Childhood 200 Years Ago (when it was outrageous to limit work days to 12 hours or offer 30 minutes a day of education)

This little tidbit from Chris Jennings' fascinating Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. The Owen mentioned is Robert Owen who became fabulously wealthy operating factories using the new spinning jenny that boosted productivity enormously. This little excerpt is just a reminder of what childhood was like the early days of the Industrial Revolution and how viciously opposed people are even to the changes that strike future generations as obviously positive.

Owen used his newfound celebrity to back progressive legislation in Parliament. In 1815, he drafted a bill for the "Preservation of the Health and Morals of Apprentices ... in Cotton and other Mills." The bill had three central provisions: children under ten should be prohibited from working in mills; workers under eighteen should not work more than twelve hours a day; and young millworkers should receive a half hour of schooling each day.
Owen to Parliament expecting an enthusiastic response. Instead, the committee assigned to review the bill met him with startling hostility. "The employments of these Children in Cotton Mills is not sedentary [suggesting they were getting opportunities for physical activity]," one of the bill's opponents insisted; "it is neither laborious, nor such as tends to cramp their limbs, to distort their bodies, or to injure their health. Generally speaking those who are introduced young are most orderly, as might be expected from early habits of industry, attention, regularity, cleanliness, and subordination." A coalition of mill owners lobbied against the bill. In familiar language, they decried the proposed intrusion of big government into their industry. "Legislative interference betwixt the free labourer and his employer," they insisted, "is a violent, highly dangerous, and unconstitutional innovation." If children work fewer than twelve hours a day, some critics pointed out, their families will end up on the dole. As for the outlandish notion of providing young workers with thirty minutes of reading and arithmetic lessons each day, the claimed that "the unnatural mixture of education with work proposed by [Owen's] Bill, would not only be expensive and vexatious to the employer but impracticable in execution." Owen's proposed reforms would merely deprive the "heads of families of their natural control over their children," and "reduce the prohibitive labour of the Country." In short, the bill was an unpatriotic, antifamily job killer that would erode the morals of the working class by "throwing them idle and disorderly on the community too early in the evenings."

They Shoot Candidates Don't They? - The Most Dramatic Moment in Presidential Campaigning

For my nickel, Teddy Roosevelt provided the most dramatic moment of any presidential campaign. On his way to a rally, he was shot by a would-be assassin. He shook off advisers who insisted that he go to the hospital rather than the podium. The audience - in this time before cell phones, TVs, or even radio - had no idea that Roosevelt had just been shot until he dramatically opened his suit jacket to show the spread of blood. When his aides saw this, they panicked at the sight of so much blood and again insisted that he rush to the hospital and he again shook them off. (Now that, sports fans, is a called an attention getting opening and is far more effective than a joke.)

Roosevelt explained to his audience that his speech was more important than his safety. (And, fortunately, it was a long speech. The sheaf of papers in his breast pocket was so thick that it slowed the bullet. Had he been delivering a speech as succinct as the Gettysburg Address, he might have died.)

What mattered so much to Roosevelt? Issues that today we take for granted, issues that helped to create a far better world where capitalism in its rawest form was tempered by something more just and less brutal. His platform included advocacy of the vote for woman, limits on child labor, the introduction of old-age insurance, regulations on business and an end to racist practices. Although Roosevelt never served another term, there were probably no issues that better defined the difference between 1900 and 2000 than the issues he championed in this death-defying speech. He lost his bid for a third term (this time as a Bull Moose rather than Republican) but his issues eventually won.

I don't just love this story about Roosevelt. I love the thought of how speechless would be today's pundits and analysts who endlessly dissect oddly trivial moments like Clinton's recent emotional moment. Now that would be campaign coverage.