History Question: What was on the agenda of the first trade unions in Europe?

[Boojatta]

Maybe I'm relying on 20/20 hindsight, but it seems obvious that an important issue affecting trade union members is the legality of contraception.

Regardless of management policies, having a lot of children requires working many hours per week, except for the minority of the population that is working at a very high wage per hour.

The more years of education that a parent's children are to have, the more years that a parent who is a factory worker will have to be working enough hours per week to cover the cost of supporting the children while the children are in school.

If factory workers had produced few children, then governments might have gotten worried about the total population level falling, but it's obvious that if there's a macro-level desire to increase the number of children, then the only people who should produce the children are people who can afford to do so. Becoming a biological parent creates a moral obligation to provide for the children. It makes no sense to say that people have a moral obligation to create for themselves other moral obligations that they are unable to fulfill. Analogy: if you are totally blind, and there is an emergency requiring that someone step forward to drive a particular vehicle, then it cannot be you who has a duty to step forward and drive. If you were to drive, then you would simply create additional emergencies.