In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 Youth’s Discoveries Mothers and Fathers and Adolescent Work Ann Cannon died in 1904. No older than forty-seven, she had lived a hard life. It was her fate never to see her modest aspirations realized, or, at best, to experience them only partially and briefly. Her disappointments would have been evident to young Jim Cannon, who was a mere fourteen years old at the time of his mother’s passing, and they no doubt nurtured a sense of injustice that eventually turned against wider issues of inequality, unfairness, and victimization . For the moment, though, Jim Cannon’s hurt was a personal one. That John Cannon’s move into insurance and real estate did not pay large and immediate dividends was evident in his son’s early entry into the workforce . In the summer of 1902, with school out, it was arranged, through a friend of the family who worked as a foreman at one of the Armourdale meatpacking plants, to secure Jim a job. Hopping a streetcar, the boy made his way to the 7:00 a.m.“shape-up” on the riverside docks, where people milled about, waiting for their names to be called. Stepping up politely, Jim was asked how old he was. After answering truthfully, “Twelve, sir,” Jim got an apologetic response of,“Can’t hire you. Come back when you’re sixteen.”Cannon insisted that he was doing nothing more than what he had been taught at home: “My parents were very honest people. They paid great attention to not lying and not stealing. That’s not right according to the Church. Upon my return home I told my mother what happened and I never knew whether she felt more disappointed that I didn’t get the job[,] because we needed the money[,] or whether she was prouder of my honesty.”Young Jim had a summer’s reprieve, but the scruples that kept him out of waged work were apparently set aside the 020 Palmer Ch02 (39-51) 11/27/06 2:32 PM Page 39 next fall, when the routine was followed again, with Jim stating that he was sixteen and landing employment. For ten hours a day, every day but Sunday, Jim labored in the packinghouses, employed for two years at, alternatively, Swift’s and Armour’s. At first he opened and closed the large iron double doors to the coolers where meat was stored, but he soon graduated to all manner of other work, including a stint on “the hog’s bed,” where they “made use of all parts of what once had been a pig, even the bristles, tails and snouts; everything, as they used to say, except the squeal.”1 Kansas City, Kansas, ranked as the second largest meatpacking center in the world in the opening decade of the twentieth century, its eight slaughterhouses processing $152 million worth of livestock annually and employing 12,500 workers—male, female, and child.2 A boy’s wages were a drop in the bucket of this local industry, capitalized at roughly $20 million, but they were crucial to the survival of many Kansas City families. A portion of young Jim’s wages, which must have hovered around $7.50 a week (and certainly would not have topped $12.00), may well have contributed to the domestic economy; by 1905, Jim’s father owned his home for the first time in his life, having purchased the modest domicile at 1709 Kansas City Avenue where he would reside for much of the early twentieth century. Ann’s death occasioned her husband’s temporary move to Rosedale’s nearby Mill Street, where he shared accommodations with his mother for a part of 1904, while his daughter Agnes retained the family house on Kansas City Avenue.Jim’s grandmother continued to live with her son and grandchildren when they relocated back to 1709 Kansas City Avenue in 1905, and no doubt shouldered some of the domestic tasks that had so burdened her daughter-in-law.3 At seventy years of age, she could not have kept house with the fastidiousness of Ann, nor was this Irish matriarch likely to have been as indulgent with Jim and his siblings. It was not a happy time for a fifteen-year-old boy, and work offered few prospects. “I never had a job I was interested in or wanted to work up in,” Cannon recalled, confessing that, like most teenage workers in meatpacking, he changed employment frequently.4 After...

Share