My experience is limited to a paper route which resembled hard labor only when it rained or snowed. My father worked as a messenger at St. Albans headquarters of the Central Vermont from the age of 12 through high school. My maternal grandmother (1889-1985) worked full-time at a mill in Massachusetts after the 8th grade. I wish I had thought to interview them on this subject.
Mike
CHILD LABOR IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES (1899)
BY CHARLES B. SPAHR
There has been child labor ever since the world began, but child labor became a pressing public problem barely a century ago in England, and only during the present generation in America. This does not mean, however, that child labor was never an evil before the present century, and still less does it mean that the conscience of men and women never awoke to the evil until three generations ago in England and a few years ago in our own country. Child labor until a few years ago here, and until three generations ago in England, was the labor of children in helping their own parents, and the love of the individual parents for their own children was a far better protection to the little ones than any law that could then have been enacted. It was only with the invention of Arkwright's spinning frame in 1769 and of the power loom a few years later, that spinning and weaving in the factories took the place of spinning and weaving in the homes, and the need of public law to protect the children against task masters who cared nothing for them became imperative. For centuries, England had had laws to protect orphans who were apprenticed to strangers. Now in the factory districts virtually all the children became apprenticed to strangers, and law was equally needed to protect them against inhumanity.
The law, however, was slow in being enacted. Just as today less skill is needed in the factories where carpenters' work is done by machinery than in shops where it is done by hand, in the same way apparently less skill was needed to " tend the machines" in the textile factories than to manage the hand looms at home. Old persons were absolutely unfit for the new work. The nimble fingers of young children were especially in demand, and the interests of the factory owners were arrayed against any limitation of child labor. This period was the darkest one in England's industrial history. It was the time of the Napoleonic wars, when the taxes caused by these wars took a third of the wages of independent workmen, and made pauperism for the first time a great national curse. The middle classes suffered corresponding losses, but the wealth of the wealthier classes rapidly increased. Nowhere more than in the factory towns did these tendencies assert themselves. The wealth of the factory owners rose by leaps and bounds until they vied with the great landlords in power, but in the factory towns it seemed as if the life of the working people was being crushed out. Huddled together in unsanitary homes - or rather sleeping-places - and working in unsanitary factories, the death rate in some of the cities became double the usual rate in rural England. This meant that the average time of life was reduced to less than twenty years. More than anyone else the children suffered. "Children of all ages, down to three and four," says Willoughby's "Child Labor in England," "were found in the hardest and most painful labor. Labor from twelve to thirteen and often sixteen hours a day was the rule. Children had not a moment free save to snatch a hasty meal or sleep as best they could. From earliest youth they worked to the point of extreme exhaustion without open-air exercise or any enjoyment whatever, but grew up, if they survived at all, weak, bloodless, miserable." After a while the heart of England protested. As early as 1819 the employment of children under nine was prohibited, and the labor of those under thirteen was limited to twelve hours a day, but it was not until near the middle of the century that the protest availed to secure effective measures. To the Earl of Shaftsbury belongs the credit of carrying these measures through Parliament. It was he who really awakened the conscience of England to realize that little children in factories and in mines were being condemned to "hours of labor not exacted from the most hardened criminals." In his great conflict, as he said, his support was the nation's heart. Not only was its wealth arrayed against him, but its culture also. Nearly all the writers on economics took the position that the limitation of child labor would injure England's trade. A few clearheaded economists, like Macaulay, had the penetration to see that whatever produced better men would in the long run produce better work, and that therefore England need not wait for other countries before restricting the hours of labor to such as would preserve health and manhood. But such insight came only to those whose consciences were stronger than their concern for material gains. The final victory of 1847, reducing the working time of all persons under eighteen to ten hours, with half time and five hours of schooling for those under thirteen, was distinctively a triumph of heart and conscience over theories and the demands of business. Today, everybody in England realizes that England's commercial power was built up by the protection afforded to the physical and intellectual vigor of her working people; but half a century ago Mrs. Browning was a "sentimentalist" when she wrote:-
'' The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young, young children, 0 my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others
In the country of the free."
In this country the movement to restrict the employment of children did not begin until that in England had triumphed, but here the restrictions from the first have generally been more rigorous than those imposed in England even now. Massachusetts practically led the way with an act passed in 1866, and since that date one after another of the northern states has followed her example, until the territory covered reaches across the continent and includes nearly every state with any considerable factory population. As a rule, the age under which children are not allowed to work is twelve or thirteen, whereas in England it is only ten; and our laws, like the English, usually require a certain amount of schooling until the children are fourteen. Here, however, the superiority of our legislation ceases. The English factory laws are well enforced, while our factory laws, as a rule, are badly enforced and our compulsory education laws, if anything, even worse. Some of our states have no public officers charged with the enforcement of these laws, and were it not that the public sentiment of our citizens requires far more schooling for the children than is required by public sentiment in England, we should have little occasion for pride. At this point, however, lies the superiority of American conditions. The great body of American families will keep their children in school as long as they are able, without the compulsion of law. In England, according to the report of 1842, one-third of those employed in coal mines were children under eighteen, and nearly half of them were under thirteen. In this country, the number of children under thirteen who work in even the lightest employment is relatively insignificant; according to the last census, only about three per cent of the labor force of this country consists of children under fourteen.
But while conditions are far better here than in England, we cannot boast that they are improving, save in Massachusetts and a few other states where organized labor, supported by a better public sentiment, is now securing the enforcement of the restrictive laws. Between 1870 and 1880 the amount of child labor in this country decidedly increased. In 1870, out of 5,604,000 children between ten and fifteen years old, 739,000 were wage earners; in 1880, out of 6,649,000 children of these ages, 1,118,000 were wage earners. The last census changed the classification of children, so that exact comparisons are impossible. It reported that of 7,033,000 children between ten and fourteen years old, but 603,000 were at work, and on the basis of this report Commissioner Wright claims that a great gain has been made. This, however, is doubtful, as fourteen is precisely the age at which children are most likely to leave the grammar schools and go to work.
At the best, much remains to be done. The employment of over half a million children under fourteen in factories, shops and mines demands serious national attention. In the mining regions of Pennsylvania, boys of twelve are taken out of school and put to work for ten hours a day at the breakers, picking slate from the coal; and in the south, boys and girls are taken from school before they are ten and set to.work for twelve hours a day in the cotton mills that are now being scattered over the country. The children in the cotton mills work with surprising animation, but their best employers admit that these children are sapping their strength and are likely to pay in the future for their exhaustion now. These employers say that they would gladly refuse to employ such children, but are compelled to do it; because otherwise the parents of these children will go to other employers not so scrupulous. