Child Labor In Victorian England Essay

As early as the 1830’s Child Labor in the U.S. was already starting to arise. In rural communities child labor on the farm was common, children being employed in factories or mills didn’t seem to be much of a concern to people. In 1830 laws were passed prohibiting children to be hired in an industrial or factory type setting. By 1800, some states passed a large amount of laws prohibiting child labor. Often times these laws did not apply to immigrants so they were often abused on the immigrants which lead to the immigrants living in poor places working for long hours for very little pay. Immigrant or not, child labor back in the 1800’s was a way of life.

Luckily, the conflict was altogether solved when in 1833; Anthony Ashley Cooper took up the cause of factory reform and passed the Factory Act. This made it illegal to employ children under the age of nine, and set a maximum eight-hour day for children between the ages of nine and thirteen. Once this act (along other acts controlling urbanization conditions) was in place, burdens of the Industrial Revolution were not to be seen, and only benefit appears coming out from this revolutionary time period into the modern world.

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.).

8. 15. Concerns for child labor were that children were working too long and not getting and education. The parliament passed an act called the English Factory Act of 1833 that stated; children fewer than nine could not be hired, the children from nine to thirteen could only work nine hour days, and the people to employ these children had to

After many discussions about it, the Congress finally passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This act ensured that no child under the age of 14 is allowed to work. Not only did it state that, it stated that minors are only allowed to work a certain amount of hours per week. This is significant because before this, any child of any age was allowed to work. If it weren’t for the teachers, and parents, and the children themselves who came forward throughout the 1920s to talk about child labor and the negative effects it had on their childhood, child labor may have lasted a lot longer than it

Throughout the American Industrial Revolution, child labor in industries such as textiles, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, laboring, street work, and domestic work was endemic in the United States. Several factors, including mechanization, urbanization, industrialization, poverty, labor shortages, and lack of regulation were the primary causes for this increase in child labor. Children, as young as three years old, worked from sunrise to sunset in factories, mines, fields, and mills where conditions were excruciating. The arduous work resulted in myriad deleterious effects, namely, afflictive injuries, pitiful deaths, and bleak futures. In order to curtail the abusive conditions, numerous people championed the rights of child laborers and ultimately achieved their concordant goal of gaining federal regulation of minimum employment ages, permissible types of jobs, and duration of work hours for youths.

Several reports from sub-commissioners to the public led the way for changes to occur in the workplace. John Allett reported, “A child was working wool, that is, to prepare the wool for the machine; but the strap caught him...carried him into the machinery; and we found one limb in one place...and he was cut to bits” (Simkin, “Child Factory Accidents”). As more information caught the public’s eye, regulations were implemented to make the environment for children and workers easier and safer to work in. One particular act, the Factory Act of 1833, was designed to lessen the long hours spent in the workplace and other conditions that enabled children to be in a safer place. The act verifies that, “WHEREAS it is necessary Mills and Factories should be regulated, inasmuch as there are great Numbers of Children and young persons now employed in Mills and Factories, and their Hours of Labour are longer than

Believe it or not, before 1938, there was a time when children as young as 8-10 years old (sometimes even younger) would be forced to work until midnight or later in America during the time of the industrial revolution (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2001). There were simply no laws to regulate the maximum number of hours that children could work, how old they had to be, or how much they had to at least be paid. Thus, in 1938, Congress invoked its constitutional powers to regulate interstate commerce and passed a law known as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that addresses these malpractices by employers.

Also, a group of people in the working class is child labour. The situation of children was not good: Children under 6 years old worked for a long time and they worked in very dangerous environments. In 1833, the government enacted the Factory Act. In this law, it required that no child worker under 9, employers had to have certificate, no work at night, limited the working time foe children, inspectors to enforce the law and so on (The Factory Act, 1833). However, According to Reports of Inspectors of Factories 1863, inspectors had to enforce the law, otherwise they would receive penalty. But data showed that the penalty was less than their salary, so to work quickly, they were still not abidance the law. A Factory Inspector (1836) mentioned [Children] stated to me that they commenced working on Friday morning, the 27th of

In reply to the concerns from the people, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act of 1916. This law banned the delivery across borders of the states of goods made in factories which hired kids under the age of 14, or kids between 14 and 16 who worked overnight shifts, more than eight hours a day, or more than six days/week. This is what was considered to be child labor.

Beveridge, was called The Keating-Owen Act. This bill prohibited the distribution of goods produced by children under fourteen years of age, the employment of kids under sixteen years-old in mines, and in it regulated the working hours of the sixteen years-old, setting a limit of eight hours a day. However, it was revoked by the Supreme Court in 1918 given as how it threatened several employers and it would also provoke the loss of a sustainable income in certain families at the time, which was the case of Dagenhart, the father of two boys who would lose their jobs in a cotton mill in Charlotte, N.C,. He call the Act unconstitutional. The case became about whether or not Congress had the power to regulate the commerce of goods manufactured by children under fourteen years of age and whether it could prohibit interstate commerce of

Laws and Acts have been established throughout America, putting restrictions on work labor for youth. The “Fair Labor Standards Act,” passed in 1938, establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and you employment standards affecting private and federal sectors for local governments. Laws such as these help youth throughout America, get fair pay, hours, and working conditions. Yet, there are still acts that some people may disagree with. The “Keating-Owen Act,” prevents children at the age of fifteen and lower from performing hard labor jobs. Teenagers such as myself, I am fifteen years old, are not allowed to do hard labor jobs, like painting houses, or doing landscaping. The pay for jobs such as these, are

To begin, 18% of American workers in 1900 were below 16 years of age. 25% of the employees in southern cotton mills are below age 15, yet half of the children are younger than 12 (“Child Labor”). The sad truth is that all of this is still going on today. During the Industrial Revolution is when child labor

As you know the Factory Act of 1833 established a set of rules for businesses. Children are banned from working in textile factories under the age of nine. With that children from 9 to 13-years-old limited to 9 hours a day and 48 hours a week and 13 to 18-year-olds were limited to 12 hours a day and 69 hours a week. Aside from that all other children under eleven to have two hours education a day. To make sure these laws were enforced Government Factory Inspectors appointed to enforce the law. Now in 1844 the Act is being revised! Now in this age of great technological advance the minimum age for working in factories reduced to 8 years old and 8 to 13-year-olds to work a maximum of six and

Many diseases were also spread due to the increased susceptibility caused by open wounds (Taylor). The Factory Act of 1833 banned children under the age of 9 from working in textile factories and limited the hours that children between the ages of 9 and 13 could work to 9 hours per day for a total of 48 hours per week. The Mines Act of 1842 and the Ten Hour Act of 1847, also served to improve the working conditions of children as they cut off the maximum work hours of all child workers at ten and a half hours in 1850. This legislation was later extended to over 50 workshops in 1867 ("Victorian Child Labor and the Conditions They Worked In."). These acts provided children with a chance to restart their education and live the life of a child as compared to one of an adult