Friday, September 2, 2011

Double Hetter: Child Labor

March 31st, 1938, and January 6th, 1950:



Why hire help when you can have kids? In the cartoon on the left, Het tells us that it's those dirty farmers who put their own children to work rather than paying strangers. But twelve years later, she's admitting that she uses her own adult children for the same purpose.

Isn't it weird to see the term "birth control" in A. a comic strip and B. 1938?

6 comments:

  1. *idea for the term "double-Hetter" courtesy of Amber.

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  2. Thanks for the credit, Jere.

    Seriously, though, the only reason to have kids is for the free labor.

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  3. Also, I feel like Het wasn't poo-pooing those farmers. What's she doing in that panel?

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  4. I think she's walking down the street with her purse, and the farmer with his six (?) kids is going back to the farm.

    I just meant she's acting like it's something only the uncivilized farmers do--but then admits later she does the same thing, only instead of replacing day-workers with offspring, she's replacing the dishwasher.

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  5. Hmm. I wonder what Maisie would think of the farmer, since she's all haughty and NYC. Which is still funny to me, since Maisie is a damn cow name.

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  6. Maybe Maisie was born in Fountain Inn, but just attended NYU for a while. And gave up on her ill-advised acting career.

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