Many people’s favorite segments from Atlas Shrugged are mine too. (See here and here.) But there are a lot of shorter segments that I particularly like.
Here’s one on child labor (p. 92 of the paperback.)
Francisco d’Anconia, at age 12, hides from Mrs. Taggart (Dagne’s mom) the fact that he is working over the summer at Taggart Transcontinental. Mrs. Taggart finally wises up and catches him. Here’s the dialogue:
“Francisco,” she [Mrs. Taggart] asked, when she brought him home, “what would your father say about this, if he knew?”
“My father would ask whether I was good at the job or not. That’s all he’d want to know.”
“Come now, I’m serious.”
Franciso was looking at her politely, his courteous manner suggesting centuries of breeding and drawing rooms; but something in his eyes made her feel uncertain about the politeness. “Last winter,” he answered, “I shipped out as a cabin boy on a cargo steamer that carried d’Anconia copper. My father looked for me for three months but that’s all he asked when I came back.”
I first read Atlas Shrugged a few days after my 17th birthday and I had had a number of jobs in my early second decade. Not this exciting, of course and not full time. But still, I related.
READER COMMENTS
John hare
Sep 24 2022 at 5:18pm
My first full time was the summer I was 11. Quit school at 12 and have been full time since. Work ethic is important, mixed with some ability to learn and things can happen. While I don’t recommend how I did it, learning to work early should be part of education.
Andy Weintraub
Sep 24 2022 at 9:56pm
I live in an area that has a number of Amish settlements.
The Amish are among the most skilled construction workers around, and they sell their skills at below market prices.
I recently hired an Amish housepainter to paint the exterior of my newly constructed home – someone for whom I had to wait two months before he could start the job. His helper was his fourteen year old son, the tenth of his fourteen children. He started the job after Labor Day and the local schools had already started, so I asked the painter why his son wasn’t in school. He said that Amish children finish school at age fourteen and then start working. I’m not sure how they legally avoid the requirement to stay in school until 16, but this young man was not only a good painter, but also very articulate and quite sociable.
I think Brian Caplan is on to something.
Jose Pablo
Sep 26 2022 at 11:25am
Of course he is!
Schooling after 14 is a monumental waste of time and money (even compare with schooling until 14)
Henri Hein
Sep 26 2022 at 1:33pm
David Friedman wrote about that in “Legal Systems Very Different from Ours.” The Amish chapter is available online.
The Amish also were able to carve out exceptions for Social Security and mandatory service.
AtlasShrugged69
Oct 2 2022 at 11:13pm
Would be an interesting discussion to compare this to the Age of Consent – Why should we allow children under the age of 18 to determine when to sell their body for work but not for sex? According to the law, those under 18 cannot legally enter a contract, as the law assumes their age renders them unable to consent. Yet, Rand and the commenters above seem to think those under the age of 18 have enough autonomy to use their body for financial gain…
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