-- REPOSTED BECAUSE OF WISCONSIN

I want to introduce you to Billy, a Pennsylvania child coal worker. It is 1910, and these are the days of the real America.

Billy, and  a crowd of companions who look about 10 years old, are wedged into a coal "breaker room" from dawn until dark. They pick through the black rocks in total silence. No complainers here, though minor accidents of broken and smashed fingers are routine. One knows when a serious accident occurs only when a scream pierces the silence, and a boy has fallen into the coal machinery and is mangled; or disappears, to be found later suffocated.

Free from the tyrannical hand of government, Billy's boss can pay a good competitive wage, $3 a week tops. Such is their work ethic and loyalty, that these employees won't even take time off from their jobs to go to school. The children are so hard-working that their backs actually become deformed and bent over like old men, from hunching forward all day. The children share a joke when a raw recruit has developed his deformity. "He's got his boy to carry around with him wherever he goes," they say.

Modern American workers find this golden age of American commerce   unbelievable. But Billy's story  is all true,  and it was only 100 years ago. People are still alive that saw his day! It shows how easily America could be restored to what it was before the unions ruined everything. It was as recent as 1935, that President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, giving Americans the right to organize and bargain collectively. That was only 74 years ago! And it only took 74 years for most Americans to realize the evil of unions and big government. But they  have really begun to reverse these mistakes. Average wages have been declining for decades, and bloated benefits are falling like rain. Fat and lazy "middle class jobs" are becoming non-existent for the average worker.

 Millions of destitute employees have been smuggled into the country who are willing to work hard  for a lot less.

Los Angeles has been a great innovator in this area. About 1/3 of all employees there  now work off the books -- totally out of the reach of the dead hand of American government. Thriving L. A. entrepreneurs are free to imagine any possible working conditions that they desire, and to see those conditions make them money!

 Well, it is now time to meet our next boy laborer. Hu is  an 8- year- old Chinese lad who works in a brick kiln. The comparison between he and Billy is a touching example of the universality of the human experience. Though they live in totally different cultures and eras, we shall see that they have much in common.

The first thing we notice about Hu is that he is wearing a filthy and worn school uniform.  This signifies that he is a kidnapped employee. The Chinese industrial miracle has resulted in part, because local police and local government officials have worked with Chinese business  to employ Hu. Note the Chinese method of working with business, instead of working against business,  like the  government  in the  U. S. A. We also notice that Hu has infected sores on his body, and that he is extremely gaunt. The brick industry has found it profitable to lock Hu and his coworker friends  in windowless dorms, and to feed them little. Guard dogs, beatings, and whippings for recalcitrant children round out their competitive labor practices. Another key feature at the plant is that the air surrounding it is extremely polluted.  Poor-country business owners are seldom hamstrung with any of the environmental regulations that have so crippled American manufacturing. A few nutty environmentalists still protest this, but most experts agree that it will be a long time before the filth China pours into the world's air and oceans daily reaches the U. S.  The Chinese boys are also not fettered by any foolish labor or safety regulations. Not all Chinese workers labor as competitively as Hu, of course,  but practices that have been incorrectly labeled  here as "labor violations" abound in China.  American workers, again, find these Chinese  efficiency practices hard to believe. But we are not making these working conditions up!

 It is no wonder that China now seems to make almost every consumer product bought in the U. S. Though a few bleeding hearts obsess about child labor, most Americans neither know nor care.

And if  Americans  can get any product they need for the cheapest possible price at Wrong-Mart, it is their God-given right to do so.

In closing, we wonder what message Hu might have for American boys and girls regarding their future.

If Hu could speak English, we guess he might advise  something like this:  "Wake up, Americans! It is no wonder that you are losing the global economic race with your spoiled workers and big government. American kids,  you have a long way to go before you can out-compete Hu! But don't give up, you have Billy's great tradition to draw on! And  it is encouraging that America is definitely moving quickly back to Billy's American  free-enterprise system once again."