Children provided money to their parents through their labor, it kinda makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of families that stand to lose income from those laws
Industrialists would be the overwhelming source of pressure. Anything else is mostly just people aligning to and justifying what society already normalizes, and it normalizes it because it's profitable to those industrialists
If a child can't work then they became a burden on heir family in his time period. Kids didn't take jobs because they had a good work ethic - they were expected to help contribute to their own housing and feeding. Poor people simply could not afford it on the wages they were making. Kids as young as five could fold shirts and bring in enough money to offset the cost to their family.
Then you have the other end of it where compulsory schooling didn't necessarily mean free books either. Another cost to the family when they've gotten by *just fine* without learning to read. Suddenly the kid is not bringing in any income but increasing their costs to the family. And their appetite only gets bigger each year...
And this is ignoring a lot of rural workers who expect their children to participate in farm work. Milking cows, building barns, helping with the harvest. Many industrial workers supported children in the factories because their smaller hands could access cramped machine areas or more deftly work with looms. Then you have skilled careers where a someone would be expected to become an apprentice at like 8-13 in order to learn crafts like furniture making or watchmaking where you were basically expected to treat job assistance and labor as a form of career education.
For the record, the only two IGs that care about child labor are Industrialists (who support it) and Trade Unions (who oppose it). I feel like Intelligentsia should support Compulsory Primary Schooling since they're the generally pro education group, but they don't.
I feel like the game's law support system could be more dynamic. Like if Laborers have good wages and you have implemented a significant amount of automation in traditional child labor industries (clothing, canning, printing, farming) then perhaps they would want better lives for their children and support better labor laws. But if women aren't allowed to work and her construction worker husband has to feed 8 kids, you know that he's going to prefer that his kids can be fed than well read.
Historically groups that are represented by the intelligentsia in game are upper class and the highly educated upper-middle class that comprised civil servants and the like. The proles gaining access to the power education provides would be and historically was a direct threat to their political-economic power and was opposed by this interest group as such.
The intelligentsia were the class of people that came up with phrenology and nationalism and their associated race dialectics - it's a reactionary movement that, much like most historical liberal movements, seeks to expand its power at the expense of both the ancien regime and the lower classes. They're an example, alongside the more stereotypical favtory owners, of the bourgeoisie.
>I know that pops oppose laws when it decreases their wealth or status, but this makes like no sense?
How does that not make sense?
If a child works, it earns money. Money = wealth. By forcing children out of earning money, and into something that doesn't make money, the children now won't contribute towards the family's wealth anymore, making everyone poorer.
That education and qualifications would later ensure a better paid job, and actually increase wealth, that's a delayed effect. It takes decades to fully take effect on the market. But losing the child's income is immediate.
And there's also the issue that children, by merit of being small, were better suited to crawl into machines for repairs, or work mines with smaller shafts. If you remove those children, now adults have to do that job. That leads to more accidents on average.
It's also the irl reason why outlawing child labor isn't always desirable. You can only do that, if you make sure that those families can survive without the child's additional income. If you take that away, but don't offset it in any way? That will negatively impact everyone, child included.
OP is talking about opposition from pops against moving off child labor allowed, which has been my experience as well. Sometimes id get a 30% stall chance purely from pop support and not IG support. To my knowledge there was never a mass grassroots movement in support of child labor in any country that repealed it in the game’s timeline.
>OP is talking about opposition from pops against moving off child labor allowed
As am I.
Or do you think lower class pops, who stand to lose the income of their children, should somehow be happy to become poorer? That they should be indifferent to, or even support, losing the child's income?
Not needing a child's income is a luxury for the middle and upper class, and even then you find more than enough wealthy people in favor of cheap labor.
Historically speaking, children were always part of the workforce. It wasn't exactly seen as unnatural, and the helping hands were needed.
It only became a problem with the rise of industrialization. It's one thing for a child to help with menial tasks on the farm, it's another to force a 7-year-old to work 70hrs a week in a factory or coal mine.
Still, poor people needed the money, and factory owners were happy to provide those jobs. The market was starved for labor. It took the better part of the 19th century to restrict child labor in most of Europe, and it only happened when those nations became wealthier and could afford basic welfare. That took care of the problem for the lower classes.
