We kids worked ten hours a day, six days a week, in a factory before we were fourteen. Overtime often made it twelve and one-half hours a day, and sometimes Sundays too. For that amount of work-and it was Work, you can take my word for it-I was paid something like four dollars a week.
There were no unions then.
It was tough to smell the sweet green grass of the lawns around the rich man's house as we trudged home from work, fagged out. It was tiresome to try to read in the public library at night with just enough energy to keep the eyes open. It cut deep to run across the boys and girls who went to high school and had nice homes.
But, boy oh boy! On Saturday night when we would clean up our machines with an oily rag, brush up and hurry home, the pay envelope with real money inside our pockets! That was something. I used to keep fifty cents a week. Now as I read the pros and cons of permitting young boys to work, I wonder whether I would have it different.
I learned a lot in the factories. I associated with real men who chewed tobacco, cussed, and discussed venereal diseases. I even worked next to a man who composed poetry and used to display his talents on the toilet walls. I know that hard factory work was bad for my health, and there were many things that I learned which a young boy had no business to know, but I could stand up against any boy when it came to knowing something of the world we live in and the kind of strange creature man is.
There were no unions then.
It was tough to smell the sweet green grass of the lawns around the rich man's house as we trudged home from work, fagged out. It was tiresome to try to read in the public library at night with just enough energy to keep the eyes open. It cut deep to run across the boys and girls who went to high school and had nice homes.
But, boy oh boy! On Saturday night when we would clean up our machines with an oily rag, brush up and hurry home, the pay envelope with real money inside our pockets! That was something. I used to keep fifty cents a week. Now as I read the pros and cons of permitting young boys to work, I wonder whether I would have it different.
I learned a lot in the factories. I associated with real men who chewed tobacco, cussed, and discussed venereal diseases. I even worked next to a man who composed poetry and used to display his talents on the toilet walls. I know that hard factory work was bad for my health, and there were many things that I learned which a young boy had no business to know, but I could stand up against any boy when it came to knowing something of the world we live in and the kind of strange creature man is.
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