Child labor, an illegal course of action that increases work rate, production, and most of all, profit. This method of mass-production began in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. A big cause of child labor was the big business owners needed people to work in their factories; they chose children because of their relatively low level of education, lack of knowledge of their human rights, and accepted low pay. The employers should have a responsibility to tell the children their rights, what they’re doing, and what they’re getting for it. The worst area in the world for child labor is in third world countries, because the children are dropping out of school so they can get some money so they don’t starve to death. Child labor laws were wrong because they force children to work 16 hours or more each day and up to 60 hours a week, and they work these long hours in hazardous, toxic conditions.
There are many reasons why child labor exists today, and why it existed long ago, two of the main reasons being poverty and unemployment. Lots of families will rely on their children for their basic necessities such as food, water, and housing, something they should of thought about before they had a child of their own. The children are recruited because they usually don’t know their human rights, do the hardest, most dangerous work without even knowing it; they also accept low pay. Due to the fact that their parents are unemployed and are unlikely to get a well paying job, children rely on themselves to be able to pay for their education, and their future. Most people accept it because they are too lazy to do anything about it, so they just accept it. Lots of governments don’t provide free education. Also, most employers deman...
... middle of paper ...
...ply and demand for resources. The supply side is mainly from poverty and unavailability of good, cheap schooling, while the growth low paying informal economy is the demand side.
At the end of the day, I don’t think the few good things surrounding child labor can out weigh all the terrible things that can happen in child labor, and all the conditions they make children work in. Is this still going to be what we do for cheap labor in the future, or are we going to find a more clever, safer way to have cost-effective labor? I’m sure there are many more ways to get the job done other than forcing children to do labor, when adults are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. However, they did create some decent jobs like household enterprises where the children could work with their families inside their home, completely safe.
While we, as Americans, are currently living in the most advanced civilization up to this time, we tend to disregard problems of exploitation and injustice to nations of lesser caliber. Luckily, we don't have to worry about the exploitation of ourchildren in factories and sweet shops laboring over machines for countless hours. We, in the United States, would never tolerate such conditions. For us, child labor is a practice that climaxed and phased away during and then after the industrial revolution. In 1998 as we approach the new millenium, child labor cannot still bea reality, or can it? Unfortunately, the employment and exploitation of children inthe work force is still alive and thriving. While this phenomenon is generally confined to third world developing nations, much of the responsibility for its existence falls to economicsuper powers, such as the United States, which supply demand for the cheaply produced goods. While our children are nestled away safely in their beds, other children half way around the world are working away to the hum of machinery well into the night.
In 1900, there were 1.75 million child workers in the United States alone, that was 18 percent of all American workers at the time. In southern cotton mills 25 percent of the employees were below the age of fifteen, with half of them being below the age of 3 (History.com). Child Labor is the the use of children in industry or business when considered illegal or inhumane. Child Labor is a social issue that was at its peak during the Industrial Revolution and still occurs today, but has declined drastically over the years due to the unions against it and laws put in affect.
“Child labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school.” Back then in the U.S., children were working between ages 5 to 17. Between the 1800s and 1900s, many children worked in agricultural fields, fishing, mining, manufacturing, and even drug trade and prostitution. Even though child labor laws are still avoided around the world, the effects on child labor in the US, before, was unbelieveable. Children were suffering from health issues, reform movements grew and other countries followed enforced child labor too.
The west has attempted to fight child labor for years now with little dent in curving the use of child labor across the globe. The primary reason has been the failure to find practical means to translate our intuitions on practices that ought to be eliminated into effective solutions. Economically deprived countries in order to compete in the global economy have offered child labor (Low cost Labor) as competitive advantage and companies from the west have let low cost, high profit, blind their morality. Hence, rather then making sure no child labor is in their product cost they have embraced or looked the other way when it comes to child labor.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
...them to move in crowded spaces in factories or mines where adults would not fit. Children were easier to manage and control and most importantly paid less than adults. Although child labor has been substantially eliminated it still causes a problem in a few areas of the economy. The United States has yet to eliminate all abuse and violations. United States has come to meet the intentions of child labor reform byhelping to determine the laws and general practice andchildren should not be full time workers like adults. Meaning children should be in schooling programs getting their education instead of working in hazardous areas and putting themselves in harms way.
