Robert Owen Quotes

And the children? Twelve hours of work for children! 0, misery. But not all the Jules Simon of the Academy of Moral and Political Science, not all the Germanys of Jesuitism, could have invented a vice more degrading to the intelligence of the children, more corrupting of their instincts, more destructive of their organism than work in the vitiated atmosphere of the capitalist factory

Very often the children are awakened by the parents at four in the morning. They are pulled out of bed when almost asleep. The younger children are carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents till they go home at night, and are sent to bed.

No child should be born to work at the cost of his childhood and freedom..

The mill-owners obtained their wealth by overworking and by defrauding the factory children. They were praying people, but took care their work people should neither have time nor strength to pray. These hypocrites pretended it was necessary to keep these poor infant slaves at this excruciating labour just to preserve them from "bad company" and to prevent them learning "bad habits".

Around 80% of Liberians are unemployed and only half of all children go to primary school. Just one in 20 go on to secondary school. Young children are on the streets instead of in the classrooms. We are not giving them the opportunity to learn and they will struggle to get jobs when they grow up.

Your Irish railways employ thousands of men, whose working hours average twelve per day. Were they restricted to a forty-eight-hour week of labor, employment would he provided for thousands of Irishmen who at present are driven exiles from their native land.

If there is any matter upon which civilized countries have agreed ... it is the evil of premature and excessive child labor.

And the children? Twelve hours of work for children! 0, misery. But not all the Jules Simon of the Academy of Moral and Political Science, not all the Germanys of Jesuitism, could have invented a vice more degrading to the intelligence of the children, more corrupting of their instincts, more destructive of their organism than work in the vitiated atmosphere of the capitalist factory. work began at five o'clock in the morning and ended at eight o’clock in the evening, summer and winter. It was a sight to watch them arrive each morning into the city and depart each evening. Among them were a multitude of women, pale, often walking bare-footed through the mud, and who for lack of umbrellas when the rain or snow fell, wore their aprons or skirts turned up over their heads. There was a still larger number of young children, equally dirty, equally pale, covered with rags, greasy from the machine oil which drops on them while they work. They were better protected from the rain because their clothes shed water; but unlike the women just mentioned, they did not carry their day’s provisions in a basket, but they carried in their hands or hid under their clothing as best they might, the morsel of bread which must serve them as food until time for them to return home. Thus to the strain of an insufferably long day – at least fifteen hours – is added for these wretches the fatigue of the painful daily journeys. Consequently they reach home overwhelmed by the need of sleep, and next day they rise before they are completely rested in order to reach the factory by the opening time.

Although these children were well fed, their limbs were very generally deformed, their growth was stunted, and although one of the best schoolmasters was engaged to instruct these children regularly every night, in general they made very slow progress, even in learning the common alphabet. I came to the conclusion that the children were injured by being taken into the mills at this early age, and employed for so many hours; therefore, as soon as I had it in my power, I adopted regulations to put an end to a system which appeared to me to be so injurious.

It cannot be too strongly insisted that Socialism means but one thing, and that is the abolition of capital in private hands, and the turning over of the industries into the direct control of the workmen employed in them. Anything else is not Socialism, and has no right to sail under that name. Socialism is not the establishment of an eight-hour day, not the abolition of child labor, not the enforcement of the pure food laws, not the putting down of the Night Riders, or the enforcement of the 80-cent gas law. None of these, nor all of them together, are Socialism. They might all be done by the government tomorrow, and still we would not have Socialism. They are merely reforms of the present system.

Eight hours daily labor is enough for any human being

215 million are in child labor as a matter of survival. A world without child labor is possible with the right priorities and policies: quality education, opportunities for young people, decent work for parents, a basic social protection floor for all

The working class must be emancipated by the working class., Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class. Child labor must be abolished by the working class. Society must be reconstructed by the working class. The working class must be employed by the working class ., The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class. War, bloody war, must be ended by the working class.

In India, innocent and poor children are victims of child labor.

No one has the right to threaten the health, education, and well-being of children by involving them in illegal or inappropriate work.

The first and continuing argument for the curtailment of working hours and the raising of the minimum age was that education was necessary in a democracy and working children could not attend school.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

Apple is a wonderful company for its customers and investors. So, too, Pixar. (NeXT, not so much...) But Apple is also an engine of misery for its subcontracted Chinese workers.

Whatever happened to the good ole days, when children worked in factories?

No family should have to depend on the labor of its children to put food on the table and no person should be forced to work in captivity.

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

It Is Not Linen You're Wearing Out But Human Creatures' Lives.

I don’t like the work but mother is dead and father brought me down [to the mines.] I had no choice. I have a harness on like a horse and pull carts. Large carts hold seven and a half hundredweight. [750 lbs.]

The 35-hour week has from the moment of its inception been a massive mistake. We need to return to people the joy of work.

[Arguing against child labor:] Is it not a cruel civilization that allows little hearts and little shoulders to strain under these grown-up responsibilities.