Social Reformers During The Early Years Of The 20th Century

The nineteen hundreds: children were working through the night while the adults were sleeping. Florence Kelley, a United States social worker and reformer, spoke out against this harsh reality. Fighting to improve child labor laws, she delivered her speech in 1905 at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, in Philadelphia. By incorporating anecdotes to emotionally appeal; shocking state statistics; and showing a strong, direct, and compassionate attitude towards children working, Florence Kelley reveals the harsh child labor laws and fights to improve their conditions.

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.

Throughout the 1700’s and the early 1800’s child labor was a major issue in American society. Children have always worked for family businesses whether it was an agricultural farming situation or working out of a family business in some type of workplace. This was usually seen in families of middle or lower class because extra help was needed to support the family. Child labor dramatically changed when America went through the Industrial Revolution. When America’s industrial revolution came into play, it opened a new world to child labor. Children were now needed to work in factories, mills, and mines. These were not ordinary jobs for young children, these jobs required much time, effort, and hard work. “American

In the 1800s the Industrial Revolution created new jobs for millions of people including children. Many children during the Industrial Revolution were employed in manufacturing and mining. One of the most widely recognized jobs for children was as a “Newsie” or “Newsboy”. This job was held by young children, usually boys, while girls usually worked in mills that produced textiles and paper products. Many newsies had families and homes, and were children who went to school in the day and sold papers in the evening and on weekends to support their families. Many times orphaned, there were as many as 10,000 homeless newsies wandering the streets of New York in the 1899. Some Newsies called “Street Waifs” or children who had been orphaned, homeless,

Florence Kelley, an active social worker and reformer of the 20th century, rants over the horrendous working conditions kids must endure. She presents this in her speech before National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, which provides context and credibility for her argument. Kelley argues clearly of the terrible conditions and work hours kids suffer to bring about her message of, “enlisting the workingmen voters.” This is essentially to free the kids from the disastrous issue through her usage of credibility, empathetic tone to strike the audience, and her usage of examples of their conditions and state rules to support her message and purpose.

In 1900, children as young as nine years old were once expected to work sixteen hours a day in harsh conditions. They were useful because of their small size and the owners being able to pay low wages. Child labor laws exist because brave men, women, and children fought for these rights. The conditions of the children’s working environment caused Lewis Hine and the newsies to act upon it.

The progressive era was filled with many pros and many cons which consist of child labour, workplace safety and big business which happened to rule over many small business’. John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Leland Stanford were known as 3 of the wealthiest men alive as their business’ expanded widely throughout the progressive era. Child labour was common within factories as children would work for for long hours which either ranged from 10-12 hours or, would work until they got the job done. Child labour spread quickly as children would work in unhealthy conditions. Unsafe working conditions had not only been in the children’s jobs but had also ranged throughout many adults jobs. Windows were often fastened and darkened with paint, their would be very little light leaving employees with poor eyesight.

While a number of the most important reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries grew out of efforts to combat the negative effects of industrialization, the main focus of their efforts was not the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the natural environment. Although some reformers, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, were deeply worried about the consequences of economic development on the natural environment, the most influential, most effective reformers were primarily concerned with the impact of the rise of big business on small businesses, industrial workers, and consumers, and with corruption in government that reformers believed resulted from the economic power of large corporations.

The first thing I will write about is a person, Jacob Riis. A esteemed author of the book “How the other half Lives”, published in the 1890s. Riis was a pioneer in the time when photography was first starting to catch on. In Riis’s photos he took pictures of people who lived in the slums of the major cities and how they lived. He was termed a Muckraker by our late president Theodore Roosevelt, because journalists like him would, as he would say, rake through all the good things and bad on the ground and only report the bad of the world. But Riis was one of the men of his era

In the United States it took a good amount of years to outlaw child labor. In the photograph (Document D), it shows young child workers for the mines. This picture taken by Lewis Hine, who quit his job as a school teacher to take pictures of child workers around the country to bring awareness to the fact that child labor was not right. These pictures started to get people thinking about how wrong this was, then reform was attempted. 28 states passed laws regulating child labor by the year 1899.

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

Throughout history, the topic of suitable working conditions on children has been a prominent issue in regards to the limit of their actions. Nearly 2 million of America's laborers ranged within the ages of six and sixteen, which are considered to be crucial years for intellectual and social development. Instead of implementing the children’s time in necessary educational matters, their time was spent crafting society’s “stockings” and “artificial flowers”. One particular social worker and reformer, Florence Kelley, strived to bring attention to the tedious working hours abhorred by children in a speech presented at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In order to convey her message in an effective matter, Kelley

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

During the 19th Century there were many reform movements that took place. Reform movements were movements that were organized to reform or change the certain way of things. Reform movements did not always work but the ones that did greatly changed the way our nation operates today. There were three major reform movements that have altered the nation; the abolitionist movement, the temperance movement and the women 's suffrage movement. Without these movements, and the great leaders involved, many common rights would not exist today.