It was any other day in the state of Alabama, people trying to get money in any way possible but it was no ordinary day for a certain family. They were dirt poor and needed money but could not make much because of their children. “I cannot believe that I am doing this,” the father thought, “ This is the best option for him to survive, but at the same time it is not my child's fault we lost so much money on the farm.” The child was asleep in the mother’s arms they took one look at each other, and set the child down on the stranger's door step knock once and ran as fast as they could and never looked back. Unfortunately this was one of the many things children dealt with throughout the 1930’s. Both children and teens in the South suffered greatly …show more content…
According to Encyclopedia.com “...Desertion became more common.” Desertion means leaving someone or something.This ended up becoming even more common than adults getting divorced. If kids are left on their own many bad things can happen, children do not want to be alone during this time period. Many children could not contribute to their family, so the parents would be leave them on the street alone. This was terrible for kids because they had no place to live, no way of food, or water, and were left for dead. Also according to the same website, “Psychological stress on adults resulted in domestic violence and child abuse.” Psychological stress is a feeling or any unpleasant emotion, and was very common during the Great Depression due to low paying jobs, having no money, and sometimes raising a family. Stress can do a lot of things to a person, they might break down emotionally or break out and attack someone. When a child is abused it makes them feel unsafe in their current environment, and is usually caused when the parents believe that it is the child’s fault that something did not go right. With their being low paying jobs adults believed that it was their child’s fault that they went into poverty when really it was no one. Many children would stay with their abusive parents because they had nowhere else to go. A child’s home life was very brutal during the Great Depression through …show more content…
According to History.com, “ Children often worked long hours in dangerous factory conditions for very little money. Children were useful as laborers because their size allowed them to move in small spaces in factories…” Child labor is when young children can be employed to a job and takes away their childhood activities like school. It also can affect them physically, mentally, and socially. Factories during the depression were just as dangerous when they first were created during the Industrial Revolution, and were known to kill people. This is bad for children because having children in a factory can ruin their chance of doing anything in future. The factories could kill them or give minor injuries. On top of all of this the children are barely making any money and work longer than grown men at times. Another place children were put into labor were in mines, and according to historylearningsite.com, “In one unnamed coal mine, 58 deaths out of a total of 349 deaths in one year, involved children thirteen years or younger.” In most coal mines children pushed carts full of coal or made sure coal did not pile up when getting transported. Children were often used as a way to get to small places that adult men could not. If there were no children then the miners would force women to do it or help the children to make the process go faster. Much like in factories they
The lives of large section 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.
These comforts and conveniences included better and more developed homes, cheaper clothes, more tools and utensils to work with, and faster and cheaper travel. One of the most important concerns of this time period is the effect of child labor. Document 7 states: Large machines and rising demand for products quickly led to the growth of the factory system. The building of these factories led to the hiring of massive numbers of child workers, the youngest at 11 to 12 years old.
Often, children were forced to work due to money-related issues, and the conditions they worked in were terrible. Children worked in coal mining, such as at Woodward Coal Mining in Kingston, Pennsylvania (Doc. 7). Children were used to make the process of producing products cheaper, and they were paid low wages; the capitalists hired children just to keep the process of making products going and to make profit. One cause of child labor in harsh conditions was the unfateful fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City in 1911. Teenaged immigrant girls that were employed there worked under sweatshop-like conditions. The building they worked in was inadequately equipped in case of a fire, for the doors were locked, leaving no exit for the girls, and the single fire escape collapsed with the rescue effort; as a result, when the fire started, they were unable to escape. 145 workers were killed, but the company owners were not penalized harshly for this tragedy. This further demonstrates that capitalists were able to get away with the harsh conditions that they put their laborers, especially child laborers, through for their own benefit, which is making more money and using any means to get it, even if those means are low wages and harsh working
During the Great Depression receiving an education was becoming more and more difficult for southerners. From not being able to afford the required supplies needed, to not being able to pay the tutions, many people found it nearly impossible to attend school. The novel, To Kill A Mockingbird written by Harper Lee shows how the lack of education in society during the Great Depression affected Southerners lives, not allowing them to change their futures for the better.