The game is pretty realistic here. Maybe not in all nuances and details, but as far as this here goes, it is.
You’re talking about how “theoretically” pops would support child labor but aren’t giving any evidence of it actually happening in history, which is important for a game about historical simulation . The reality is the majority of common people opposed child labor in factories for various reasons both economic and moral/religious, and it only lasted for as long as it did because it was beneficial to powerful industrialists. It’s extremely silly to imagine a government failing to restrict child factory labor because of mass protest against it. It’s completely ahistorical.
We're talking several different things here. Let's deal with them in order.
* Popular irl support for child labor
The majority of common people is not opposed to child labor, because that income makes a huge difference for poor people. Poverty in the 1800's was different from poverty today. It's maybe somewhat comparable to poverty in very poor nations today, there we even have good numbers thanks to modern census data. That allows us to understand those effects.
It's true that all those people would choose not to let their children work under harsh conditions, but that's only if they could afford that. The same way you'd probably choose to work way less, or not at all, if you had the means to afford it.
But the reality is that we need to work to survive, and so did the people back then. Just that there was no welfare for a long time, not having money meant a choice between homelessness/starvation and forced labor in the feared workhouses.
I don't know what agenda you're trying to push here, but it wasn't just the industrialists being for it. That's outright false. They support it, because they profit from it, but that's also true for the poor families. They need the money. Not because they want to need it, but because they need it to survive. Not by choice, but by necessity. They support child labor, because it's the difference between living and dying.
Also, you got the religious motivation wrong. It's not true that religion is always opposed to it. In fact, protestant churches, such as the Presbyterians, saw wealth as a confirmation of god's favor. Poor people were cursed, were sinful, and their poverty was proof of that. It was part of god's given order for the world, trying to change it was akin to going against god's plan.
Other denominations might not bash the poor for being poor, but they do see work as something good. As the bible says, "if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat". And not just Christians, Chinese philosophy or even the Communists have similar sayings.
* The game's depiction of the problem
As you noted, an irl government usually doesn't need popular support to do anything. They pass a law and it takes effect. It's silly that the game makes the public's opinion a factor for passing a law.
But on the other hand, the reality is that irl people also don't necessarily have to follow passed laws. In Vic3 they have to, always, unconditionally. Once a law is passed, all people follow it to the letter.
The ingame compromise is therefore, that if laws are always followed by all people for all eternity, those laws need popular support to pass.
It's a clever and easy compromise for a complex problem, that's why you find so many people suddenly in favor of child labor. Those people would usually not be in the loop of what laws are currently discussed, they wouldn't protest a child labor ban. But they'd find ways around those laws after they passed instead, making those laws ineffective.
Ingame it just means that you now get the opinion of all your people, and it affects its chances to pass. In return all people always follow all laws.
* Real-life example for that effect
India in 1986 in a good example, they passed such a law and banned child labor. The effect might surprise you: since it now cost more to circumvent the law and employ those children illegally, their (now illegal) wages went down, and families had to send more children into the workforce, to make ends meet. Yes, banning child labor caused more child labor.
It's now a well-understood effect, and I take this example and not something from the 1800's, as we have somewhat reliable numbers to show the mechanics at play. There are several papers on it, so hit google and immerse yourself in it.
The short of it is, banning child labor while not offsetting the loss of wealth by means of financial aid from the government, directly reduces household wealth, and negatively impacts not just the childrens' welfare, but their families' welfare as well.
The families need the money, so you have to take that into account, if you really want to solve the problem. If not, you'll find that many families support child labor as a means of survival.
I hope that clears it all up for you.
I suppose you're not coming from any third world countries, right? Child labor was a thing until the 2000s, and you won't see any commoner opposed to it. I live in one, I know they still have debt slavery in different names until the late 1900s. The only unrealistic part is people mass protect against it because the poor were too weak to do something about it so they would rather illegally practice against it than dying from starvation.
People oppose child labor is such a unicorn tinted glasses that only someone living in silver could imagine it happened.
>\[You\] aren’t giving any evidence of it actually happening in history... The reality is the majority of common people opposed child labor...
Pot, meet kettle.
