Child Labor During Industrial Revolution Reading Comprehension
Kid labor, or the use of children every bit servants and apprentices, has been good throughout nigh of homo history, but reached a zenith during the Industrial Revolution. Miserable working conditions including crowded and unclean factories, a lack of safe codes or legislation and long hours were the norm. Crucially, children could be paid less, were less likely to organize into unions and their small stature enabled them to consummate tasks in factories or mines that would be challenging for adults. Working children were unable to attend school—creating a cycle of poverty that was difficult to interruption. Nineteenth century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working conditions to uplift the masses, but information technology took the Great Low—a time when Americans were desperate for employment—to shake long-held practices of kid labor in the The states.
Child Labor in the The states
The Puritan piece of work ethic of the 13 colonies and their founders valued hard work over idleness, and this ethos applied to children likewise. Through the get-go half of the 1800s, child labor was an essential function of the agricultural and handicraft economy of the U.s.. Children worked on family farms and as indentured servants for others. To learn a trade, boys began their apprenticeships between the ages of ten and fourteen.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution saw the rise of factories in need of workers. Children were ideal employees because they could be paid less, were oft of smaller stature and so could nourish to more minute tasks and were less likely to organize and strike against their pitiable working weather.
Before the Civil State of war, women and children played a critical role in American manufacturing, though it was still a relatively modest function of the economic system. Advances in manufacturing techniques subsequently the war increased the number of jobs…and therefore kid laborers.
Immigration and Kid Labor
Immigration to the United states of america led to a new source of labor—and kid labor. When the Irish Spud Famine struck in the 1840s, Irish immigrants moved to fill lower-level factory jobs. In the 1880s, groups from southern and eastern Europe arrived, provided a new pool of child workers.
Child Labor Reform
Educational reformers of the mid-nineteenth century attempted to convince the public that a chief school instruction was a necessity if the nation were to accelerate every bit a whole. Several states established a minimum wage for labor and requirements for schoolhouse attendance—though many of these laws were full of loopholes that were readily exploited past employers hungry for cheap labor.
Outset in 1900, efforts to regulate or eliminate kid labor became primal to social reform in the United States. The National Child Labor Committee, organized in 1904, and state child labor committees led the accuse. These organizations employed flexible methods in the confront of slow progress. They pioneered tactics like investigations by experts; the apply of photography to spark outrage at the poor conditions of children at piece of work and persuasive lobbying efforts. They used written pamphlets, leaflets and mass mailings to reach the public.
From 1902 to 1915, child labor committees emphasized reform through state legislatures. Many laws restricting kid labor were passed as part of the progressive reform movement of this period. But many southern states resisted, leading to the conclusion to work for a federal child labor law. While Congress passed such laws in 1916 and 1918, the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional.
The opponents of kid labor sought a constitutional amendment authorizing federal child labor legislation and it passed in 1924, though states were non keen to ratify it; the conservative political climate of the 1920s, together with opposition from farm and church organizations fearing increased federal power over children, acted every bit roadblocks.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression left thousands of Americans without jobs, and led to sweeping reforms under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Bargain that focused on increasing federal oversight of the workplace and giving out-of-work adults jobs…thereby creating a powerful motive to remove children from the workforce.
Almost all of the codes developed under the National Industrial Recovery Human activity served to reduce child labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a national minimum wage for the first time and a maximum number of hour for workers in interstate commerce—and also placed limitations on kid labor. In effect, the employment of children under 16 years of historic period was prohibited in manufacturing and mining.
Automatization and Instruction
Changing attitudes toward work and social reform weren't the only factors reducing child labor; the invention of improved machinery that mechanized many of the repetitive tasks previously given to children led to a subtract of children in the workforce. Semiskilled adults took their place for more than complex tasks.
Didactics underwent reforms, likewise. Many states increasing the number of years of schooling required to concur certain jobs, diffuse the school yr, and began to more strictly enforced truancy laws. In 1949, Congress amended the kid labor constabulary to include businesses not covered in 1938 like commercial agriculture, transportation, communications and public utilities.
Does Child Labor Exist Today?
Although child labor has been significantly stalled in the United States, information technology lingers in sure areas of the economic system like agriculture, where economically impoverished migrant workers are more than difficult to regulate. Employers in the garment industry accept turned to the children of illegal immigrants in an try to compete with imports from low-wage nations. Despite laws limiting the number of hours of work for children and teens nevertheless attending school, the increasing toll of instruction means many are working longer hours to brand ends meet. State-by-state enforcement of child labor laws varies to this day.
Sources
Child Labor in U.Due south. History. The University of Iowa.
History of Child Labor in the Usa. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Child Labor. Britannica.
Lewis Hine'due south Photographs Expose Child Labor in America
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/child-labor
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