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The advantages of child labour
Child labour 1760-1900
Child labour in the 1800s
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My research paper will be about child labor in the late 1800s/ early 1900s. Child labor is the use of children in industry or business, especially when illegal or considered inhumane. During the 1800s and 1900s children were mostly used as laborers becauses they easier to manage, cheaper than paying adults, and their size. While researching about child labor, I am going to focus how the roles the children worked as and how it affected society. I am also going to talk more about how that affected adults trying to get jobs. I want to know how it felt to work as a child during the late 1800s and early 1900s. How many hours did they work? How old were most child working? Those are a couple of questions I plan on answering for my research paper.
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
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
Child Labor. The 1890 census showed that more than one million children, ages ten to fifteen, were working in America. By 1910, that number increased to two million (Davis). Children as young as five could be found in glass making factories, canneries and home industries. Their workday could be as long as eighteen hours and would only get paid a fraction of what an adult would. Yetta Adelman, a Polish garment worker said “I was twelve years old but I wasn’t. Compared to a child [born] here in the United States, I was twenty (McGerr 18).”
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
The industrial revolution was in the late 1700s and early 1800s, it started in England and caused mass production. Certain impacts that were short term where the population boom, and urbanization. Most of the population was the working class and they worked in factories and mines and didn’t get a lot of pay. The industrial revolution resulted in the suffering of the working class in the short-term due to the inhuman working conditions and child labor.
In the mid-19th century the entire country utilized child labor because kids were paid less and the money the children earned was necessary for their family’s survival. According to The American, a high school history textbook published by Holt McDougal, the “North and South used children- cheap labor- for full days… 10 year old slave children worked in the fields like adults” (Danzer 266). During the mid 1800s it was the “norm” for young children to work to support the family, “one Northern mill employed 100 children ages four to ten” and textile-mills often had workers 15 years old and younger (Danzer 266). Unsafe child labor was very popular, increasing child fatalities and injuries caused by fatigue. Throughout the progressive era, multiple groups worked to protect child workers and eliminate unsafe child labor. In 1908 reformers were able to gain legislation in many states, this allowed restrictions to be placed on child labor, while also setting work hour standards (Danzer 517) Finally, in 1938 Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which “restricted the ages, hours, and working conditions of school-age workers” to improve teen safety while working ("Regulating Teen”). The specifics of teen and child work have continued to change and improve over the past 80
Whaples, Robert, ed. "Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution." EH.net. EH.Net Reviews, 02/03/2010. Web. 29 Feb 2012. .
During the Victorian Period children were good sources of labor. Beginning work as young as six or seven employers saw many benefits to hiring children (Yancey 33). Adolescents were a significant part of the labor force because they could be paid lower wages (Cody). Also their naturally small and nimble hands and bodies were easily maneuverable. Employers most often hired children over adults because kids were powerless and would not revolt (Yancey 33). Economic conditions forced poor children into working, sometimes as hard and long as their parents (Cody). Essential to the economy, Parliament supported child labor saying a child was more useful to his family working (Altick 249).
Child labor helps the kids by teaching them how to work with machines. They helped get materials that were stuck in the machines out of them. In the first document, Sadler interviewed an eighteen-year-old boy named William Cooper. Cooper said that he is able to read. In the picture on “Child Laborer in Cotton Mill, ” it shows a boy working at the mill. He looks about ten or eleven and Cooper started to work at the age of ten. Cooper was able to have some work experience. For child labor, there are negatives too. Cooper never got to go to school so he does not know how to write. He does not get paid a lot of money, he gets paid about a quarter of what the man make and women make. Cooper only has 40 minutes to eat at that is at noon so his health
Throughout history, many forms of child labor have existed, including child slavery and also indentured servitude. When industrialization grew it moved the workers from workshops and farms into more urban areas and to work in factories, for these jobs the children were well-liked because the owners of these factories saw them as cheaper, less likely to strike, and also easier to manage. Around the 1900s, many states decided whether they enforced child labor or not in their standards. By this time in history, many American children work in vast numbers in glass factories, home industries, agriculture, mines. Then during the twentieth century, child laborers in the U.S. had came to a peak. When child labor lead to a de...
Laws for child labor have been proposed in the U.S. since 1832, but they were not passed until over a hundred years later (About Child Labor). When industries began to rise in America after the Civil War, families from the countryside moved to larger cities with the hope of finding better work. (Childhood Lost). Unfortunately, the jobs offered to them had pitiful salaries, compelling parents to make the difficult decision of putting their kids to work. According to Eastern Illinois University, “Those working included children as young as three,” (Childhood Lost). It is unthinkable to imagine three-year-olds working, but it reveals a powerful glimpse into U.S. history many would not like to venture
Hobbs, Sandy, Jim McKechnie, and Michael Lavalette. Child Labor : A World History Companion. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 1999. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Child labor is the illegal use of children for business, warfare, etc. What this does is that it takes away children’s childhoods and their education. The conditions the child labors work are harsh and undesirable for anyone. Sadly the use of kids for work is a very prevalent thing in the world, and it’s mostly seen in Africa and the Middle East. Many laws have been passed worldwide to lessen the use of minors for work. There are many reasons why children work at such a young age and in such harsh conditions. Some reasons why are because they get kidnapped and they have no choice, or that his/her family needs extra financial aid and he/she needs to provide to their family.
Charles Henderson, who is head of socially responsible investment research at Aegon, once stated that "What is socially and ethically acceptable to investors is changing all the time.” Furthermore, the best way to define the ethic is a system of moral principles where people follow specific rules and regulation. Even though our code of conduct basis for humanity does not allow one employee to enslave or forced a child to do labor work, Child-labor has become one of the aspects of the ethics of stock market investing. Therefore, to create more understanding of how child-labor is making its recognition in our modern world, this paper will briefly discuss on the elements such as occurrences of child labor in the past, usage of child labor in the presence, and motives behind the unmerciful act.
Child Labor has been around for a long time. Child Labor is the use of children in industry of business, especially when illegal or considered inhumane. Child Labor harms children and/or keeps them from school and from their childhood. Multiple children that are over the age of eight already have jobs. Children are already treated as adults by the age of thirteen and some already have children of their own. Child Labor is bad for society and younger children because children are losing their childhood and aren’t getting an education like other children are. It’s difficult to know how many children under the age of fifteen. Most kids that are involved in child labor are forced to do it and if they refuse they are beaten and sometimes hung because they will refuse to work. It is very dangerous and unsuitable for kids to work. Kids can be easily stressed if they are beaten. Parents sell their kids to horrible people and make them do awful things.