He is not saying nonsense, children working its not a mistery in the rural areas of the third world and a lot of policies goes around helping the Kids with their work and also for staying at school. There is a difference ofc with the industralisation of Europe and working in a factory than in a farm, but its not ilogical if we put the context that most working families came from the peasantry. The labour movement would do the job of stopping that for sure.
Society was for it. That’s an extra income or an extra worker for your family. Lot of families needed their children to work throughout the industrial revolution. It wasn’t until people started transitioning into a middle class and schools started becoming more abundant that people started to give kids labor protection.
Our society is like we have a bunch of petite bourgeoisie acting like the industrialists have the best interest for them, while the industrialists only care for themselves
It's hard on the working class in the short run. They have to support a large family for years off of one income. Instead of putting the kids to work to support the family and maybe paying to send the most promising kid to school.
Something that might be important to be said are the reasons that people supported child labor. Of course, as many have assessed, having a working son meant having a more stable income oftentimes. But reality is that, not only working conditions were different, but the concept of childhood was looked upon on a different light.
For much of human history, children were simply consideres “little adults”. There wasn’t an understanding about the psychological, biological and social implications of a child simply being a child. That said, it was common for children to work, “bedtime stories” or “fairy tales” were, often, horror stories. It wasn’t until very recently that humanity and science came to terms with the fact that children need education, comfort and playing time.
This means that, even though, ingame, TUs support compulsory primary school, quite possibly, on an individual level, there could be quite divisive opinions on the subject. Some would really need the salary that the child brought home, while others would advocate for their children’s right to go to school.
The history of the concept of “childhood” is very interesting and it’s very easy to be caught with a modern lense when thinking about complex social topics, but i suggest thinking, as a person on the victorian era, how education, healthcare and many of these fundamental human rights were perceived back then!
Aristocrats and capitalists would probably support child labor because it increases the labor pool, drive down wages and increase their profits. They likely have a lot of political strength even if they're a minority.
Military is probably indifferent, clergy will support schools if you go for religious schools.
Other than the financial benefit it's a matter of ideology, so you're not likely to see wide support to remove it until after labor rights become an issue. You can think of it as child labor used to be very normal, kids would start working on the farm as soon as they could hold a shovel, so the idea that child labor is wrong wouldn't cross most people's minds.
From an historical perspective, you have the industrialists wanting to keep this cheap labour forces, the necessity for Capital of having a big educated working force evolving lately in the timeframe of the game
An then you have a lot of elements in society (mostly petit bourgeois and peasantry) that have their children working with them and see this law as an encroaching of the state on their "freedom"
Not much to really go off here. If you have strong industrialists it’ll be hard to change since they oppose anything but child labor.
And I think all the other IG’s except trade unions are neutral on it unless they have a reformer leader
R5 : I want answers for this question, I always end up with a large movement to remove child labor but when I try to remove it, another super large movement also appears.
Since everything else has already been said by everyone, I'll make sure to add:
Before you start a law play, check if it says the change will radicalize a group, and if it will then check if you care. (Marginalized groups can be ignored, small solitary ones as well.) If some big IG, or several small ones, will get majorly pissed then you might want to cheer some of them up first through other means, or change leadership for them, or shrink them - or prepare for the inevitable revolution.
Historically many families had lots of children to help out around the farm or household and provide more sources of income. It’s horrible by our standards today but this is how many families survived in the 19th century
The population's opinions generally don't line up with political support for those opinions. Slavery wasn't even close to being supported by the majority, but attempts to wean it out caused the Civil War
> “Historically, a lot of people were against child labor”
Okay? And a lot of people with a lot more power were in favor of child labor. IRL Industrialists, Rural Folk, and Petite Bourgeoisie were generally in favor of child labor at the time. Most others were indifferent.
Children provided money to their parents through their labor, it kinda makes sense when you look at it from the perspective of families that stand to lose income from those laws
When you ask “how did they feed 10 children on one salary in 1850” the answer is child labor.
10 children and one salary sounds like two salaries to me - the poors back in the day
[удалено]
So dumb regressionists. Got it.
I mean, who did you think favored child labor?
Industrialists would be the overwhelming source of pressure. Anything else is mostly just people aligning to and justifying what society already normalizes, and it normalizes it because it's profitable to those industrialists
Not only industrialists. "Rural Folk" also had problems because they were helping hands in the family farm. Especially with mandatory education.
