Causes Of Child Labor During The Industrial Revolution

During the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s child labor was a social issue that developed in the United States. In the early 1900’s, so many children ages 16 and under were working in American mine and factories. Our kids should not be forced to work at such an early age, they need education and a good childhood that they will always remember. Some children that are as young as 4 years old are being forced to work in crammed, dangerous factories. These factories are full of poisonous fumes and diseases that can obviously kill. Kids as young as 13 are being forced to work around 13 hours a day. Working these 13 hours is exactly what most adults are working at the time. Kids are also earning a lower wage since they are minors, employers

In a photograph taken by Lewis Hine, he shows us “how dangerous the machines are that the children are working on and that they were practically working inside of them” (Document 8). Being in a room full of dust and sweat, small children could get all of the dust and lint stuck in their lungs. With no windows, this work habit is highly unsafe for the children. It is actually unsafe for anyone who is stuck in a small room with no windows for thirteen hours a day. In the same interview, Elizabeth Bentley was asked, “To explain what she had to do while working in the flax mill” (Document 7). Her answer was, “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 8). A six year old child doing all this work was a disaster waiting to happen because children could easily get hurt or hurt another person.

The younger boys who worked at the mines were called breaker boys. They didn’t work in the mine itself, but sat on benches and picked out the bits of rock from the coal. “These children worked in the picking room, a crowded, high-ceilinged vault, crisscrossed with rickety catwalks and crooked stairs, lit only by a wall of grime-choked windows” (Levine, Marvin J. "Mines, Mills, and Canneries." Children for Hire: The Perils of Child Labor in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 21. Print.) Within factories, small children had to work fast at the machines, being very careful unless an unfortunate body part happens to get caught in the high-powered, dangerous machinery. For several long hours in rooms without fresh air, ventilation, and sometimes, no windows, the working conditions that the children suffered through were appalling. There are children who work in hazardous industries, risking accident and injury; there are others working in conditions that take a slower but definite toll on the children’s health (Basu, Kaushik, and Pham Hoang Van. "The Economics of Child Labor" The Economics of Child Labor (1998): 412-27. Print.).

On the other hand, because of the establishment of factories by businessmen, the workers ' lives became hard as they faced unfair working conditions in dirty and small working places. They worked long hours with no break. The machines used in factories were also very dangerous and led to workers enduring injuries. Unskilled labor did not even require training. During the Industrial Revolution, child labor became common since it was cheaper to have children working. Instead of earning an education, children started working as early as 8 years old. Also, factories produced pollution within the cities because of all the coal that was being used for power, leading smoke to contaminate the air. People became sick and even

Conditions of factories were not safe for anyone, let alone a small child. Due to these conditions many children died before their prime. Many children “began work at age 5, and generally died before they were 25” (www.victorianweb.org), America was beginning to lose an entire generation due to these working conditions that so many had to endure. Children were hired at an alarming rate. “In 1870, the first time census reported child workers, there were 750,000 workers in the United States age 15 and under, not including those who worked on family farms or in other family businesses” (“Child Labor in America”), these numbers were not something that was looked over, it astonished many. “A cotton manufactory of 5 or 6000 spindles will employ those 200 children” (Bremner 232). The workforce would continuously grow, hiring more and more children each day. Factories were good for using children as a means of their productivity. “Textile factories, for the most part […] were in the forefront of this industrial revolution, and children formed an essential component of the new industrial workforce” (Bremner 232). Many times without these children working some of these factories would not have survived through the revolution.

Document 6 states children working underground, breaker boys inhaled great amounts of coal dust damaging their lungs and causing illness. This shows that many children were worked hard. Additional document 1 shows that in 1910 there were 163000000 child workers,117 infants under one died. That means .5% of the work force was children.

