'http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

Have you ever felt guilty eating a piece of chocolate? Maybe you should. There's still a lot of it produced with child slave labor.

I picked apples for $.50 a bushel, cherries for $5.00 a case, and thinned sugar beets at $.50 a two hundred yard row when I was a kid - sun up to sun set...so?

Nowadays kids won't even do manual labor anymore, and they expect $10.00 an hour for sitting on their butts... A generation of lazy shyyts!!

Pass the chocolate -

quote:

Originally posted by billbright:
'http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

Have you ever felt guilty eating a piece of chocolate? Maybe you should. There's still a lot of it produced with child slave labor.

Are you talking about the the cocoa fields around the world? Where not only kids, but some adults are being forced to work in the feilds.

I think the have some green wyas to find out if the cocoa that goes into your chocolate
has been done right. I think the label says something like green harvested or fair compensation showing that it was done right and ip pays the farmers and the workers a good
wage for working. This way it does away with some of the slavery.

There is a product called Fair Trade Coffee it has been done around the world and is reaching into other products, maybe a heads up to them will start the ball rolling???

Now, what about products made in China, India, and Pakistan? Try to get dressed without wearing child-labor products from Wal-MArt, etc. all over yer body - -

Plus what we think is horrible wages in our country isnt necessarily there, in fact it could be a really good wage. Yes there is still child labor out there in countries but compared to what it use to be it has improved.

Shoot I do remember being able to work at 12, I would babysit 3 kids for 3 hours a day after school 2 days a week, for $2 an hour. These days the teenagers want $5 per hour per child. That is more than minimum wage, I don't think so.

Hauling hay for $5.00 a ton was how I got in shape for football during high school years - -

Nobody lifted weights back then - They WORKED!!

Laid Sod all summer or tore off roofs for peanuts. Went to high school half a day and A.V.T.S the other. Worked at a full service gas station during the school year till 23:30. I missed a lot of sports I wanted to play. Shidt Happens!

I don't want any type of abuse to children, animals or adults, but there is nothing wrong with hard work.

The greedy corruption that goes on does not have to be, they can still produce, make money, treat their employees right and all without the abuse.

The two jobs I had that I hate the worst was cleaning manure out of commercial chicken coops and loading a dump truck by hand with rocks varying from about softball to basketball in size. I was supposed to get $10.00 for the truck load of rocks. I was about 12 at the time, and that was a lot of money. The guy had harrowed the rocks up out of some pasture he wanted to plant with alfalfa. It was a job Dad hunted up for me. I threw rocks in that truck all one day and never saw a dime - -

Dad contracted the chicken coop jobs for fertilizer for the five acres of apple orchard we had. Some times the ammonia would be so strong when throwing that stuff into wheel borrows to haul out to the the dump truck that it was all I could do to stubble outside for fresh air without collapsing. Never got a nickle for days of doing that either - -

As for the orchard, I got paid by the guy that used to own it $.50 a bushel for picking right along side the Mexicans he brought in, except they got to pick the bottoms of the trees, and local kids had to pick the tops. The Mexicans saw to that!

Once Dad bought the place, he only used local pickers - us three kids, local kids and their mothers mostly. They got paid. I didn't, because it was my job to take care of the whole place, water turns and such - so the occasional rifle as a gift, or hunting trip was supposed to be pay enough. Well, that didn't pay for a date or a car - so I also started working 4 or 5 days a week as a life guard at a water resort, as much as 10 hours a day at $1.00 an hour. Everybody I knew did that kinda stuff. Ya watched TV (3 Channels) from 8PM on if you could keep yer eyes open - -

quote:

Nowadays kids won't even do manual labor anymore, and they expect $10.00 an hour for sitting on their butts... A generation of lazy shyyts!!

I agree GWG, except in my house, I make my kids tow the line.