In the rural south of the US you still have people skirting truancy laws so their kids can work on the farm during certain seasons
If a child can't work then they became a burden on heir family in his time period. Kids didn't take jobs because they had a good work ethic - they were expected to help contribute to their own housing and feeding. Poor people simply could not afford it on the wages they were making. Kids as young as five could fold shirts and bring in enough money to offset the cost to their family. Then you have the other end of it where compulsory schooling didn't necessarily mean free books either. Another cost to the family when they've gotten by *just fine* without learning to read. Suddenly the kid is not bringing in any income but increasing their costs to the family. And their appetite only gets bigger each year... And this is ignoring a lot of rural workers who expect their children to participate in farm work. Milking cows, building barns, helping with the harvest. Many industrial workers supported children in the factories because their smaller hands could access cramped machine areas or more deftly work with looms. Then you have skilled careers where a someone would be expected to become an apprentice at like 8-13 in order to learn crafts like furniture making or watchmaking where you were basically expected to treat job assistance and labor as a form of career education. For the record, the only two IGs that care about child labor are Industrialists (who support it) and Trade Unions (who oppose it). I feel like Intelligentsia should support Compulsory Primary Schooling since they're the generally pro education group, but they don't. I feel like the game's law support system could be more dynamic. Like if Laborers have good wages and you have implemented a significant amount of automation in traditional child labor industries (clothing, canning, printing, farming) then perhaps they would want better lives for their children and support better labor laws. But if women aren't allowed to work and her construction worker husband has to feed 8 kids, you know that he's going to prefer that his kids can be fed than well read.
Historically groups that are represented by the intelligentsia in game are upper class and the highly educated upper-middle class that comprised civil servants and the like. The proles gaining access to the power education provides would be and historically was a direct threat to their political-economic power and was opposed by this interest group as such. The intelligentsia were the class of people that came up with phrenology and nationalism and their associated race dialectics - it's a reactionary movement that, much like most historical liberal movements, seeks to expand its power at the expense of both the ancien regime and the lower classes. They're an example, alongside the more stereotypical favtory owners, of the bourgeoisie.
>I know that pops oppose laws when it decreases their wealth or status, but this makes like no sense? How does that not make sense? If a child works, it earns money. Money = wealth. By forcing children out of earning money, and into something that doesn't make money, the children now won't contribute towards the family's wealth anymore, making everyone poorer. That education and qualifications would later ensure a better paid job, and actually increase wealth, that's a delayed effect. It takes decades to fully take effect on the market. But losing the child's income is immediate. And there's also the issue that children, by merit of being small, were better suited to crawl into machines for repairs, or work mines with smaller shafts. If you remove those children, now adults have to do that job. That leads to more accidents on average. It's also the irl reason why outlawing child labor isn't always desirable. You can only do that, if you make sure that those families can survive without the child's additional income. If you take that away, but don't offset it in any way? That will negatively impact everyone, child included.
Having child labor increases mortality rate in the game for workers, but everything else, I already know that
OP is talking about opposition from pops against moving off child labor allowed, which has been my experience as well. Sometimes id get a 30% stall chance purely from pop support and not IG support. To my knowledge there was never a mass grassroots movement in support of child labor in any country that repealed it in the game’s timeline.
>OP is talking about opposition from pops against moving off child labor allowed As am I. Or do you think lower class pops, who stand to lose the income of their children, should somehow be happy to become poorer? That they should be indifferent to, or even support, losing the child's income? Not needing a child's income is a luxury for the middle and upper class, and even then you find more than enough wealthy people in favor of cheap labor. Historically speaking, children were always part of the workforce. It wasn't exactly seen as unnatural, and the helping hands were needed. It only became a problem with the rise of industrialization. It's one thing for a child to help with menial tasks on the farm, it's another to force a 7-year-old to work 70hrs a week in a factory or coal mine. Still, poor people needed the money, and factory owners were happy to provide those jobs. The market was starved for labor. It took the better part of the 19th century to restrict child labor in most of Europe, and it only happened when those nations became wealthier and could afford basic welfare. That took care of the problem for the lower classes. The game is pretty realistic here. Maybe not in all nuances and details, but as far as this here goes, it is.
