Child Labor DBQ Essay

Being an industrial worker in the late 19th-century in America was not a simple life. Even at the best times the pay was small and the time spent at work was long in dangerous conditions. Most of the money derived in America went to the actual workforce. Women and children suffered the most however, making up the majority of the workers and only receiving a small percentage of what a man could make. Different periods of economic crises tokk the nation by storm, also breaking down the amount of wages from industrial work and increasing the total population of the unemployed.

Or cloths it’s a pretty good chance it’s from child labor.Child labor is around every where it’s estimated more than 200,000 million kids around the world are in child labor.Child labor still does continue today it is a concern people are fighting to stop child labor but they need more people to help fight the war of child labor.Almost half of those kids are 5-17 years old that are involved in something dangerous in child labor.

In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, labor was anything but easy. Factory workers faced long hours, low pay, high unemployment fears, and poor working conditions during this time. Life today is much easier in comparison to the late 1800s. Americans have shorter days, bigger pay and easier working conditions. Not comparable to how life is today, many riots sparked, and citizens began to fight for equal treatment. Along with other important events, the Haymarket Riot, the Pullman Strike, and the Homestead strike all play a vital role in illustrating labor’s struggle to gain fair and equitable treatment during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

After the civil war, up until the early 1900s, the need for a larger workforce grew as industrialization expanded. Samuel Slater brought the industrial revolution from England, and even since then, there were people trying to get better working conditions. Due to the growth in population by immigrants and expansion of industrialization, the working conditions became worse and worse, causing workers to suffer. Many people fought to solve this problem and changed many American’s lives for the better.

“I believe in the children of the future,” are lyrics of The Greatest Love of All, made famous in 1977 and 1985 by George Benson and Whitney Houston respectively. They believed in the value of children in our society and that they should be protected. However, those people believed in a child 's capacity to change the world in the future. While people in the past saw children as a way to change the world while they were children. In the late seventeenth century, industrialization arose in England ushering in a new era of industry in our world. More industry means more workers, including children. With the rise of industrialization in a nation, child laborers are viciously abused due to their niche roles in production and their families

Between the years 1870-1900, Americans began to respond to the effects fostered by these corporations. From urban factory workers to rural farmers, Americans began to organize against these big businesses. With mass industrialization, more job’s were made available to women, these jobs were often in factories with terrible conditions, sweatshops. There was a sameness about working in mass production factories. Thus, working in these modern mass production factories created a homogenous environment that diminished individualism and the need for skilled workers. (Doc. C) Strikers were common during this era, workers participated in strikes and joined labor unions, such as The American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, due to the terrible working conditions. The American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, was specifically for skilled workers and argued for better wages and a reduction in working hours. (Doc. G) Although urban workers were greatly impacted by the growth of these corporations, they were not the ones. Farmers, suffered

The use of children sped up production and made the pool of employees much larger. The benefit of child labor for the workers being able to have more people in the factory. The disadvantage was the fact that children are young and should be spending their time learning and playing opposed to operating machines for 16 hours and never attending school (Document 1). Some communities made child labor an option and enforced education at the same time. These communities were known as working societies. They focused on making nice conditions for children that worked. They took good care of kids and paid them in exchange for work. Safety was a big concern so death rates were very low (Document 5). However, not all companies treated their kids well. Some factories abused child labor, allowing kids as young as three years old to help out (Document 9). Politicians are managers claimed that the kids were just fine and even benefited from working. “I have visited many factories, and I never saw a single instance of corporal chastisement inflicted on a child. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert” (Document 4). Child labor was a debatable topic during the Industrial Revolution because many people depended on it but many other people wanted it to stop because it was

Child workers in factories Children were viewed as a dispensable source of labour during the Industrial Revolution. Evidence of this is that they were given potentially dangerous jobs, worked to the point of exhaustion and harshly punished for their actions. Children were viewed as dispensable because they were given potentially dangerous jobs. The jobs that children were made to do in factories and mines were often in tight enclosed spaces or close to dangerous heavy machinery. Evidence of this can be found in sources one, two and seven.

