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Child labor laws during the industrial era
Effects of child labor
Child labor laws during the industrial era
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Child Workforce helps struggling parents with paying bills and earning a little extra cash for food or needs to survive. Child labor is a good thing because it helps families that need the money to get out of their debt and need it for everyday life.
Children have been known for helping their parents by doing chores, small favors and in an out house work. Children work similar like parents and get paid by wages and by the hour, some people pay minimum wage and others pay what the job is really worth. In Pennsylvania children were allowed to work in factories from the ages of 8 and older. In the 18th century factories depended on children to show up and work everyday. Families moved to rural areas in the north to farms to look for new industrialized places and made a living. The poor families had to find a good job to support themselves with their family. Factory owners loved child labor because it was cheap and they could support their ideas by saying it was good for the country/state and the economy. Children labor was very useful, because they could fit into smaller areas that the average human could not fit in. The children were used to fix small problems in the machines that could become into a bigger problem, because the grown man's hand could not fit into the smaller areas children were very useful to the factory owners. the factory owners also found it way easier to get them to work easier and to manage and control there feeling to get more work out of them. Owners and parents could send them away for jobs and trade them for older or younger so they could earn more money and make a better living for each other.
So many families had to depend on the kids to go out, work, and make the money for the fam...
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... more and more educated when it came to work, and as they grew up they were better at working and knew the rules of what to do and not to do. “Federal and State child labor laws governing agricultural employment reflect this belief they are much less restrictive than those applied to other industries children working on farms owned or operated by a parent are completely exempt from Federal agricultural child labor provisions, and other teenage farm workers are permitted to perform hazardous jobs at younger ages than are their counterparts who work in other industries.” (Child Labor Laws and Enforcement). “From the early 1800's, children were an integral part of the textile industry's work force. In the Manayunk district of Philadelphia, children as young as seven assisted in the spinning and weaving of cotton and woolen goods.” (Kenneth, Wolensky and Judith, Rich)
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 started during the industrial revolution, cheap labor was needed, and the machines could be operated by children. Many children worked because of poverty, they were forced to work to help out their families. The lack of government regulations that enforced safety standards or that said how long the children were to work. They would work very long hours with nothing to show for it. Since children were so small they could fit into small spaces that the adult workers could
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.
Children were useful as laborers because their size allowed them to move in small spaces in factories or mines where adults couldn’t fit, such as it was for chimney sweeping. Children were also easier to manage and control and could be paid less than adults. Supporters of child labor also argued that the employing children was beneficial to the family, the child, and to the country; the conditions were similar as it has been in cottages, farms, or up the chimneys. The work was simple enough for children and helped them make an obligatory contribution to the family’s income. To factory owners, employing children was seen as necessary for their products to remain competitive and for production to run smoothly. Additionally, Child labor can be used as a mean of preventing vice and idleness. Thus, child labor was seen as beneficial to society, to the children, and to the
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
Most children who worked; suffered health related issues. “Many of the industries that employ large numbers of young workers in the United States have higher-than-average injury rates for workers of all ages, such as grocery stores, hospitals, nursing homes, and agriculture.”Because of their physical differences from adults, kids had rapid skeletal growth, greater risk of hearing loss, greater need for food, higher chemical absorption rate and lower heat tolerance. Also they weren’t able to receive education.
During the Industrialization period, a child working was not an uncommon occurrence, but as time went on it began proving a large issue
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...
The childhood of the past has changed through many eras of time. The labor work of children is not needed in a great deal no more. The 1800s was a time of labor for children. Families would have more children than now, because without a child many families could not survive. Children were needed to bring home money and feed the family. The girls were used to do the chores around the house, while the boys were used to do outside work, like cut wood. Children were influenced to do labor. They would not believe in an education, both rural and urban children. Through the industrialization children started working in family farms or in small workshops. Boys and girls would find work at mines or large factories. Children were seen as the important economic survivals to their families. By the 1890s, Canada ...
The majority of the children started at a young age “What time did you begin work at the factory? When I was six years old” (Document 7). Children were counted upon to start work at the earliest age possible to earn money to aid their family. In addition the kids would also have the same hours as adults, which was at least eight to ten hours a day. Bustling work was assigned to the children also “ Explain what you had to do: When the frames are full, they have to stop the frames, and take the full bobbins off, and carry them to the roller, and then put empty ones on, and set the frame going again” (Document 7). Young ones were expected to do hard work which involved running back and forth, it was sure-enough strenuous work for younger children. Loads of kids did work similar to this if not harder, most kids worked in textile factories. Bountiful amounts of kids body’s were physically damaged “You are considerably deformed in person as a consequence of this labour? Yes I am” (Document 7). The hard labor the children had made their body's frail and weak after a long period of time. This started happening when they grew into teenagers after all the years of work they did. Child labor had a extreme effect on children's life, but the working conditions for children and adults were just as
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.
The problem spread to other industrialized countries including the United States. Massachusetts passed a law in 1836 that required working children to receive some amount of schooling. Connecticut followed in 1842 with a law that created a maximum amount of hours children could work a day in a textile factory. It wasn’t until the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 that real progress was made in child labour in the United States. One example of these terrible abuses is the story of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani child who was forced into labour as a carpet weaver. At the age of four, the boy was sold as an indentured servant to a factory owner for ...
In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s big business began to boom. For the first time companies were developing large factories to manufacture their goods. Due to the new mechanics and cheap labor, factory owners could now produce their goods at a cheaper rate. As big businesses brought wealth and capitalism, it also widened the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor. One class in particular was horribly affected by the growth of big factories. This class was the poor working class. According to the article “Child Labor in the United States” written by Robert Whaples, a big proportion of the labour work force was made up of children: “In 1820 children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the manufacturing labor force of the industrializing
people. For countless families, joining the labor force was a much more productive way for their children to spend their time. ("The causes and consequences of child labor").