MY FLORIDA COMPLEX

Whenever you see films of pre-World War I factories there seem to be a lot of 12 year old boys running the show. It's the same when they show the early telephone exchanges. You look at photographs of who they were sending down the coal mine in the Nineteenth Century, who was working the mill, even the newspaper sellers - it's all 12 year old boys. Where are all the adults in these pictures? What were they doing when they filmed the factory at work? They're all at home, living it up.

Now, far be it for me to fly in the face of 100 years of social reform and child labour laws, but doesn't that seem a better life to you? Sure, you start work when you're seven years old, you're working down the mine until you're 16 or 17, but after that you're retired, your life is your own.

I tell you, if it hadn’t been for those employment reforms I'd be living in a beach house in Florida right now, laughing about the long hours I used to put in at the factory in my childhood. Who's the real winner here, huh?