THE SERPENT'S TOOTH

Meyer, Ernest L.

The Serpent's Tooth By ERNEST L MEYER THE OTHER DAY is was announced in New York that child labor laws have been relaxed to permit children to pick turkeys from now until Dec. 31, thus relieving...

...I'm going to make you free and happy, Susan, by sending you out to pick either turkeys or pockets...
...It's time you went to work and supported me in the style to which I am unaccustomed...
...There is a labor shortage because we are at war...
...Life is not made for funny pictures, but for honest toil...
...I also recall, my child, that on many afternoons, in the chill of Autumn, the young and tender lads of my age would go into a field and work hard and conscientiously at kicking an inflated pellet of pigskin...
...They hold also that child labor laws have always been a meddlesome and noxious form of federal regimentation and menace the power of parents over their own children...
...If I can't appeal to your sense of duty, maybe I can appeal to your vanity...
...I pushed heavy ivory balls with a stick...
...she is robust, nimble, and quite able to go to work and help support me...
...Now this reply outraged me so deeply that I seized the churlish monster and carried her, howling, into the bedroom, where I exercised my constitutional rights by locking her in a clothes closet...
...I want to play Eskimo," said Susan...
...Not For Katzenjammer Kids "Shut up...
...Think what joy it will be when you grow up and Can call yourself a self-made woman who began as a news-girl at the age of four and worked herself up to third assistant finger-waver in the Crokinolle Beauty Shoppe...
...She's almost four years old...
...Father Meyer Is Outraged "Daddy, I want to go out and play with my scooter," said my own flesh and blood...
...The sweat of toil would roll from our brows...
...Were they out hustling for their Old Man ? They were hot...
...These news dispatches interested me greatly, as did also the position of the defenders of child labor law violations...
...They hold that war economy makes needful the labor of children...
...Daddy," said Susan, "I want to look at the funny pictures...
...Why, at the tender age of 16, I remember, I worked nights after high school...
...It is not made for Katzenjammer Kids, but for calluses...
...Her name "is Susan...
...31, thus relieving the labor shortage...
...And if Susan starves in the clothes closet, or if she gets run over by a truck while peddling papers, or if she gets chopped to bits under a machine in a Chicago factory or a Texas cotton mill, by golly, I'm going to uphold the sanctity of family life even if I have no family left...
...When Susan came trotting in with a doll in her arms, I said: "My child, the time has come for serious converse...
...And yet you, my child, hesitate about going to work in a factory and sacrificing a leg or a mere couple of fingers for the Four Freedoms...
...She reported an increase of 197 per cent in the number of business establishments violating the law in 1942 as compared with 1941, and another 33 per cent rise in 1943...
...She added that as a result of the violations the rise in industrial accidents has increased enormously, because children are inexperienced in the handling of machinery...
...Serious Converse With Susan Resting in my easy chair after scanning these items, I suddenly remembered that I had children, too...
...They were lazy," unpatriotic, and ungrateful, and it is recorded that a child's ingratitude is like a serpent's tooth...
...Pay attention," I shouted, and I stood on my constitutional right of a father's power over his own child -by smacking her on the left ear...
...These sticks weighed around 20 ounces, and I would put in many hours wielding the stick with my frail, adolescent arms trying to push the ivory balls into pockets appropriately provided for them in a green felt table...
...I'm going to help free the oppressed of the world even if I have to sell my child into economic slavery...
...My own unhappy life has been nothing but a record of job heaped on job...
...And in line with this humane ideal, I'm going to start with my own family...
...My child, your levity wounds me," I said, wiping away a tear...
...And tomorrow I'm going to Washington to lobby against the child labor laws...
...Sc I summoned into „my presence one of my serpent's teeth...
...So tomorrow you either pick turkeys or peddle papers...
...You talk like an anarchist," I roared...
...Tomorrow at 6 a. m. you go to work...
...Daddy, my doll's name is Helga," said Susan...
...We are at war because we want to make all the people of all the world free and happy...
...Play Eskimo, indeed...
...On the whole, peddling papers is best, because then more people will be able to read about the virtue and necessity of child labor...
...I'm putting you on a bread and water diet so you'll grow pale and puny and will attract the sympathy of sentimental ladies and thus sell more papers...
...They were lolling in idleness...
...On the same day, an item from Chicago reported: "Alarming increases in the number of state and federal child labor law violations were reported to the Illinois Welfare Association by Florence Henderson, child labor consultant of the United States Children's Bureau...
...You will hand over to me all your earnings, of course, as a mark of recognition that the sanctity of the home still flourishes in this land of noxious regimentation...
...And now you, my own flesh and blood, refuse to go out and hustle for my living...
...Ah, when I think of my own years of toil...
...Think of it...
...Besides, she's quite mature...

Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48


 
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