My school holidays from at age 10-12 were spent working on a farm & from 12-14 I worked for a roofing contractor & at 14 I started my apprenticeship. For me school holidays always meant work.

Big Nana,

I hope you're not condoning child labour in Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

The use and abuse of child labour was absolutely abhorrent. What those poor children went through is one of the great black spots in history and human behaviour.

Please find time to read some of the accounts to be found in the history and sociology literature. Children as young as 4 were put to work; a large group of children aged 8-14 employed by one mill spent 12-14 hours a day in the factory and rest of the day corralled together in a barn to sleep, only to be woken at 4 am to be marched down to the mill for another day of work. And the horror of putting an 8 year old, boys and girls, into the dark unventilated coal mines where they crawled several miles on hands and knees to the coal face.

How many children died because of these conditions. The lucky ones ran away but only to places like London where they probably ended up as prostitutes and thieves or at the end of the rope. And of those that stayed in the mills how many committed suicide?

Big Nana, children are not small adults to be used in the same way as adults, which is how people thought in the 19th century. We don't do this nowadays in our society because people need to be trained over long periods to perform the tasks in the workforce. The types of jobs on offer require children to be educated to a higher age and to do several years of vocational training at university and technical colleges.

Misopinionated,

My god, what a moron. Just because someone points out that young people had to work from early ages in earlier times, doesn't mean they condone it. But I suspect you know at least that much.

After all, until well into the twentieth century in Australia, the vast majority of kids went only to primary school. Public secondary schools weren't built until around 1900, and well afterwards in the countryside. So of course, they were expected to go out to work from twelve and thirteen. The compulsory age of fourteen wasn't instituted until (I think) around 1914. And even then, in the rural areas, if a kid lived more than a few miles from a school, they didn't even need to EVER go to school. I don't think my mum's father ever went school, he was selling meat off the back of a cart from the age of nine.

Many wonderful sociologists wrote extensively about the inequities of class: Robert Redfield, Oscar Lewis, Aaron Wildavsky, John U. Ogbu, all contributed enormously to the understanding of persistent class inequality, about different aspects of it. All died far too young, around sixty. Who knows what they could have written if they had lived another twenty years.

Their works would be available on Google Scholar, or from Book Depository (postage free). Give them a try.

Joe

Child labour. How did that get into the act. The people we are talking about, adults and children, are all on benefits provided by white 'racists'. No work for them. And the female trouble makers are thriving on it - all grossly obese.

LOUDmouth,

Actually, you would provide a good case study re child labour, having yourself left school after Grade 6 and then going to work. I'm sure you have some interesting stories to tell.

If people haven’t now woken up to what two-faced, gutless grubs the creeps they keep putting into office are, they never will. The China virus has been the instrument to reveal all.

People can’t travel, go to the football, attend funerals or worship in a church, but thousands of thugs can march shoulder to shoulder, blocking streets and shouting germs in the cause of anarchy and get away with it.

In South Australia, the Police Commissioner - whose officers have been harassing and fining people for breaches of draconian social distancing laws - said it was OK for thugs to parade in Adelaide on Saturday.

Our ELECTED premier did bugger-all.

If Australian voters have any sense at all, they will regard politicians in a very different light in future, and start demanding people who can be relied on to do the job they are paid (over-paid) to do. The current duds have hidden behind so-called experts for the duration