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
They were forced to go out to work and make a rapid transition into adulthood. In these work places they, like any other adult, had a limited amount of time to eat. Patience Kershaw, a miner at the age of 17 recalls having cake for dinner- in inadequate dinner- and she does “not stop or rest at any time for the purpose” referring to her inability to eat throughout the day . She of course is not the only one, Elizabeth Bentley who works in the mills was asked whether she had the opportunity to eat in the factory. The 23 year old who began working at the age of 6 replied with a “no” saying how she had little to eat. The human rights were furthermore diminished as I read further on about the consequences there were if a child were to arrive late to work or became drowsy. Clearly the long hours and often times the long travel from home to work would severely tire anyone, to keep the kids under control and alert while working, the over lookers resorted to strapping them “when they became drowsy”. Matthew Crabtree explains the dread that these kids had of getting beaten, due to the fear they had we can infer that the means of physical abuse was prevalent in these factories. In the mines the young girls and women had to adapt to the conditions of their workplace. The vigorous lifting and loading was a strenuous activity done by both sexes, males worked naked to combat heat while females also worked
Children as young as young as five or seven years old worked in dangerous factories. Many times if the children fell asleep while on the job, they would slip and get stuck in the machines, resulting in death. Child labor in the late 1800’s was very unsafe and put the lives of young children in danger. The children worked in very dangerous conditions, most of the time it was factories. The conditions were very poor, the factories were dirty and unsafe for children. The children would work for up to sixteen hours with little to no pay.
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.
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 businesses.
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.
In the Gilded Age in America, there were children as young as three years old working. In the factories, the air quality was horrible. It was full of toxins that could cause serious health problems, especially in children who were still developing and had weaker immune systems. Children who worked in rural areas also worked
Currently there are laws and regulations that protect children from working in hazardous workplaces at a young age. The article, "The Impact of Discrimination on Working Children and on the Phenomenon of Child Labour” mentions the Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only set the minimum wage but also banned children under the age of sixteen from working. This act led to the decline of child labor in the United States over a period of time. For the first time after a long time, children did not have to work in hazardous workplaces and risk their lives. Children were able to live their childhood and did not have to grow up so fast. In add...
Imagine waking up at five in the morning to walk over a mile to a factory where you work until noon where you get a half hour break for lunch, then it’s back to work until nine or ten at night, when you are finally allowed to go home and you are only eight years old. Today that seems unimaginable, but during the early 19th century it was the everyday life of thousands of children whose ages range from as young as five until you died. During the Industrial Revolution many children were required to work dangerous jobs to help their families.
A woman who had lived an unsteady life throughout her childhood was negatively affected as an adult by the things that she had went through in her earlier years. In an article entitled “One Family 's Story Shows How The Cycle Of Poverty Is Hard To Break,” Pam Fessler stated that “Like many before her, she carried her poverty into adulthood, doing odd jobs with periods of homelessness and hunger.” The woman had realized that her children were being negatively affected by the unsteady lifestyle that they were living. The mother had said that her six year old daughter had emotional issues, which led to her making herself throw up after eating, running away, and talking about killing herself (Fessler). The little girl had been emotionally affected by poverty, which caused her to do things that most six year olds would not think about doing. The people who live in poverty as a child are more likely to struggle in adulthood. Poverty has many negative effects on children and tends to affect the way they grow and live the rest of their life as an
Casie could recall some mothers she knew growing up having to have 3 jobs at a time. The kids of those mothers were affected with greats amount of depression, because they never got any attention from their mother. They would have to result in getting attention from other parents, and anyone else who would give it to them. Little did they know, their mother’s were simply trying to earn enough money for them to continue living in a house, with food on the table, and clothes for them to wear. In the 1990s, single mothers who were below the poverty line essentially grew poorer. "Poverty Rate Among Working Single-Mother Families - Press Release - 8/16/01." Poverty Rate Among Working Single-Mother Families - Press Release - 8/16/01. N.p., 16 Aug. 2001. Web. 25 Oct. 2015. When Casie’s daughter was too young to go to school she would have to get night jobs, because she could not afford daycare. Casie had to depend on her parents, and a few close friends to watch her daughter at night time while she was out working. Fortunately, once her daughter was old enough to start school, Casie was able to get normal day jobs to help provide for