In the coalmine, it was rare to come across a boy that was in decent shape. “From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men” (Document A). From this, many kids had hunches at the age of 12. For a 12 year old boy, a workday included hard work “for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day” (Document A). Not only that, but the job was very dangerous. Cuts and bruises from the col happen all the time and cleanliness is never thought about. Infections take place, and even worse, often “a boy is mangled

The places that children would work were never heated in the winter or cooled in the summer. Most of the time these conditions would end up getting the children injured or sick. The worse part about child labor is that half of them didn’t know what

One problem in the 1900s was child labor, which was not an uncommon sight in the factories. The children who worked at these factories would be exposed to harsh chemicals and could possibly lose and arm or limb to the machineries. Children as young as 16 years old would work in those unsafe, overcrowded factories instead of going to school to receive an education. To resolve the child labor issue, many states begun passing laws that made child labor illegal. As shown in the illustration in document 7, the state of Georgia passed the Georgia Child Labor laws, which took children out of Georgia Factories and into schools for education (document 7). Also shown in document 2, in

Children lost many body parts due to working on these machines they’re required to use. Which goes back to why working in factories is very harmful. Although, these kids already knew what they were getting themselves into while working in the factory. They fairly needed the benefits that were provided for the hours they worked. Plus during this time, it was very difficult to come across work during this time era.

(Miflin, 2014) Health of children in the 19th century wasn’t good; working twelve to sixteen hours a day with hardly any rest would make the children exhausted and would have likely suffered from fatigue. They also would go without food, and would end up falling ill as a result of lack of nutrition. As well as being exhausted, hungry and generally not well, children working over machines would often have bowed legs and their limbs and muscles would be poorly developed. Factories were not the only work children would take on, some children would be sent down the mines and work under ground. Mines were extremely dangerous, and children would work without any sunlight for hours on end, this resulting in a lack of vitamin D. children would be forced to carry heavy equipment whilst traveling on foot through water. If children were not working they would be out on the streets, finding food and looking for safe places to sleep the night, that is if they weren’t at home with families, some families would disown their children kicking them to the streets or to be taken into the orphanage. This would have had major impact on their health as the streets would be riddled with disease, the water wasn’t pure and the food wasn’t easy to find. The cold would have hit them and children would often die after the first week of been on the streets. In 1899 the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded (NSPCC) making children’s live that bit

Children most of the time worked in mines, glass factories, textiles, canaries, and home industries. A lot of these industries are filled with dangers that can easily kill them. In this quote “Children as young as six years old during the industrial revolution worked hard hours for little or no pay” (Child labor in factories). A good number of these kids were harassed and mistreated by the factory bosses. If children didn’t arrive on time to work, they would have to be punished by the factory bosses. The punishment was that the children would have to sprint up and down the factory aisle until they were completely drained out of energy and they had to do this nude carrying a backpack full of heavy objects. This caused a lot of children to develop

Child Labor Essay Evaluation Child Labor during the Industrial Revolution was a very difficult time for children because of the labor and hardship that children were forced to face at the time. Labor was long and hard, pay was little, if any pay was given at all. Due to their labor taking up almost all of their time, they would often have little education, as quoted in Mr. Coal, “It is only half past seven o’clock in the morning. Boys of his age should be eating breakfast and getting ready for school.” “When he first started at work, he wanted to go to school, but now he does not care.

Children have worked throughout the majority of human history, but child labor reached a new level during the Industrial Revolution which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries in Europe and America. The Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant events that created modern society. It not only was a time of great technological change, but also social change. It changed the way items are produced due to the invention of mass production, which require factories and workers. Children were available and cheap at the time, which was convenient for factory owners. Overtime, industrialization became common in almost every country, with some nations experiencing it later than others. Due to industrialization, child labor is now present

Typically, their work conditions are unsafe, unsanitary and could easily affect their health permanently. These “work” conditions can cause long term illness and health effects such as; hearing loss, high chemical absorption and rapid skeletal growth which can mess up hormones in the young children’s body. There were 126 million children that were exposed to hazardous work conditions.