Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

One of the Marxists—and the unaware-they-are-Marxists-by-indoctrination products of our indoctrination machines, including those who now teach in them—worse lies is the maligning of the industrial revolution.

It’s 2 parts Marx and 1 part Rosseau. It is the ignorance and disdain of the moneyed for what the working class has to do to survive, coupled with a naive certainty that rural work is sort of like gardening and beautiful.

As some of you have caught on, for the last month or so, between illnesses, travel and trying to squeeze in a few hours a day to write, I’ve been all out of spoons for real reading. So I’ve been reading Pride and Prejudice variations, which is to say fanfic. It’s restful, you know how it’s going to end, there’s not even new characters to get into.

Once, during the … not worst but strangest two years of my life, when Dan had a traveling job and I had a pre-schooler and an elementary schooler in the house, I spent a lot of time reading it on line, and also writing it. I find it beyond extraordinary that we now live in a time when we can put these up for money, and as soon as I have a few minutes, I’ll finish some of my half-done stuff from austen.com, such as By Her Hearts and Allurements or Oh, Hill.

Anyway, the way I do it is to find an author I can stand, and read everything she (or he, but hes are more rare) has out. And this kid I’ve been reading is promising. She had, in the beginning the occasional impulse to ruin what is otherwise a decent (if not responsible) character like Mr. Bennet to make him sink into depravity and vice for no reason, but the more she writes, the more Human Wave she becomes. (I’ve been reading more or less in order.) And she doesn’t preach feminist cant, which is a reason to wall most other authors of these.

But this is the second book that she’s made me stop part way through because of the “dark Satanic Mills” thing.

No, seriously, this woman believes that in the Regency working men and women hated mill owners, that the mills were sort of like hell, that society looked down on children working in them, and that anyone who owned one would be ostracized, not for sullying himself with trade, but because he owned “one of those evil places.”

It is obvious to me, from this woman’s work that she’s very young. Twenties, maybe. My kids’ ages. And it makes me yell “What the hell are they teaching the kids, actually?”

Okay, the entire dark satanic mills bullshit benefited greatly from the talent of one Mr. Dickens, convinced socialist. I will admit he was a good writer. He was also one of the few whose books I avoid like poison. Yes, I know he didn’t know how bad socialism would turn out to be. But he must have known he was lying. And if he didn’t, it was only because he was such an elitist fool that he never mingled with the people or actually knew what went on in their lives. Actually 90% of what he portrayed well was the criminal under class, and anyone who has had no matter how accidental contact with them, not to mention anyone who reads true crime books knows they are tediously the same in our day, and it has zero to do with conditions or exploitation, but with people’s on internal drive, and what values or lack thereof they choose to listen to. Without some kind of internal compass people seem to create their own hell, falling victim to human instincts of indolence and envy which will eventually destroy them.

Heck, even with an internal compass, and ambition, it’s sometimes pretty hard to stay on track in the face of set backs and own bodies sudden yet inevitable betrayal, as I can tell you.

Look, we bought into the horror of the early industrial revolution, partly because the Marxists wanted us to believe the present prosperity and the industrial age, which at their core they hate and despise, was built on exploitation and was irredeemably evil and also that anyone that achieves anything is naturally evil and has committed some sort of crime. What else can you expect from the gospel of envy.

However, in the current day and age, no one has an excuse to believe, much less teach this stuff.

Why?

Because we’ve seen the industrial revolution work, in real time, in countries like China and India. And while China does have a component of slave labor, mostly in camps, that’s not the bulk of their industrialization. And it certainly isn’t in India.

I guess generation fair-trade can not comprehend this, but they should understand these are not feudal systems (well, China kind of is, but again, that’s not the thing driving it. In fact I think the industrialization has escaped the party’s ability to control, which is why they’re getting twitchy.) People leave the fields in droves to go work in the mills, because it’s a better life.

Look, boneheads, I know you guys are appalled at the idea of six year olds working much less working 12 hour days. Yeah, so am i, but let me tell you, that was not anything the mills did differently from the rest of human history before it.

