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Impacts of child labor during the industrial revolution
Consequences of child labour on the children industrial revolution
The debate of child labor
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EVOLUTION OF CHILD LABOR
Child labor has come to be regarded as a ghastly by-product of the industrial revolution. The cruelty described in much of the historical literature has made the employment of children the industrial revolution’s most despised feature.
Poverty is the root cause of child labor. Parents send their children for work to earn money for household survival. The entire family is working to run their lives. This popular argument makes banning child labor lose much of its force. The market has been treating child labor as a cheaply available human resource that can be exploited to extract unskilled labor at almost no cost. Many organizations replace their adult labor force with child labor to reduce costs. This has led to new cheaply available child labor market.
Child labor has been a persistent problem throughout the world. Even in the presence of laws and restrictions, many children that live in undeveloped countries do work and that leaves them open to exploitation from small garages to large corporations.
CURRENT SCENARIO IN INDIA
India, an IT giant and the world's second-fastest growing major economy, has millions of children all under 14 years of age, some as young as 4 or 5, and all toiling hard just to get a square meal to keep body and soul from parting company. Child labor is a dagger through India's soul. With an estimated 30% of the world's working kids living in India, the country has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest child labor force in the world.
Today millions of children work as laborers in various businesses in India. You find children being exploited in garages, hotels, construction sites, etc mainly used for low skilled work. These kids have the burden of working to hel...
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...e a brighter future and eradicate child labor.
CONCLUSION
Employers have always capitalized on the cheap child labor available to reduce their costs. This does not make it morally or ethically right for companies to exploit children. Companies like Nike and Hershey need to lead by example. The government should enforce and practice stringent actions against violators. If laws are not enforced, then child slavery will continue and these children will be deprived of the simple joys of childhood.
Child labor can be eradicated only when people realize that it is unethical to support child labor. More than the laws and punishments, people should be true to their conscious and make voluntary efforts to make sure that every child gets to enjoy their childhood and get the right environment to grow into good healthy citizens of our country and bring glory to our nation.
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
All of my life I have considered myself as a person who loves children. I enjoy playing with them, helping them, and just being around them. So when I first agreed with corporations who use child labor I shocked myself completely. After examining two articles; one “The Case for Sweatshops”, by David R. Henderson, and two “Sweatshops or a Shot at a Better Life”, by Cathy Young, I came to the conclusion that in some cases when young children work under proper conditions it can keep them out of the streets and be helpful to them and their families.
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.
Want to know how many deaths does Child labor cause throughout the whole year? Because of child labor, there are over 2.7 million deaths every year! Child labor is a definite human rights violation which is included in both factories and farms. There they are overworked, underfed, and have no medical attention. The use of children for child labor is gross to even think about and is a major human rights issue. First of all, child labor should not just be used for their size to work in factories. Secondly, they should not be the victims to the harmful pesticides and chemicals sprayed over the field to help the crops.
We have all at one point seen or read an article of young girls and boys being abducted or simply forced into manual labor. Many reasons have been given as to why child labor occurs in these foreign countries such as: poverty, low pay, and unskilled work. These foreign companies or sweatshops find it easy to simply abduct poor and uneducated children, and force them into slavery for little to no pay and horrible working conditions. This is because there is greater demand for low skilled, and low cost labor that employers prefer to fill with child labor, instead of having to deal with more expensive and less flexible adult employees. Throughout the years there has been an increase in the supply of child labor mainly because of young kids in
Child labor laws need to be enforced more because governments are paying little attention to those who abuse the laws; therefore children are being abused physically by long hours and economically by low pay. Farmers and many businesses in third world countries are accused of taking major advantage of these laws. This topic is highlighted as one of the highest controversial issues in labor politics. Child labor is a major issue in countries such as Africa, Argentina, and Bangladesh. For example, in Africa, some children do the work of a grown man for as little as one dollar a day. On the other hand, in the United States some studies show that child labor is a bigger problem in the U.S than some third world countries (Barta and others). Many farmers are facing a huge problem; the government is attempting to keep children from working long hours on their family farms.
Think about the cotton in your shirt, the sugar in your coffee, and the shoes on your feet, all of which could be products of child labor. Child labor is a practice that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity and includes over 200 million children worldwide who are involved in the production of goods for companies and industries willing to exploit these kids for profit. Although most countries have laws prohibiting child labor, a lack of funding and manpower means that these laws are rarely enforced on a large scale. However, even for a first-world country like the United States, that has a large number of state and federal law enforcement officers, child labor is still a problem because priority is given to crimes that are more violent or heinous. Child labor must be made a priority issue because it is a global plague whose victims are physically and psychologically scarred, lack a proper education, are impoverished, and whose children are doomed to the same fate if nothing changes.
The kids under the age of fourteen were sent to go assist with the textile workers. They then would beat and verbally abuse the child. And if children would show up late, they would be weighted. Weighted means to put a very heavy weight on the child's back and have them walk up and down the factory aisles for hours, so other children can learn from it. This then resulted in back and neck injuries. (“Child Labor in Factories”) While this all seems really cruel, there were many positives that came out of child labor. Children were still able to contribute to their families. Money was a big struggle, and it had a major impact for poor families. Children were also getting a wide range of opportunities and work experiences for the future ahead. Although it might not be the best way to get experience, they were still helping out there families and showing respect towards them. This shows that during the Industrial Revolution, children were used harshly for labor, and the positives and negatives out of
Child labor refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely or by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work (International Labor Organization). Child labor has been a big problem ever since the Victorian Era. Many counties worldwide have used and still to this day use child labor. Though there are many laws that have been implemented against using children to work, many countries tend to ignore them. In my paper I will be discussing countries where child labor is present, push to stop child labor, companies that use child labor, the effects on children, and the reasons for child labor.
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.
Nardinelli, C. (1990). Child Labor and The Industrial Revolution. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
So I believe that the issue of child labour is not simple. As Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report argued, children’s work needs to be seen as having two extremes. On one hand, there is the destructive or exploitative work and, on the other hand, there is beneficial work - promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest. ‘And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development.’ My firm belief is that there is a difference between child labour and child work and that in both cases the issue is whether or not the child is deliberately being exploited.
If we try to solve these problems, the rate of child labour will reduce by 50 percent. With this confidence, for the last three years we are conducting the programmes of educational awareness for eradication of child labour. 4. Causes of Child Labour : Problems faced by parents, social backwardness, illiteracy and dislike for schooling, etc.
Census (2011) of India indicates that there are over 12 million child workers in India. They are employed in textile factories, roadside restaurants (dhabas), hotels, domestic workers, in mines and so on. They are even seen doing hazardous work in firecrackers and matchstick industries. This is not a new scenario for India. The Government has been taking proactive steps to tackle this problem through strict enforcement of policies and laws.