The worst work I ever did was hauling hay with a long bed P/U, no automatic nothing, .07 cents a bale, from the fields to be stacked properly in the barn. You can't get the itch out of those t-shirts, you gottta throw them away. The most me and my brother and one cousin did in one day was 1200 bales, from 0700 till 1230 at night, my gawd, I never want to do that ever again. 1982

quote:

Originally posted by greywolfghost:
I picked apples for $.50 a bushel, cherries for $5.00 a case, and thinned sugar beets at $.50 a two hundred yard row when I was a kid - sun up to sun set...so?

Nowadays kids won't even do manual labor anymore, and they expect $10.00 an hour for sitting on their butts... A generation of lazy shyyts!!

Pass the chocolate -

half a cent a pound picking beans and 50 cents a half bushel basket racking wild blueberries in the 50"s in Maine you got paid more

I cleaned a coin operated laundry refilled the
soap and bleach vending machines. I also refilled the soda machine.

I collected the coins from all the machines and
turned it over to the owners.

The owners also owned liquor store, which was next door to the laundry. When I was not cleaning the laundry, I was stacking cases of liqour in the basement of the liquor.

That was slightly illegal to have a kid working in a liquor store...even if it was in the basement!

The Guv'mint keeps takin my munny.

Isn't that slavery.


FREEDOM TO THE PEOPLE...

Attention old guys who worked when they were kids, like I did (I'm 65).
The vast majority of those kids slaving away in fields and shops in faraway places today have no opportunity to better themselves and we did. We were not chained in a system of drudgery for pennies a day with no hope for a future. Each of us has done well and our 'child labor' was short lived. I grew up in the Rockies of Western Montana and kids working was the norm, and often for nothing (call it choirs) and it was often dangerous (I did once get paid to help a neighbor rancher load cattle on box cars, got fifty cents for a day’s work.)
So comparing our own 'child labor' to third world countries is not only unfair but unrealistic. I have seen those sweat shops in SE Asia and Mexico and it's unlikely any native born American had to do anything close to that.
btw after I got out of the service in the early 1970s I picked pears and apples and made some good money for doing that. Was glad to do it, too, as it also offered me ‘flexible hours’.
Second thought: ever wonder why bananas are cheaper than apples grown in your own state?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: reducetension,

quote:

Second thought: ever wonder why bananas are cheaper than apples grown in your own state?

Cuz they can be picked green and shipped, and one slice of the machete gets you 2 bushel at once. Apples have to be picked individually, not by the branch -

You ever had a fight at 15 with your old man over whether you will pick apples all fall or play football in high-school - I mean a real fight? Kids being farmed out as day labor by parents ain't a new idea to me - -

reduce, we are fortunate that we have child labor laws in this country!

quote:

Originally posted by Bergy46:
reduce, we are fortunate that we have child labor laws in this country!

Yes indeed or you'd still have parents farming their children out for 'slave labor'!

Never-the-less, none of us got 'stuck' with anything close to what those kids in third world countries do! btw the US government fought instituting child labor laws right into the 20th Century. Big business likes cheap labor.

quote:

Originally posted by greywolfghost:

quote:

Second thought: ever wonder why bananas are cheaper than apples grown in your own state?

Cuz they can be picked green and shipped, and one slice of the machete gets you 2 bushel at once. Apples have to be picked individually, not by the branch -

You ever had a fight at 15 with your old man over whether you will pick apples all fall or play football in high-school - I mean a real fight? Kids being farmed out as day labor by parents ain't a new idea to me - -

Well actually, wolf, my old man did take me out to pick apples at 15 and I didn't question it. Didn't play football where I went to school in Montana. The adults had other ideas of how to use our time after school and it didn't involve a ball.

quote:

Originally posted by greywolfghost:
I picked apples for $.50 a bushel, cherries for $5.00 a case, and thinned sugar beets at $.50 a two hundred yard row when I was a kid - sun up to sun set...so?

Nowadays kids won't even do manual labor anymore, and they expect $10.00 an hour for sitting on their butts... A generation of lazy shyyts!!

Pass the chocolate -

Amen Brother. You took the words right out of my mouth.