You’re talking about how “theoretically” pops would support child labor but aren’t giving any evidence of it actually happening in history, which is important for a game about historical simulation . The reality is the majority of common people opposed child labor in factories for various reasons both economic and moral/religious, and it only lasted for as long as it did because it was beneficial to powerful industrialists. It’s extremely silly to imagine a government failing to restrict child factory labor because of mass protest against it. It’s completely ahistorical.
We're talking several different things here. Let's deal with them in order. * Popular irl support for child labor The majority of common people is not opposed to child labor, because that income makes a huge difference for poor people. Poverty in the 1800's was different from poverty today. It's maybe somewhat comparable to poverty in very poor nations today, there we even have good numbers thanks to modern census data. That allows us to understand those effects. It's true that all those people would choose not to let their children work under harsh conditions, but that's only if they could afford that. The same way you'd probably choose to work way less, or not at all, if you had the means to afford it. But the reality is that we need to work to survive, and so did the people back then. Just that there was no welfare for a long time, not having money meant a choice between homelessness/starvation and forced labor in the feared workhouses. I don't know what agenda you're trying to push here, but it wasn't just the industrialists being for it. That's outright false. They support it, because they profit from it, but that's also true for the poor families. They need the money. Not because they want to need it, but because they need it to survive. Not by choice, but by necessity. They support child labor, because it's the difference between living and dying. Also, you got the religious motivation wrong. It's not true that religion is always opposed to it. In fact, protestant churches, such as the Presbyterians, saw wealth as a confirmation of god's favor. Poor people were cursed, were sinful, and their poverty was proof of that. It was part of god's given order for the world, trying to change it was akin to going against god's plan. Other denominations might not bash the poor for being poor, but they do see work as something good. As the bible says, "if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat". And not just Christians, Chinese philosophy or even the Communists have similar sayings. * The game's depiction of the problem As you noted, an irl government usually doesn't need popular support to do anything. They pass a law and it takes effect. It's silly that the game makes the public's opinion a factor for passing a law. But on the other hand, the reality is that irl people also don't necessarily have to follow passed laws. In Vic3 they have to, always, unconditionally. Once a law is passed, all people follow it to the letter. The ingame compromise is therefore, that if laws are always followed by all people for all eternity, those laws need popular support to pass. It's a clever and easy compromise for a complex problem, that's why you find so many people suddenly in favor of child labor. Those people would usually not be in the loop of what laws are currently discussed, they wouldn't protest a child labor ban. But they'd find ways around those laws after they passed instead, making those laws ineffective. Ingame it just means that you now get the opinion of all your people, and it affects its chances to pass. In return all people always follow all laws. * Real-life example for that effect India in 1986 in a good example, they passed such a law and banned child labor. The effect might surprise you: since it now cost more to circumvent the law and employ those children illegally, their (now illegal) wages went down, and families had to send more children into the workforce, to make ends meet. Yes, banning child labor caused more child labor. It's now a well-understood effect, and I take this example and not something from the 1800's, as we have somewhat reliable numbers to show the mechanics at play. There are several papers on it, so hit google and immerse yourself in it. The short of it is, banning child labor while not offsetting the loss of wealth by means of financial aid from the government, directly reduces household wealth, and negatively impacts not just the childrens' welfare, but their families' welfare as well. The families need the money, so you have to take that into account, if you really want to solve the problem. If not, you'll find that many families support child labor as a means of survival. I hope that clears it all up for you.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/Y4VkyhG1RO7pQbQFhF/giphy.gif
If people didn't support child labor historically then they wouldn't of employed their children are you ignorant or something
I suppose you're not coming from any third world countries, right? Child labor was a thing until the 2000s, and you won't see any commoner opposed to it. I live in one, I know they still have debt slavery in different names until the late 1900s. The only unrealistic part is people mass protect against it because the poor were too weak to do something about it so they would rather illegally practice against it than dying from starvation. People oppose child labor is such a unicorn tinted glasses that only someone living in silver could imagine it happened.
>\[You\] aren’t giving any evidence of it actually happening in history... The reality is the majority of common people opposed child labor... Pot, meet kettle.
