What Makes Children Enslaved To Child Labor?

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The poem “Chimney Sweepers-Songs of Innocence written by William Blake portrays the life of young children in the work force. The poem of the “Chimney Sweeper” depicts the suffering of children enslaved to child labor. The children’s workforce was a very big part of most economies in these times. Children were encouraged to work at young ages to help their families survive. Child Labor was popular because the children were cheap to hire and they typically had the hard jobs that no one else wanted to do. Although child labor was effective there were many negative ramifications that the children had to endure. Many of these scenarios are engraved in the poems of the “Chimney Sweeper songs of Innocence”. The speaker in the poem was actually sold …show more content…

After our society began to develop “when tribes and clans separated themselves into families, children continued to work with their elders in the woods and fields and in caring for crops and animals. They also helped in the handicrafts, as these developed. .” (Hindman 6) The main factor in a society that produced child laborers is that a nation in low economic standing or a nation that is in early development. The industrial revolution was a prime example; at this point in time child labor was not seen as a problem. Therefore “No nation has developed an advanced industrialized sector without going through this “dirty” phase of development.” (Hindman 5) Most children were encouraged to work and at times had to work to help support their families. A majority of the children were immigrants or poor, “With Industrialization, poor children and their families were drawn off the family farm, out of the home workshop, or out of the urban tenement into the mines, mills, and factories. ” (Hindman 5) In the Songs of Innocence Tom Dacre had a dream about these harsh conditions these boys faced “As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! /That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, /were all of them locked up in coffins of black.” (10-12) Although these were hard times for most people the children did not deserve the treatment that they had to endure. Many of these …show more content…

Majority of the children were poor, orphans and some were sold into labor, Blake reveals this “When my mother died I was very young, /And my father sold me while yet my tongue/Could scarcely cry” (1-3) William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” brilliantly expresses the mindsets of two individuals made to carry out these expectations of working at a very young age. Despite society’s judgments on child labor, William Blake uses irony and sarcasm to get across his beliefs, the church and society lacked the effort to put an end to adolescent chimney sweeping. Blake establishes a poem full of grief and suffering but is engrained with a silver

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