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Child labor during the industrial revolution in Britain
Labor unions from 1875 to 1900
Child labor during the industrial revolution in Britain
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During the 18 and beginning of the 19th century in certain regions of the U.S child labor made up more than 40 percent of the population (Wolensky). That’s almost half of the working population. Since the beginning of time children have always been known to help their families with domestic tasks. Most of these kids worked in factories because they were easy to control and paid less than adults. Kids earned less than half of what adults made in the work force. In these factories they usually cleaned under and inside machines while functioning because of their small size.. That’s how these kids felt as it was described in a article in our history book. They were always in danger of getting hurt or even dying, which many did. Kids as young as five year olds worked 12 hour shifts, seven times a day with no breaks or lunches. Children during this time period of the 18th and 19th century, worked just as hard as adults did and did not even get to live a regular childhood where they played outside with each other. Child labor was a big problem and the majority of kids were forced to go to work because their family needed the money to make a living in America. Child labor showed us how children worked in some of the most dangerous environments risking their lives for just a dollar a week and working as hard as adults did by doing these exhausting 12 hour shifts that tired them out.
Children during the industrial revolution worked just has hard as adults did but were treated even worse, worked the same hours and barely made enough to buy bread for their family. “By 1810, about 2,000,000 school-age children were working 50- to 70-hour weeks. Most of them came from poor families. When parents could not support their children, they sometim...
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...cieties. Because of child labor we now have all these laws that protect children from most dangerous activities that never existed back then. Now children can have fun and be kids.
Works Cited
Kenneth C. Wolensky and Judith Rich, "Child Labor in Pennsylvania" Historic Pennsylvania Leaflet No. 43(Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1998).
"Eastern Illinois University Homepage." Childhood Lost. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Yellowitz, Irwin. "Child Labor." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Wagner, Jannifer. "The History of Child Labor During the American Industrial Revolution."IHS Child Slave Labor News ::. N.p., Oct. 2002. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
"The Industrial Revolution, 1700-1900." DISCovering World History. 1997
Student Resource Center. Framington Hills, Mich.: Gale Group. Online Database.
November 8, 2001
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
As industry grew in the period following the Civil War, children, often as puerile as 10 years old but sometimes much younger, labored. They worked not only in industrial settings but additionally in retail stores, on the streets, on farms, and in home-predicated industries. This article discusses the utilization of child labor in the Amalgamated States, concentrating on the period after the Civil War through the elevate of the child labor reform kinetics. These are kids who are as adolescent as 6 years old and are being coerced to fight against others. Albeit children had been auxiliaries and apprentices throughout most of human history, child labor reached incipient extremes during the Industrial Revolution. Children often worked long hours in hazardous factory conditions for very little mazuma. Children were utilizable as laborers because their size sanctioned them to move in minute spaces in factories or mines where adults couldn’t fit, children were more facile to manage and control and perhaps most importantly, children could be paid less than adults. Children are working at puerile ages endeavoring to fortify their family with the little pay that they are fortuitous to get. Children who are in economic child labor are less liable to be in school. Of the total children aged 5 to 14 years in economic child labor, about 15 percent were not in school. Child labor is generally defined as
Instead of playing with dolls and ribbons, eight year olds of the early twentieth century were working in factories making them. At this time there was no regulation or policies dictating when or where a young girl could work. In 1905, Florence Kelley delivered a speech advocating for the helpless children being sent to work by their parents. She emphasizes the need for change in the working environment and the underlying need for women sufferage. Kelley presents her argument with an appeal to the emotions, a call to action, and the use of examples in order to encourage the voter to put an end to child labor.
