Child Labor Laws

All the people complaining about the cold weather this year have prompted recollections of delivering newspapers while growing up in North Dakota. Thinking about this made me think about the absurdity in some of the loopholes in child labor laws.

I delivered newspapers from late grade school through early high school. This was really about the only way to earn money available to someone that age because child labor laws prohibited you from having a real job that worked real hours that paid a real wage.

So instead I got up around 4:30 am to deliver newspapers on my 7 mile long paper route in subzero temperatures combatting stray dogs and ice and snow. My dad was nice enough to drive me around on the route if the windchill was 30 below zero or greater. I have many memories of getting up in the dark and staring bleary eyed at the TV screen hoping that The Weather Channel would say that it was below -30. There are not many of us that actually pray for those temperatures.

Then there was the pay…..7 cents a paper? You have got to be joking. This is typically well below minimum wage. And they forget to mention that they don’t even actually pay you. They send you a bill for the papers they give you and it is up to you to collect from the customers and pay the bill. The extra is yours to keep for your efforts. You have no idea how many people will actually have no qualms about stiffing a kid. What a bunch of low-lifes. I know there were months that I actually paid to be subjected to this cruelty.

So, where were the child labor laws here? I couldn’t wash dishes in a nice warm restaurant for a decent wage at decent hours but I could be out in the freezing dark for hours for less than minimum wage? Sounds like government bureaucracy at its best.

"Help, help!! I'm being repressed! I'm being repressed!"
from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail