"Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir." "Are there no prisons?" "Plenty of prisons." "And the workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?" "Both very busy, sir." "Those who are badly off must go there." "Many can't go there; and many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Efficient markets, the glory of Empire. Britain and the Victorians were not alone in this of course. In the face of stiff opposition from industrialists who enjoyed a supply of inexpensive and pliable labour, and of course their servile politicians preaching the value of work and the evils of compassion, child labor was finally regulated by the US federal government in 1938. In the 1930's America, my mother had to leave school at age 12, to get a factory job working long hours in an industrial factory in Euclid, Ohio. Her family was very poor, and as the oldest boy was killed, someone had to take up the slack. They tried to give her away to a wealthy woman who had no children, but my mother would not leave her family, although she remembers the woman had a large mock orange plant in her yard, which my mother liked to smell. But when her family left she ran after them. So work was the only alternative. A very bright and sensitive woman, she told me how she sat for long hours at her machine, and cried and cried. It always bothered her that she only had a seventh grade education. And the experience 'left a mark.' My grandmother used to say that she could not cry anymore, because she had given all her tears for her children in the Great Depression.
