Child Labour Dbq

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.

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.

One of the many reasons why Industrialization is a negative impact on society is that it caused child labor. Child workers vary from ages 5-17.Child labor is when child work for money to support their family. There were not a lot of different types of jobs for child, but some of the job opportunities were coal miners, factory workers, and

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 1833, the Factory Act of 1833 was passed to improve the working conditions for children who labored in factories. A source reveals, “Young children were working very long hours in workplaces where conditions were often terrible,” (Document 10). As this came to the government’s attention, the act was produced by them in an attempt to lessen the abuse of working children, and to treat them more like children. First, the Factory Act limited the hours children could work in factories. The act states, “Children of 9-13 years to work no more than nine hours a day; children of 13-18 years to work no more than 12 hours a day,” (Document 10). Children were also not allowed to work at night. By having working hours reduced, children were able to fit in time to play, sleep, and get an education. It also reduced fatigue, as the children weren’t on their feet as long, and they got in more time to sleep. Secondly, within the act, there was a rule limiting the age children must be to work in factories. No children under the age of nine were allowed to work in the factories,” (Document 10). Although this decreased the amount of money coming in for each family, it allowed the children to get educations, have more free time, and help their

Although this treatment seems inhumane from the perspective of child laborers, factory owners biasedly insisted that children were better off working at factories than staying home. Factory owner Andrew Ure asseverated that he never witnessed any corporal abuse of children (Document 3). He asserted that child laborers showed no traces of exhaustion upon exiting the mills at night (Document 3), making him strongly believe that children thrive better in factories than at home (Document

Working at the factory was not very enjoyable for the laborers for it involved a repetitive amount of work in an extremely hot environment. Factories were dirty and rarely cleaned, which caused the workers to get extremely sick. Sickness spread easily especially with everyone working in the same closed space.  Machines were unsafe and could potentially provoke life-threatening injuries. Children got involved for they were naive, cheap, and easier to control. Child labor continued to grow and many died or got sick because of this. The laborers were exploited, taken advantage of, and oppressed. Even if it harms other people, entrepreneurs and business owners would do whatever it takes to get their hands on the pot of gold. After all, money means

With the wave of immigration occuring in the years before the Gilded Age, many factories created jobs for all these new immigrants. However, as all of these jobs were for unskilled laborers that immigrated to the U.S., they didn’t pay extremely well, and led most of these workers into poverty. Sometimes, this poverty got so bad that even children of the family between ages 10 to 15 had to begin working for their families. Several problems arise when children of too young age are forced into working, especially when there are no laws correctly restricting the amount and extent of the work minors should be allowed to do. As seen in Document 3, Jane Addams paints the picture of child labor in in Chicago in 1912, in which only one child labor law existed, which only applied to children working in mines to protect them. Although this is great initiative, it does not accomplish much in other fields of work that minors were forced to work in. Because of the lack of child labor laws in other fields, Addams specifically describes a few children injured by a machine at a factory in Chicago. She continues to portray the point that

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

During the 18 and beginning of the 19th century in certain regions of the U.S child labor made up more than 40 percent of the population (Wolensky). That’s almost half of the working population. Since the beginning of time children have always been known to help their families with domestic tasks. Most of these kids worked in factories because they were easy to control and paid less than adults. Kids earned less than half of what adults made in the work force. In these factories they usually cleaned under and inside machines while functioning because of their small size.. That’s how these kids felt as it was described in a article in our history book. They were always in danger of getting hurt or even dying, which many did. Kids as young

Child labour was common in the lower class, even though they were often poorly paid, and placed in a low-status positions without any opportunity for further development in the career.

The article on the Industrial Revolution is about how kids work under dangerous conditions. That isn’t the worst part, the worst part is that they allowed kids up to the ages of 6 years old to work in factories even sometimes younger than that. The conditions that children worked in mirrored quite closely that of the conditions that slaves worked in just a few years before the Industrial Revolution began. There are a few similarities in the conditions that they worked in, but there are also many differences to the children working during the Industrial Revolution. The main similarities between the slaves and children who worked during that time was that many of them didn’t even know their ABC’s. When they tried to change the way they were

There were so many people in need for jobs that the owners stopped caring about how they treated their employees. If their employee was not doing what the owner had wanted they would be fired because there was always someone to replace them. Child labor also became a big problem. Factory owners often always wanted the person who would be paid the least, and Child labor was the cheapest labor of all. Some maintenance tasks, such as squeezing into tight spaces, could be performed more easily by children than adults. And, children did not try to join workers unions or go on strike. Best of all, they were paid 1/10 of what men were paid. Many children appeared to be no older than seven. The men, generally from sixteen to twenty-four. Some of these machines were so easy to operate that a small child could perform the simple, repetitive tasks. It’s not surprising, then, that children were heavily employed in the first factories in history. In 1789, in Richard Arkwright’s new spinning factory, two-thirds of 1,150 factory workers were children. Child labor was, unfortunately, integral to the first factories, mines, and mills. In textile mills, as new power looms and spinning mules took the place of skilled workers, factory owners used cheap, unskilled labor to decrease the cost of production. The tedious and dangerous factory work had negative effects on the health of children. Doctor Turner Thackrah

Male and female children worked in factories and mines. Mintz discusses the growth of child laborers for the poor and working classes. Children were given responsibilities at an early age and were not closely monitored. This contributed to the extinction of childhood.10 Mintz notes that the Child-Savers "often