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I was surfing the net on early 1900's life in America as that is a timeline that intrigues me and i came across the Photos of kids back in those times as they were made to work as poverty was extreme back then. Notice how old most of these kids look.
Yup, working conditions in the factories use to be pretty darned horrid - that's why political concepts like Communism were so appealing to those folks.
Fortunately the development of the labor unions and collective bargaining forced the factory owners and goverments to improve the lot of the workers - thereby pulling the rug out from under the Communists in most countries.
Lots of folks can make legitimate (or semi-legitimate) gripes about the unions (they encourage inflations, they've become too self-serving, they're prone to corruption, their time is past, etc, etc, etc) but the fact is, if American had not developed the unions most of us would either be living a life of serfs under the hand of all-poweful owners, or we would be living as property of the State under a Communist regime.
Neither extreme is acceptable to me.
The unions provided a much-needed counter-balance to the power of the owners at a time when working people had few options of their own.
Looking at these kids would have been my Gamdpa's older brother and sisters age group back then as he was born in 1915. Although he was raised on the farm in Rural South Carolina he always told me stories of what life was like for him and his family and community back then as it was fascinating to hear some of the tales he told me as a kid and teen when i was growing up.
Anyway i really like to study that era in America and seeing these photos are very cool although depressing as that was a factor of life in our country and the world back then.
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Last edited by Six Foot Three; 01-17-2008 at 09:43 AM..
Reason: spell
Thanks for sharing those photos. My grandpa worked in a coal mine in PA as a little boy. He worked in factories as a teen and young adult. His dad was a coal miner and he died when my grandpa was young. To help support his family, grandpa went to work in the coal mines. It was a hard life back then. My grandpa was a hard worker his entire life.
I was surfing the net on early 1900's life in America as that is a timeline that intrigues me and i came across the Photos of kids back in those times as they were made to work as poverty was extreme back then. Notice how old most of these kids look.
It is really sad how terrible things were in th early 1900's. It bought tears to my eyes. I remeber my grandparents talking about things like this. Neither of them finished school because they had to go to work for the family. My grandmother was a seamtress and made 7.00 a week!
Those aren't children - they're "Mountain Dwarves" - that's what the textile mills around here called kids when the mills were criticized for using child labor...
Inthesierras and Cindy15161 good storys about your Grandparents.
Yeah my Grandpa told me that they were in the fields at 5.00 a.m. for several hours then off to school and afterwards it was back in the fields ontil sunset. They did eat well as they grew their own food and slaughtered their own cattle and hogs. What they didn't have they bartered on saturdays at the farmers market and on sunday was the day the families got together for a large barbecue and had homemade apple and/or blackberry pie as that was a real treat back then......
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