Labor Day -- 2011

As conservative political forces work hard to turn back the clock on government regulation, it's worthwhile to recall the conditions which created the needs for such governmental action.  Jack London's autobiographical story, "The Apostate" is a good place to start.  This comes from The Library of America "Story of the Week"
site.

http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2011/09/apostate.html

The Apostate

Jack London (1876–1916)
From Jack London: Novels and Stories

Interesting Links
“Child Labor in U.S. History” (Child Labor Education Project, University of Iowa)

Also of interest:
Jack London:
Novels and Social Writings
The People of the Abyss • The Road • The Iron Heel • Martin Eden • John Barleycorn • essays
See the table of contents
1,192 pages

Jack London worked a number of odd jobs during his childhood years in West Oakland, California: delivering newspapers, sweeping salon floors, and setting up pins in a bowling alley. After he completed grammar school in 1890 at the age of fourteen, he found employment at the nearby Hickmott’s cannery, where he spent twelve to eighteen hours a day stuffing pickles into jars—at ten cents an hour. The work was strenuous, tedious, and robotic, and the long hours kept the teenager from his favorite pastime: reading in the local library. As Alex Kershaw notes in his biography of London, “There had been no attempt to outlaw child labor in California, nor was there health and safety regulation, nor any limits on hours worked.” Toward the end of the century, some states began passing laws prohibiting factory and quarry work for children under fourteen, but evasion was widespread and enforcement was spotty. . . .