Coming from a rural community, in 20th century terms poor as Job, but in comparison to the rest of history rich beyond comprehension, and belonging to a middle class family in which grandad was a trained professional (carpenter) and dad had a white collar job, but about 90% of our food was still what we grew, let me tell you that kids worked, starting very early. I was given all kinds of passes, because I was born premature and was very sickly. To be honest, I was giving more passes than I should have been, and felt excluded often. But still, I remember being awakened early on a Spring morning when I was 5 and set to weeding the onions. And this wasn’t an isolated occurrence, merely the first I remember. During grape harvest the entire family—yes, including kids—took time off and spent three days working sun up to sun down. The women would mostly be in the kitchen, cooking food for the multitude, at least part of the time, but we also carried the baskets of grapes (yes, on our heads.) And as young as three, I was set to harvesting the grapes atop the hen coop, because the roof was iffy, and also the grapevines (which in private residences in the North of Portugal are grown as a canopy over patios and any free space, to maximize area they can grow. Dad said in his day, and before trucks, they grew in a canopy over the street) had grown kind of close to those tin roofs, so no adult could squeeze there. When cousin grew too big to do it, I was hoisted up there, to harvest the grapes.

Now, in my day and even dad’s day, this type of child labor was safe and almost fun (at least if you didn’t do too much of it) kind of like my gardening these last few days.

But let me tell you I paid attention to the poorer families. If you think having a five year old tend to cows and other big animals was “safe” you’re out of your bloody minds.

So the “Horrible things happen in mills. People lose limbs.” is very impressive to our pampered kids, but it cut absolutely no mustard with the people who were actually leaving the farms in droves to work in those mills. Why? Because a lot of them had horrible things happen to them at the farms, and lost limbs. Worse, until mechanization and artificial fertilizers, it was brutal, unrelenting work, sun up to sun down, and at the mercy of fate in a way even traditionally published authors find too risky and scary.

People left the country in droves to work in factories, not because they were forced, but because what seem horrible working conditions to them were no worse than what they’d experienced in farms, and they might have a day (or half day off) plus the work paid more than farm work did. And the cities provided more opportunities.

Heyer, who did her research has a kid working in textile mills growing up to own the mills (the unknown Ajax) and of course it was that kind of upward mobility as well as the fact that their rural tenants and workers whom the noblemen always treated like charity cases, were escaping them that horrified the ton. They might have covered it in concern for the poor little children, but trust me, that wasn’t it.

And at any rate, no one in the regency was horrified at anyone owning a mill, unless it was in the “tainted with commerce” sense. And people in the country were more likely to try to ingratiate themselves with mill owners. They brought jobs to the area, particularly at a time of grain-price instability.

However it appears otherwise intelligent women are emerging from our schools with the belief that mills were a horrible place. (Which they were, except for comparison with everything else available to the working class at the time.) I have no idea HOW they think they caught on, and became what’s called “the industrial revolution” except that I know that kids are uncertain about when feudalism stopped or for that matter of the difference between feudalism and slavery. And guys, they vote.

This distortion of even trivial details in history is what you’re up against raising kids now and here. And because the left pervaded everything for the last hundred years, they have corrupted everything, including entertainment and teaching, so the kids might never find out any better. I’m fairly sure some of their teachers haven’t. It takes thinking and analyzing primary sources or an unusual set of experiences to know how full of nonsense all this is.

Oh, and btw, having a house maid be afraid to be “sent to the mills” is the outside of enough. Mills weren’t workhouses. People didn’t get SENT there, they got HIRED. Dear Lord, what are they teaching the kids. And if you think being a house maid was better than working in say a textile mill, you’re out of your mind. You’re also spitting on the generations of girls who ran away from “service” to work in the mills. The Jane Austen fan fic writers seem unaware that most house servants weren’t ALLOWED to marry (until sometimes middle aged, sometimes never.) and that their work was a never ending round from before sunup till very late in the evening. They seem to think of it as some kind of sinecure. Perhaps because they think of housework in the light of all the labor-saving aids we have, from machinery to chemicals.

In short, these kids are being taught it’d be fine and dandy to go back to the pre-industrial age, by people who see themselves as feudal lords. And it makes me sick.

Teach your children well, teach them to think. We might already have lost two generations, who will vote to go back to the horrible conditions their ancestors escaped with cries of gladness, to work in those evil, satanic mills. From which came enough surplus to lead to our current blessed age, where the children don’t even know how good they have it.

 

Reprinted from for August 15, 2019