When declaring independence in 1776, colonists on the American eastern seaboard were finally free from the irrational and decaying power of their mother country Great Britain. Using life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the foundation of their newly founded country, they experienced massive floods of immigrants in the 19th century. Consequently, America’s inhabitants were eager to progress with a fair political system, a non-autocratic society and most importantly, an economic powerhouse. With this motive, industrialism stimulated the economy, giving the nation a reputable, global name. However, under the severe hegemony of industrialism, optimistic immigrants and lower-class families became the source of labor. Most shocking to Americans

After releasing the damage these onerous amounts of labor were having on children, the British Parliament set out to lessen the burden on children and create laws against child labor. One of the first Acts proposed was the 1802 Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, which came about after the conditions of Sir Robert Peel’s factories were discovered. Peel was one of the first factory owners to employ pauper or orphaned children in mills as “apprentices,” a practice that quickly rose in its popularity as the children were not paid. In these mills, conditions were so ruinous that an outbreak of fever had caused most of the children to die. This act was applied principally, though not exclusively, to apprentices in cotton and woolen mills (Simkin,

Charles Henderson, who is head of socially responsible investment research at Aegon, once stated that "What is socially and ethically acceptable for investors is changing all the time.” Furthermore, the best way to define the ethic is a system of moral principles where people follow specific rules and regulation. Even though our code of conduct basis for humanity does not allow one employee to enslave or forced a child to do labor work, Child-labor has become one of the aspect of the ethics from stock market investing. Therefore to create more understanding of how child-labor is being used in our modern world, this paper will briefly discuss on the components such as occurrences of child labor from the history, use of it in the present era, and motives behind its brutal act.

"Seated on the rough boards and coated with black dust, the breaker boys bent over their work in silence, banging away with their tiny mallets, gathering little piles of slate by their sides. Sean Flannery was a "breaker boy" who longed to join his older brother and father down in the mines. Breaker boys spent their time above ground pulling rocks and slate from coal cars as they rushed by. To accomplish this task these young boys would sit on boards that hung over the coal chutes. "Trapper Boys" opened the doors for speeding coal carts. Often young workers fell or were hit by rushing carts." (Child labor, 1) Child labor through out history has been proven to affect child. Many things have happened in the past, which ruined the lives of

Child labor is considered as a form of child abuse, it being the exploitation of a child’s rights and freedoms. Therefore, child labour is when underage children are employed, this happens because a child labourer is paid less than an adult labourer. Consequently employers have more children working for them because they spend less paying the children.

“In 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16” (“Child Labor”). This was during the end of the Gilded Age, when child labor was problem and was starting to be a major one. Child labor started because of poverty when children worked to support their families but were forced to give up education. Children could work long hours in dangerous positions for little money. Child labor continues because children have little power to complain or stand up for themselves to adults, their bosses. Human rights are rights that one is entitled to because they are a human being. Child labor is a violation of human rights because it is enslavement which human beings should be protected from. Child labor is dangerous for a child’s

(Laslett, 1970) Coupled with these innovations was the new concept of applying scientific methodology to industrial processes. (Laslett, 1970) All of these changes, while beneficial to businesses, did little to improve the lot of the industrial laborer. (Laslett, 1970) One of the key complaints of an entirely unregulated labor force in the late 1800s was the extensive use and abuse of child labor. In 1870, nearly three quarters of a million children between the ages of ten and fifteen worked in hazardous aspects of manufacturing, agriculture and street trade. (Laslett, 1970) By 1880, that number was over one point one million, or one in every six children in that age group. (Laslett, 1970) By 1900, that number doubled. The conditions under which children worked were very dangerous. They worked the same shifts as adults (about 12 hours a day, six days a week), denying them the opportunity for school and play. (Laslett, 1970) The factories, mills, mines and other work venues in which they labored were unsafe and unregulated. Children were also often used in the most dangerous aspects of industrial work, such as clearing jammed machines or working in confined spaces too small for adults. (Laslett, 1970) In 1881, only seven states had any kind of regulation laws for child laborer. Desperate for money to survive, immigrants and working-class Americans forged