Child Labor in the Textile Industry in the Early Nineteenth Century

Everyone can agree life has it’s wonderful and egregious moments. Some people have a grand life with insufficient negativity. Others people have a miserable life and non imposing. In the late 1800’s and beginning to mid 1900’s, child labor caused several children to have an inimical life rather than a preeminent life. When people read what these children had gone through, they fail to remember to put themselves in the children’s situation; therefore, they don’t understand, nor cease how horrendous life was for the children. Numerous factual documents state how deplorable life was for the children during this era. Furthermore, these documents include the Union-made Cigars, Finding of the Commission, the Law of 1913, the letter from WPA Teacher Union to Governor Lehman, and lastly a telegram from Mrs. of Nassau County to Governor Lehman. Schools today teach this time period to the students and share innumerable certainties of the children’s lives. Ultimately, children in this life span had an atrocious duration.

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

Child labor was very common and popular especially in the late 1800s and early the 1900s even though many people were not aware of the dangers. We can define child labor as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and cause to their physical and mental development. Children are the base of a country but in a developing country child labor is an issue that has yet to disappear. Most of the children remain illiterate because of their poor economic condition and parents do not have enough money to spend on the education of their children, rather they send their children for work so that they could earn some money during their poor economic condition. The objective of my research paper is to raise awareness

Throughout history, children have always worked, either as apprentices or servants. However, child labor reached a whole new scale during the time period of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout the time frame of late 1800s-early 1900s, children worked long hours in dangerous factory conditions for very little wages. They were considered useful as laborers because their small stature allowed them to be cramped into smaller spaces, and they could be paid less for their services. Many worked to help support their families, and by doing so, they forwent their education. Numerous nineteenth century reformers and labor groups sought to restrict child labor and to improve working conditions.

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.

The practice of Child Labor in America in the early 1900s had a devastating impact on generations of children. This mainly impacted children of poor and disadvantaged families; these families tended to suffer from generations of debt or were new immigrants to America. These children worked long hours which they did not get paid nearly enough for. They worked hard, dangerous jobs daily. In the 1900s, children chose to support their families in times of need rather than furthering their education, for which they did not get paid nearly enough. These jobs affected their health poorly and had a negative impact on their childhood and development. Children of poor families in cities suffered the most during the Industrial Revolution, because they had to work long hours, did hard jobs, and often sacrificed their health and education to support their struggling families.

In the documentary “The Children Who Built Victorian Britain” by BBC, talks about the children of the industrial revolution, it shows the jobs they had, where these children came from, their motivation and the progression of laws against child labor. Before the industrial revolution people used to manufactures their goods in their homes using simple machines, but in the late 1700’s this shifted drastically in Britain. They started to implement new ideas of modernization using industries to manufacture goods at a larger scale. The steam engine, iron and textile industries were one of the many industries that played a key role to improve economy, transportation and living conditions in the late 1700’s. Without the industrial revolution we wouldn’t have the technology that we have nowadays, but the industrial revolution also brought a dark chapter for history, the exploitation of children.

During the industrial revolution in Britain, the usage of child labourers dramatically increased as it became a cheap and easy form of labour. This lead to the continued abuse of many children in textile factories. In 1833, the Factory Act of 1833 was put forth which dictated that no children under the age of nine would work. Children ages nine to thirteen wouldn’t work more than nine hours a day and children ages thirteen to eighteen wouldn’t work more than twelve hours a day. In addition it introduced the circulation of four factory inspectors who were to enforce the new legislation. They were to certify whether children had received their compulsory education of two hours each day and report conditions to the government. This act brought forth attention and sparked debates from the public which made stronger note of the working conditions for children.

Through research the primary interpretation of the industrialisation has been positive, with some light now being put upon some of the negative aspects of the industrial revolution, through sources which were obtained in those times. The “British Child Labour Inquiry” (as cited in Stearns, Gosch, Grieshaber and Belzer, 2012, pp. 121-122) acts as one of these primary sources. It was an inquiry conducted on Abraham Whitehead on the conditions for British children who were forced to work in wool mills. This interview with Whitehead, a clothier

Child Labor, once known as the practice of employing young children in factories, now it's used as a term for the employment of minors in general, especially in work that would interfere with their education or endanger their health. Throughout history and in all cultures children would work in the fields with their parents, or in the marketplace and young girls in the home until they were old enough to perform simple tasks. The use of child labor was not a problem until the Factory System. The Factory System is a working arrangement where a number of people cooperate to produce articles of consumption. Some form of Factory system has existed even since ancient times.

One reason why the Industrial Revolution had a negative impact on the world is because it started child labor. Child labor is when businesses and industries take kids from any age and make them work in dangerous and inhumane places. In the document from a British industrial worker, the Sadler Committee in 1832 investigated the workers’ conditions in British factories. It says, “ ‘... When did you first begin to work in the mills? When I was ten years of age … we began at five in the morning and stopped at nine at night … at times we were frequently strapped [whipped].’ ”. This statement from the document shows a negative impact in the Industrial Revolution because kids at young age are sent to work for long hours and are frequently whipped.

A regular shift for any factory worker was 12-16 hours a day, six days a week. The poem “My Boy” written by a working mother during the Industrial Revolution says that her “labor drives [her] forth…” (Document 2) until “…night when [she is] free.” (Document 2) She is “a stranger… to [her] child and [her child] one to [her].” (Document 2). This was not unheard of during this time. Parents and their children being driven away from each other to provide for the family. However, the mother working at the factory provided better financial opportunities for her family and in turn a higher standard of living. Elizabeth Bentley, a woman who testified on the child labor in Britain, when asked “what time [she] began work at the factory” (Documents 7) responded “when I was six years old” (Document 7). She worked in the mill “for about a year” (Document 7). Long hours and separation of family weren’t the only problem when it came to the Industrial Revolution. The use of child labor was also a significant

To begin, people debated whether child labor during the Industrial Revolution was a social problem or a political problem. During the Industrial Revolution, the extent of child labor changed due to Britain becoming more industrialized. In the article “Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution,” Wade Thatcher stated that the majority of scholars argued that since there was a plentiful supply

Children starting as young as five years old began working in factories and mines in order to help contribute to their families financial security. Document 6 shows an interview of a former child laborer, where he was asked, “At what age did you start work?” And the boy responded, “Seven years of age.” The interview was conducted by Sadler, a member of the House of Commons in England. This branch of government would have been more likely to have supported the working class in their woes against Industrialization since they represented the common man in legislative. This interview goes into further detail about the mistreatment of the child workers, who were rarely given breaks outside of lunch and practically lived at the factory due to long shifts. Robert Owens was a major figure at this time period who discussed the atrocities of child labor. Children are not equity with enough skills at such young ages to endure harsh factory conditions and remain unscathed. Children among the lower and middle class also were losing out on a proper education due to their lack of time to devote to studies. This created a British population that had regressed in terms of

(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