Children At Work: Looking at Child Labor in the Victorian Age

Today, it is not that unusual for some youngsters and youngsters to work. They might earn extra cash by child-sitting, doing yard work, or perhaps even strolling canine. Others, as soon as they go on to highschool, might go to work of their native grocery retailer, malls, or meals chains. However, within the Victorian Age, it would not appear in any respect unusual to see youngsters as younger as 5 or 6, go to work full-time (typically sixteen hours a day!) in typically harmful circumstances.

As you learn, ask your self questions. Why do you assume youngsters so younger have been working? What sort of jobs do you do for extra cash? What kinds of jobs did the Victorian Age youngsters should do? What would you do to assist cease youngster labor? How totally different do you assume your life can be if as an alternative of getting an schooling, you needed to go to work in a paper mill, or on an meeting line?

Why Did it Happen?

During the primary United States Census, the variety of youngsters working in 1870 equalled almost 750,000. This solely included youngsters beneath the age of 15, and did not rely these youngsters who have been engaged on their household farms, or within the household’s enterprise. The variety of youngsters working continued to extend as new know-how and the Industry grew. What have been a few of the issues that brought on households to ship their youngsters to work? What concerning the employers that employed them?

Poverty

One mom within the Victorian Age, Mrs. Smith, stated this:

“I have three youngsters working in Wilson’s mill; one eleven, one thirteen, and the opposite 14. They work common hours there. We do not complain. If they go to drop the hours, I do not know what poor individuals will do. We have arduous work to reside as it’s… My Husband is likely one of the similar thoughts about it… final summer time my husband was S weeks ailing; we pledged virtually all our issues to stay; the issues aren’t all out of pawn but… We complain of nothing however brief wages… My youngsters have been within the mill three years. I haven’t any grievance to make of their being crushed… I would slightly they have been crushed than fined.”

Another roadblock to vary was that most individuals thought that by letting youngsters have jobs, it might serve to assist the poor households to make more cash.

There have been many ways in which youngsters entered the workforce. Orphaned youngsters have been typically despatched to a distant mill or manufacturing unit proprietor for feeding and care whereas working to earn their maintain. Others have been indentured, or bought to a enterprise proprietor by their mother and father for a delegated variety of years. Other, extra lucky working youngsters lived with their households whereas working full-time.

Industrial Needs

While some manufacturing unit house owners and leaders of the industries spoke out towards placing youngsters to work so younger, others employed youngsters as a result of they weren’t paid as a lot as adults did. Children have been additionally employed for manufacturing unit and mill jobs as a result of most of the machines that they used have been very small. In their eyes, youngsters have been the perfect candidates to work the machines, and to repair them once they broke.

It’s additionally essential to keep in mind that youngsters have been raised and handled in another way within the Victorian Age. There have been some employers who did not assume that there was something improper with hiring younger youngsters to work. They believed that by hiring these youngsters, the youngsters would ultimately develop-up as accountable, exhausting staff.

However, as you will notice within the subsequent part, most of the jobs that youngsters obtained have been typically very arduous, at occasions even harmful.

Working for a Living

When youngsters go to work in the present day, they will select from many kinds of work. They might be cashiers, fry cooks, child-sitters, entrance desk clerks, stockers or create their very own garden service. Children of the Victorian space did not have these choices.

So, what did these youngsters do for a dwelling?

The most lucky working youngsters have been employed on as apprentices for the key trades of the period. Some of those trades would come with:

• Blacksmith
• Tinsmith
• Cooper
• Iron foundry
• Cobbler
• Lace making
• Leatherworking

While the youngsters have been nonetheless required to work, and typically required to work lengthy hours, they have been at the least fortunate sufficient to study a worthwhile commerce, which provided hope to them for his or her future.

Younger youngsters may need began out working as road sweepers, “scavengers” or by promoting newspapers. Scavengers have been youngsters who searched by means of trash, garbage and refuse for gadgets they might promote to junk shops, and even to their neighbors. Some of these things may need included items of rope, or metallic scraps.

Still different youngsters went to work in additional harmful circumstances.

• Glass factories
• Textile mills
• Coal fields/mines
• Cotton mills
• Shipyards

These are just a few examples of the arduous work youngsters would face, typically working as much as ninety hours every week!!

Sometimes the youngsters who went to work and have been typically away from grownup supervision would fall into felony exercise. They would wind up concerned in issues like playing, stealing, and typically even prostitution.

Making a Difference

Many individuals labored very lard and arduous to assist shield youngsters from being taken benefit of by the industries. Some key individuals who fought to regulate youngster labor have been:

• Charles Loring Brace – created the Children’s Aid Society
• Lewis Wikes Hine – photographer who uncovered the kid labor drawback to the general public at giant
• President Woodrow Wilson – created the Keating-Owen Act (see under)
• Lord Ashley – created the Children’s Employment Commission in 1842
• Charles Dickens – wrote and spoke out towards youngster labor. For extra info, learn Oliver Twist
• Karl Marx – helped incite public opinion
• Michael Sadler – labored on the “Ten-Hour Movement”

Organizations concerned in gathering help from individuals and regulation makers to regulate youngster labor embrace:

• “Short Time Committees”
• The Children’s Aid Society
• The National Child Labor Committee

Progress was typically sluggish, however all the time encouraging. Several Factory Acts (1819-1878) emerged in England, which elevated the minimal age of youngsters who have been capable of work. Along with the Factory Acts, there was the “Ten-Hour Movement” which restricted shifts to 10 hours, with a weekly restrict of fifty-eight hours. Other legal guidelines in England that influenced the change of kid labor legal guidelines included Lord Ashley’s Children’s Employment Commission (1842), adopted by the Coal Mines Act in 1843. This Act stopped the Coal Mines from hiring ladies, or boys underneath the age of ten.

In America, activists joined collectively in teams and coalitions to work for labor regulation and reform, or change. They acquired a small victory in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson created the Keating-Owen Act, which banned the interstate (between two or extra states) sale of any gadgets produced by youngster labor. However, this Act was later deemed unconstitutional. The actual victory got here within the yr 1938, with the Fair Labor Standards Act. This Act created a nationwide minimal wage and set the nationwide working age to sixteen (eighteen if the job was harmful). Children aged 14 and 15 have been allowed to work underneath sure circumstances and fields of labor, however solely after faculty hours.

Because of the efforts of the Victorian individuals and the brand new legal guidelines it created for the youngsters of England and America, youngster labor is not as giant of an issue… for us. But baby labor hasn’t disappeared! According to some current surveys and research finished by the International Labor Office, estimated 250,000,000 youngsters between 5 and fourteen have been working. Of these youngsters, one hundred twenty,000,000 are working full-time, typically in harmful circumstances.

Take a while to think about methods which you can assist with the fashionable day international baby labor reform.