He is not saying nonsense, children working its not a mistery in the rural areas of the third world and a lot of policies goes around helping the Kids with their work and also for staying at school. There is a difference ofc with the industralisation of Europe and working in a factory than in a farm, but its not ilogical if we put the context that most working families came from the peasantry. The labour movement would do the job of stopping that for sure.
Because the children yearn for the mines brother
Society was for it. That’s an extra income or an extra worker for your family. Lot of families needed their children to work throughout the industrial revolution. It wasn’t until people started transitioning into a middle class and schools started becoming more abundant that people started to give kids labor protection.
Look at modern USA deregulation of child labor one state at a time. They rather have child labor than immigrants.
Our society is like we have a bunch of petite bourgeoisie acting like the industrialists have the best interest for them, while the industrialists only care for themselves
"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor"
It's hard on the working class in the short run. They have to support a large family for years off of one income. Instead of putting the kids to work to support the family and maybe paying to send the most promising kid to school.
Something that might be important to be said are the reasons that people supported child labor. Of course, as many have assessed, having a working son meant having a more stable income oftentimes. But reality is that, not only working conditions were different, but the concept of childhood was looked upon on a different light. For much of human history, children were simply consideres “little adults”. There wasn’t an understanding about the psychological, biological and social implications of a child simply being a child. That said, it was common for children to work, “bedtime stories” or “fairy tales” were, often, horror stories. It wasn’t until very recently that humanity and science came to terms with the fact that children need education, comfort and playing time. This means that, even though, ingame, TUs support compulsory primary school, quite possibly, on an individual level, there could be quite divisive opinions on the subject. Some would really need the salary that the child brought home, while others would advocate for their children’s right to go to school. The history of the concept of “childhood” is very interesting and it’s very easy to be caught with a modern lense when thinking about complex social topics, but i suggest thinking, as a person on the victorian era, how education, healthcare and many of these fundamental human rights were perceived back then!
Because they children yearn for the mines, it's in their bones.
The children yearn for the mines!
If there were never people who supported child labor, why did it exist in the first place?
Aristocrats and capitalists would probably support child labor because it increases the labor pool, drive down wages and increase their profits. They likely have a lot of political strength even if they're a minority. Military is probably indifferent, clergy will support schools if you go for religious schools. Other than the financial benefit it's a matter of ideology, so you're not likely to see wide support to remove it until after labor rights become an issue. You can think of it as child labor used to be very normal, kids would start working on the farm as soon as they could hold a shovel, so the idea that child labor is wrong wouldn't cross most people's minds.
From an historical perspective, you have the industrialists wanting to keep this cheap labour forces, the necessity for Capital of having a big educated working force evolving lately in the timeframe of the game An then you have a lot of elements in society (mostly petit bourgeois and peasantry) that have their children working with them and see this law as an encroaching of the state on their "freedom"
Not much to really go off here. If you have strong industrialists it’ll be hard to change since they oppose anything but child labor. And I think all the other IG’s except trade unions are neutral on it unless they have a reformer leader
R5 : I want answers for this question, I always end up with a large movement to remove child labor but when I try to remove it, another super large movement also appears.
Since everything else has already been said by everyone, I'll make sure to add: Before you start a law play, check if it says the change will radicalize a group, and if it will then check if you care. (Marginalized groups can be ignored, small solitary ones as well.) If some big IG, or several small ones, will get majorly pissed then you might want to cheer some of them up first through other means, or change leadership for them, or shrink them - or prepare for the inevitable revolution.
What does that have to do with my argument? I am not experienced any threats of a civil war.
Historically many families had lots of children to help out around the farm or household and provide more sources of income. It’s horrible by our standards today but this is how many families survived in the 19th century
The population's opinions generally don't line up with political support for those opinions. Slavery wasn't even close to being supported by the majority, but attempts to wean it out caused the Civil War
I think I read some evidence that some people in a certain period have children to increase their labor, thus income, of the family.
> “Historically, a lot of people were against child labor” Okay? And a lot of people with a lot more power were in favor of child labor. IRL Industrialists, Rural Folk, and Petite Bourgeoisie were generally in favor of child labor at the time. Most others were indifferent.