Child labor has been around for hundreds of years. “Children of poor and working-class families had worked for centuries before industrialization” (Tuttle 1). Before children were needed in factories they worked on family farms tending the fields or animals, as time went on families moved from farms to the cities where children were still required to work. Children worked for numerous reasons some were that their parents couldn’t work so the responsibilities were passed to the children; others included the simple need for more money to feed the entire family. Large businesses welcomed the increasing number of child workers, for the business it meant cheap labor and cheap laborers that could be replaced easily. The exact number of child workers is unknown and has been estimated as stated in multiple articles such as this, “By 1900 over two million children, mostly immigrant children under the age of sixteen, were employed” (Wagner 1). Parents wanted their children to work as soon as possible so they could get as much income as possible, parents often did illegal things to get their children to work, “Boy’s parents often presented a fake birth certificate with an altered date o...
Child labor refers to the economic active population under the age of 15 years employed in various industries (Grootaert, 2). According to the Microsoft Encarta, child labor is now used to denote the employment of minors in work that may interfere with their education or endanger their health (IPEC, 1). Child labor has grown to be a topic of widespread debate. It has many favorable and unfavorable points of view. In any case, child labor should be eradicated as it is harmful to the health of the children, it is an obstacle to their education, and it denies them a happy childhood.
Child labor is the employment of children, but not all work done by children should be classified as child labor that should be eliminated. Children’s participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling is generally regarded as being something positive. The term “child labor” is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.
Child Labour has been in existence in different forms from the beginning of time but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that it became the problem it is today. With the arrival of the factory system in the 18th century, Children as young as 5 were being used as workers in England. During this period, a law called the English Poor Act gave the government the responsibility to care for children that had no parents or whose parents were too poor to care for them. Under this law, the government would take these ‘pauper children’ and place them in jobs where they could become apprentices and learn a trade. The law was not usually affective because when the children were handed over to the factory owners, they usually became slaves. Other children were sold by their parents as indentured servants. Children were used to tend to machines in factories and many worked in the dark, damp coalmines, carrying coal on their backs up ladders. Many children would work 10 to 15 hour days with a small break for lunch. On top of this, the children were paid a starvation wages.
According to the article “A History of Child Labor” reviewed by Milton Fried, a child could work as long as six days a week for up to 18 hours a day, and only make a dollar a week. Child labor was nothing but cheap labor. The big companies loved cheap labor because then they could make an item for not very much money, and make a huge profit margin. Fried continues to state how cheap the labor was, “One glass factory in Massachusetts was fenced with barbed wire ‘to keep the young imps inside.’ These were boys under 12 who carried loads of hot glass all night for a wage of 40 cents to $1.10 per night.” Unlike, children today who are in bed sleeping by 8 pm each night, these children had to stay up all night working to make just enough income for their families. Sadly, the children had no choice but to work for very little pay. Their mothers and fathers made so little money in the factory system that they couldn’t afford to let their children enjoy their childhood: “Other working children were indentured—their parents sold their labor to the mill owner for a period of years. Others lived with their families and worked for wages as adults did, for long hours and under hard conditions” (Cleland). The child had no other choice, but to work for these big
By the end one should be able to understand why child labor is in violation of human rights and should not be accepted and what is currently being done to put an end to it. Many people want to put an end to this plight, but they feel overwhelmed by the complications and the enormity of it that it becomes difficult to find a the right way to tackle it. There have been many implications that have succeeded in aiding this predicament and enabled progress to be ma...
Child Labor has been something that we compress and do not talk about a lot and it was a prevalent and reoccurring action that happened during the industrial revolution. However, we been able to make major strides in the fight against it and in the United States it is nearly eliminated. Some of those changes include minimum age requirements, working conditions, hours you can work , overall pay, and the allowance for education. Back in the 1800s children got jobs out of necessity for money due to their families being extremely poor and unable to provide. Nowadays children get jobs to prove to others that they are maturing or earn money for themselves for either future endeavors or personal use.
Children were forced to work because of the demand for cheap labor. Children had all sorts of jobs including working machines in factories, selling newspapers on street corners, breaking up coal, and sweeping chimneys. The children worked under really poor work conditions and were paid low wages. Sometimes they were paid 10 to 20 percent of what an adult would earn for the same job. Children had to work instead of going to school and playing with their friends. This is so unfair to kids! In conclusion, I am very happy child labor has diminished and there are laws in place to prevent
The hopes of hundreds of millions are a stake; thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice, it is a moral duty because child labor is a human rights issue. By encouraging more child labor in an immoral way, we are not only taking away those innocent years from them but also the rights to be educated and the rights to be free. What is more of human rights than growing up as a free person, attending school without being held in bondage?