Child labor is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development” (Ilo.org, 1). The Industrial Revolution is a time in history when England has an immense number of natural resources, some of which include iron and coal. The agricultural sector of the British economy is growing at high rates, allowing for the population to increase and for new opportunities to emerge. The abundance of people, resources, and land allow for new innovations and efficient labor systems to develop of which children play a major role. Used primarily for their small size and low hourly cost, children are being forced to forgo their educations to work dangerous jobs. …show more content…
A picture is painted through the use of several different adjectives and imagery components as Tom’s dream is described. By Blake choosing to write about thousands of locked up children, this gives the story a sense of neglection and tragedy. About halfway through Blake’s poem, the lives of many children are locked within metal coffins. “Were all of them locked up in coffins black” (Blake 12). This line in particular paints a picture of these dark, thick coffins that are restraining children. These coffins, though as sturdy as sarcophaguses, do not reveal the importance or show any devotion or appreciation for their exhausting lives. These caskets act as a wastebasket for the children’s hard work, giving them no benefits in return. They are used to represent the consequences of their work as well as the effects of it on their lives. The color black is used in this line to depict a sense of the end and last hope. This darkness shows that children’s lives are being taken from them, keeping any sight for a positive future completely blocked, for all it holds is darkness. However, the story lightens with the introduction of a guardian angel. “And by came an Angel who had a bright key, / And he opened the coffins & set them all free; / Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run” (Blake 13-15). In this …show more content…
The mood of “The Chimney Sweeper” transforms over time to convey a message. At the beginning of the poem, the atmosphere is gloomy, using negative language to help give the poem a sense of sadness and depression. This is evident through the way the speaker introduces the story of his friend. “There's little Tom Dacre, who cried” (Blake 5). This quote that introduces Tom, shows that he has a reason to be upset with his life. By describing little Dacre as a weeping child, it gives the poem a sense of sorrow and desperation because of the instincts of human nature, to support. This also shows how oftentimes, when people see mourning children, they tend to begin to feel upset as well. Like for example, in many instances, when people see commercials of malnourished children, they feel a hole in their hearts for those children’s disparity and have a desire to give money to help. This sadness carries over into this poem to make readers feel a compassion for the hard-working children of this time period. The atmosphere of the poem shifts through the introduction of the positive things such as the angel and the freedom of the lush terra firma. The disposition of the poem shifts completely to longing through the description of Tom’s state of mind and composition when he awakes. “Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm” (Blake 23); This dream helps Tom to have an epiphany over the potential that he has for a
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. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
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
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
"Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution." EHnet. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2017. (-- removed HTML --) .
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.
In the “chimney sweeper” that was written on the year 1794 it talks about how the innocent kid was brought into a dangerous world. How the child was taken from a safe place being the mothers belly to the drak outside world. Since the parents were poor there was work to be done in the chimney, furthermore this was the time of the industrial revolution, so it was really hard for people to stay alive.This poem talks about how the kids parents did not want him and how
The difference in the time periods of these two poems is crucial, as it severely alters the upbringing of the characters, their social projection, their self-image, and the types of problems that they face. The upbringing of children often has a great deal to do with their mental health and how they portray themselves to others as they grow older. After she mutilates herself in an attempt to make herself look beautiful, others take notice and comment on how pretty her corpse looks laying in the casket. In The Chimney Sweeper, the young chimney sweep finds enough hope in religion to keep him going.
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
England was a society dominated by children. During the reign of Queen Victoria one out of three of her servants were under the age of fifteen. Child labor was a prominent issue, because there were no systems to ensure the safety of children. During the start of the industrial revolution, there was a “high demand” for labor (Robson 53). Many families moved from rural areas to new, industrialized cities. After a while things weren’t looking as “promising” as they did before (Boone 23). In order to maintain, families had to put almost all of their family members to work. This led to a rise in the number of child labor. Children were “mistreated, underpayed and overworked” (Kincaid 30). Using children to do all of the hard work, the mining companies believed, was the most sensible and efficient way to get the job done. Because the children were a lot smaller, it was easy for them to “maneuver through tight spaces” and on top of that the children demanded little or no pay at all(Boone 43 ). These wages were enough to persuade companies to use children for all sorts of dangerous jobs such as coal mining and chimney sweeps. Children were called to do many other “horrible” jobs, jobs that adults in this era could not bear, just so long as the bills were paid (Robson 18). The working conditions and treatment of young children during this era was horrible and a lot was done to put an end to it.
The first stanza begins by telling the background of the chimney sweeper, or climbing boys as they were called. "When my mother died I was very young, [a]nd my father sold me..." (Blake lines 1-2). Once the boy's mother died his father sold him into an apprenticeship. It is here where Blake introduces his first instance of good and evil. Here the mother is seen as the "good". Muriel Mellown of the Literary Reference Center states that "His mother—always inIt can be inferred that the young sweeper loved his mother and was hurt emotionally over her death. The father on the other hand is seen as the "evil". Muriel Mellown states that "... sold as an apprentice by his father, the stern figure of authority..." (Mellown 3). This was quite normal for this time period considering that the man of the household was supposed to work while the woman took care of the house. However, it can be inferred that the narrator looks at him as a demonic man who does not care for him.
It is in lines 10 – 24 that the poem becomes one of hope. For when Blake writes “As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free;” Blake’s words ring true of hope for the sw...
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.
From the late 18th century to the mid 19th century, the economy in England was transformed from an agricultural to a manufacturing –based economy. In 1801, agriculture provided employment for 36% of the British population. By 1851, only 10% of the British population was employed in agriculture, while over 40% was employed in industry (Hopkins, 36). As a direct result of this transformation, a surplus of jobs were created and displaced farming families moved in to fill them. Factory and Mine owners exploited the situation by offering families a means to make more money, by putting their children to work. Industry profited from this arrangement by saving money, since child labor was more “cost effective”. According to one historian, Clark Nardinelli, “in 1835 56,000 children under the age of thirteen were working in textile factories alone. By 1874, the number of child laborers in the market hit its peak with over 122,000 children between the ages of 10 and thirteen working in textile factories (4).”
“The Chimney Sweeper” is a great title for Blake’s poem. The title is a symbol representing the harsh life of a chimney sweeper and his life as a child. He states, “When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue”, (ln 1-2). This is saying that his mother died when he was young and his father gave him up. Blake’s unhappiness resembles being mortal in a sense that his unhappiness is like being dead. Blake has two meanings when he says, “So your chimney’s I sweep, and in soot I sleep”, (ln 4). This line denotes that he is an adult now with the responsibility of being a chimney sweeper. Blake is really saying that his childhood was terrible like the work of a chimney sweeper.
In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake, the author attempts to educate the reader about the horrors experienced by young children who are forced into labor at an early age cleaning chimneys for the wealthy. The poem begins with a young boy who has lost his mother but has no time to properly grieve because his father has sold him into a life of filth and despair. The child weeps not only for the loss of his mother and father’s betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and innocence. Blake uses poetry in an attempt to provoke outrage over the inhumane and dangerous practice of exploiting children and attempts to shine a light on the plight of the children by appealing to the reader’s conscience in order to free the children from their nightmare existence. Right away in the first lines of the poem we learn through the child narrator that his life is about to change dramatically for the worse.