wisconsin, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy issued Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for three Michigan Universities, the University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Michigan State University. The request targeted any emails containing: “collective bargaining,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” “Scott Walker” or “Maddow.” The requests target labor studies faculty at each school. USA Today wrote that Mackinac's "demands for professors' e-mails about Wisconsin's public employee labor strife is causing an uproar among some who suggest the Freedom of Information Act requests aim to intimidate pro-labor dissenters and stifle academic freedom."

The FOIA request was very similar to one submitted by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to University of Wisconsin-Madison historian William J. Cronon during the same week, after the professor had published a blog post questioning the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Governor Walker's anti-union legislation. Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote " there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like."

Like the Wisconsin GOP's request for Cronon's emails, Mackinac's request posed some concerns for university professors because the request could be an attempt to quell political opposition. In a New York Times article, Director of Academic Freedom for the American Association of University Professors, Greg Scholtz, said, “We think all this will have a chilling effect on academic freedom. We’ve never seen FOIA requests used like this before.” "

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mackinac_Center_for_Public_Policy#Chilling_Academic_Freedom.3F

I remember feeding cattle and pigs in the barn when I was 5, of shoveling manure when I was 8, and picking rocks in the field, baling hay, milking cows, collecting eggs, butchering chickens, castrating pigs, driving the tractors, and helping to repair buildings and equipment by the age of 10. Small farms can't operate without all the family members working together, because hired hands can be expensive if you need them more than once or twice a week.

It did teach me a lot of valuable life lessons and instilled a strong work ethic I still have today, but it was also hard, dangerous work sometimes. Apparently my mom kept a journal for the first decade after they started farming, and one entry I found simply says: "July 25, 1983. Nick kicked by a cow today." I guess I was kicked by a cow when I was 3 years old, and my mom didn't think very much of it?!?!

It's not a life I wanted for my family, which is one of the reasons I didn't take over the family farm.

The fact farmers got an exemption was wrong.

Or do his handlers just minimize their cruel, evil philosophies to get them in place, keeping the ignorant president-elect in the dark?

And those in Wisconsin, too.

It was obvious that he was going to do what the governors in those states, and Kansas, etc. were going to do country-wide. And since they can do it on a grander sacale, the theft of tax money for private benefit will be on a grander scale.

incapable of critical thinking. Unless someone draws a line from points A to B to C, they can't get to C. Instead, they are just distracted by hype and fuelled by hatred.

of people that never dug a footer, broke a concrete slab with a sledge hammer, pushed a lawnmower over a 1/4 acre lot, shoveled coal into a shaker.

Nope, they are the gilded elite and think all this builds character in the peons.

Will America accept or reject this crap is the next question.

How many sociopaths are there in the GOP anyway?

With reduced safety regulations and below minimum wage as well.

How many of her progeny will enjoy such 'dignity'?

Another sales channel! Yes, sarcasm.

This is all just so very bad. Not sarcasm.

I don't even know where to begin with something like that.

If you don't make someone money, you're worthless.

Should happen any time now.

started working in the coal mines in Pennsylvania. These are pictures of him at age 18, still in the mines:






He died of black lung disease in 1969.

If this jerk thinks mining is all that much fun, why doesn't he do it?

Thanks for sharing.

He'd worked in sulfur mining in Sicily from age 7.

In Yatesboro, he was a spokesperson for the immigrant miners and met with John L. Lewis on their behalf, right before WWI.

There are 2 good mine organizing movies, The Molly Maguires about Irish Miners organizing in Shamokin county, PA in the late 1870's, and Matewan, a John Sayles movie about the war between WV mining townspeople and the Baldwin Phelps agents hired by the coal operators in Mingo County right after WWI.

The Maguires movie shows child laborers acting as breakers, busting up the big lumps of coal to make it more shippable and easier to burn.

The Matewan movie shows how the coal company imported Italian immigrants and Southern Blacks to work in the mines, to try and divide and conquer the workers and prevent union organizing.

Both good movies.

My grandfather lived in Pittston, PA. He immigrated from Montedoro, Sicily. Where did your grandfather come from in Sicily? Maybe we are related.

as people unless they have money or are making money.

they're not "Valued as people" unless they are exploited (and their childhood stolen) by wealthy X-tians.
DeVos is a major jeebus freak, as is her brother Erik Prince.
They use religious dogma to control others and enhance their wealth.

And would they have health insurance at all?

Black Lung Disease is one of the few diagnoses that will qualify one for Medicare coverage regardless of age.

Of course, Paul Ryan and friends have plans to destroy Medicare too.

well "eff them" because those are just hazards that go with the territory, right you heartless beyotch? In your world, they won't deserve decent healthcare either.

or share in all that exciting fun by working in the mines.

An exciting life. The greed and stupidity is breathtaking. This alone ought to disqualify DeVos.

when I was little and I helped him work in it, he had a two man saw and I would help him cut locust posts to hold up the roof, he had a hand drill and would drill a hole in the seam and tamp in dynamite and the a blasting cap, we would hide around the corner and he used a nine volt battery to blast the coal out (fire in the hole), we would use a wheelbarrow to haul the coal out to his 1950 Chevy pickup truck and then take it to be weighed, he got $5.00 a ton, it was custom coal for home furnaces. When he finally quit working it the EPA made him blow up the entrance.

My dad started working in coal mines when he was a little kid and had every bone in his body broke in a mining accident once, he died from black lung disease.

My Grand Pap came from Wales and was a Welsh coal miner in the old country.

All the guys in my home town voted for trump, they think he’s going to bring coal back, it’s sad.

Here's a photo of some "breaker boys" in PA.


Here's another photo from PA showing excited children in a coal mine: