George Osborne Quotes
It was the Conservatives who first protected people in the mills.
Osborne, George. "Speech to the Conservative Party Conference." The Conservative Party, 6 Oct. 2009.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
The coal miners’ strike had been going for 5 months. The major issue was the right to union recognition. The mine owners refused to do that and decided to take the strike. President Theodore Roosevelt mediated a settlement where the miners won more money but no union recognition. The great appeal and significance of this speech is that it stressed the young children who started working in the mines at ages 8 or 9 by working on the “breakers” where they broke up large chunks of coal into smaller chunks. The children never saw daylight and never had a chance for education much less a childhood. At the time, and well into the 20th century the Republican Party was adamantly opposed to any legislation regulating child labor and when two decades later public opinion finally forced Congress to pass Child Labor legislation, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and it took a Constitutional Amendment. See {32240}, {642469}, and {36885}.
Eleanor Roosevelt frequently was the political surrogate for where handicapped husband. However, she became respected and loved for she went just about everywhere including places where no President would be allowed by the Secret Service.
Labor reform was a burning issue in most of the industrialized countries of the world. The two areas that legislation was under consideration all over were working hours and child labor. There were no overtime provisions, employers were free to require workers to work 7 days for as many hours as they wanted. There were no limitations on the use of child labor. This is one of the classic conservative oppositions to these reforms. Ironically to us today, those against reform argued that it was disrespectful of the working man to take away his freedom to work whatever hours he so chose, and it was disrespectful of the workers role as a head of family to decide for him when and under what conditions his children could work. Germany at the time was a very dramatic example of the struggle as the Chancellor was opposed to all labor reform and Kaiser Wilhelm II felt that reforms were needed. The two most powerful Germans were split on this issue as were people in most countries.
He called attention to the relationship between the poverty living conditions, sanitation, and the outbreak of cholera in the Manchester Cholera epidemic of 1832. He went on to advocate shorter working hours, better sanitation, and education for the mill workers.
He in that same year then persuaded sympathetic MP, John Hobhouse, to introduce the first bill into the House of Commons regulating child labor in the mills. Considered radical in its day, forbade employment of children under the age of 9 from working in the mills, and then limited the hours that children from 9 to 18 to 12 hours a day. The bill was rejected with the same claims that have been made regarding child labor reform attempts ever since. It would slow growth, harm the economy, exacerbate the poverty of poor families and interfere with the parents right to bring up their children. It was not until after his death in 1861 that meaningful child labor laws were passed for the British mills.
George Gideon Oliver Osborne CH is a British politician and newspaper editor who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 in the Cameron government. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 2001 to 2017. He was editor of the London Evening Standard from 2017 to 2020.
