The good ship Peter Schiff had been avoiding logical shoals for the better part of an hour-long appearance on WNPR this morning when the Senate candidate and self-proclaimed finance soothsayer fielded a call from "Matt in New Haven."

Schiff, whose rhetorical style is a sort of triumphant harangue that I usually associate with rotisserie baseball devotees and people who like to point out lapses of continuity at the movies, had been arguing that the ills that have befallen the country are the result of government regulation and interference in otherwise unfettered markets.

To Matt, this sounded like "complete disregard for the history of the 19th century in this country," and the dangerous work conditions and rapacious business practices that gave rise to reforms like the minimum wage (and government regulations like workplace safety standards and ban on the use of child labor) in the first place.

Profit motive alone will not prevent business owners from riding roughshod over the rights of their workers, the caller said, and the very "reason we have the regulations we have is because of the abuse that was heaped on the middle and lower classes by the very free market system that you are espousing."

"What you have is a revisionist, socialist version of history," Schiff replied. After John Dankosky, the host of Where We Live, followed up to ask if Schiff was really arguing that workers in the 19th century were not exploited by business owners, Schiff said this:

"No, I think the workers benefited dramatically from the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy. We eliminated women labor in the country, child labor, because of capitalism. You know the reason – you know, my grandmother didn't have to work because my grandfather didn't have to pay any taxes. She was free to take care of eight kids, because that's what she wanted to do. But today, very few women have the choice to be stay-at-home moms. They are now back in the workforce. Capitalism lifted them out of the workforce but big government bureaucracy, high taxes and the social welfare state – that's the reason now that so few women, and men for that matter, can choose not to work. They have to work to support the government."

Now, there are a lot of different strands in that tangent. (The suggestion that the introduction of women to the workforce is a problem that needs to be solved seems a tad problematic, for instance, but maybe not the point that Schiff was trying to make.)

But since he raised the issue of "revisionist history," let's look at this: "We eliminated women labor in the country, child labor, because of capitalism."

Come again?

That's a version of the history of child labor laws that's neither libertarian nor socialist. It's simply incorrect.

What (mostly) stopped the exploitative use of children in textile mills was a series of laws passed by the states, and, eventually, the federal government. (See this excellent overview from the University of Iowa's Child Labor Education Project.)

In other words, what stopped businesses from doing something that was profitable but immoral and destructive was - cue French horns - regulation!

One can argue with the ramifications of specific regulations, of course. Some are onerous, some are surely outmoded after the passage of time. Some are simply too broad and damaging to businesses. But the siren of Schiff's argument, which retains its attractive elegance by virtue of its simplicity and uniformity, is pulling him onto the rocks of actual fact.

If you argue against any ability of elected officials to regulate how private businesses operate, you argue in favor of the right of a private company to operate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, if they decide that's the best way to earn profits. And yes, that means more jobs for seamstresses, and more capital for textile merchants to invest and multiply.

But it also doesn't end well.

I'm guessing Peter Schiff's office has a regulation fire door in it somewhere. I sure hope he knows how it got to be there.