Many businesses and factories hired children because they were easier to exploit; they could be paid less for more work in dangerous conditions. Plus, their small size made many children idea for working with small parts or fitting into small spaces. Children as young as four could be found working in factories, though most were between eight and twelve. Despite the economic gains made by the business that employed them, many children suffered in the workplace. The industrial setting caused many health problems for the children that, if they lived long enough, they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Children were also more likely to face accidents in the workplace, often caused by fatigue, and many were seriously injured or killed. Despite efforts by reformers to regulate child labor, it wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that children under 14 were prohibited from
Similarly, the change towards a factory-orientated nation was a harsh one for the industrialists. Many of the adult labor force had no training in how to use the machines and took awhile to pick up the new techniques (Basu and Van, 1998). It was more time consuming and costly to teach the adults than it was to hire children during this start of the revolution. Children could be molded into the ideal adult worker as they rose through the ranks in the factory. Studies indicate that about 50% of workers started working in the factories when they were less then ten years of age, from this overall amount 28% of these child workers started working when they were under the age of fourteen, while only 7.8% of workers started working in the textiles from the age of twenty- one or higher (Nardinelli, 1980). The aging of the generation of child factory workers improved the quality of adult factory workers and created a reserve pool of adults with factory experience. This pool of adults was particularly significant for men. As a child worker, they were exposed to many different positions and so learned a great deal amount of experience. Not only were the children fulfilling the basic factory needs but were creating a more work experienced labor force for the future. No longer where adults having to learn how to use machinery when entering the factory market but instead had worked in a textile during their childhood so had already obtained the human capital needed to work. The factory would then profit off of this future human capital and so keep on employing the massive amount of children in order to better themselves for the future while at the same time reaping the present value of cheap labor. With the underlying factors of cheap labor, inexpensive working conditions, and an ever-present labor market full of willing children, the industrial revolution had created a cost
In the agricultural industry the children would harvest crops and sewing. If the children were working in the mining industry it was very dangerous. The conditions were very poor, it was very dirty and not pleasant. The boys were called “Breaker Boys” they broke down raw coal into different pieces for certain furnaces. The coal bearers would carry coal on their shoulders, and the smallest children worked as trappers, they would open trap doors in the mines to move the coal. As for the manufacturing industry, the children would work in dark and dirty conditions. They worked around sharp tools and and machines, which caused a lot of injuries to them.
Factories were utilizing children to do the hard work. They employed children as young as five or six to work as many as twenty hours a day. According to Document C, children worked in factories to build up muscles and having good intellect in working rather than getting an education. They became a different person rather than conventional children. There were additionally health issues due to child labor: rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing loss, higher chemical absorption rates, and developing ability to assess risks. Progressive Era reformers believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society. They believed that children should be protected from harmful environments, so they would become healthy and productive adults. In 1912, Congress created the Children’s Bureau to benefit children. The Keating-Owen Act was passed in 1916 to freed children from child labor only in industries that engaged in interstate commerce. However, it was declared unconstitutional sinc...
The labor conditions that children faced were very demanding for a human being from such a small age. For example “In the Manayunk district of Philadelphia, children as young as seven assisted in spinning and weaving of cotton and woolen goods” (Wolensky 2). The children working in the factories had their childhood freedom taken away from them. “In 1830 in a sample of 43 Manchester mills, 22.3% of the workforce was under 14 and 32.4% under 16” (Cunningham 412). This means that about 50% of the workforce in the mills were made up of children under the age of 16 and in today in the United States, a person cannot work until the age of 16. “And it is a hard thing for small children to be confined in a tight close room all day long. It affects their growth, makes them pale and sickly” (Nason). The time these children spent in the factories prevented them from spending time with their neighbors, friends, and family. The fact that young children had to work in these textile mills, created changes to American culture on how childhood years are supposed to be spent.
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
"Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution." EHnet. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2017. (-- removed HTML --) .
Many factories and mines hired children, because they were able to fit in smaller spaces and the factories could pay them less. They also hired children, because children were easier to control. During this time it was just common for kids to work; most people were okay with child labor at the time. “In colonial America, child labor was not a subject of controversy. It was an integral part of the agricultural and handicraft economy. Children not only worked on the family farm but were often hired out to other farmers
Nardinelli, C. (1990). Child Labor and The Industrial Revolution. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
England was a society dominated by children. During the reign of Queen Victoria one out of three of her servants were under the age of fifteen. Child labor was a prominent issue, because there were no systems to ensure the safety of children. During the start of the industrial revolution, there was a “high demand” for labor (Robson 53). Many families moved from rural areas to new, industrialized cities. After a while things weren’t looking as “promising” as they did before (Boone 23). In order to maintain, families had to put almost all of their family members to work. This led to a rise in the number of child labor. Children were “mistreated, underpayed and overworked” (Kincaid 30). Using children to do all of the hard work, the mining companies believed, was the most sensible and efficient way to get the job done. Because the children were a lot smaller, it was easy for them to “maneuver through tight spaces” and on top of that the children demanded little or no pay at all(Boone 43 ). These wages were enough to persuade companies to use children for all sorts of dangerous jobs such as coal mining and chimney sweeps. Children were called to do many other “horrible” jobs, jobs that adults in this era could not bear, just so long as the bills were paid (Robson 18). The working conditions and treatment of young children during this era was horrible and a lot was done to put an end to it.
“Child Labor in U.S. History.” Child Labor Public Education Project. 2011. Web. 2. April. 2014
The Industrial Revolution restructured the employer-employee relationship into an impersonal association exhibited by indifference to the quality of life of the worker. Children were especially exploited because they could be hired for lower wages and were made to work equally long days (Miller). Around the 1830s, children constituted about one-third of the labor in New England (Illinois Labor History Society). The conditions of workers as a whole necessitated action on behalf of the rights of laborers.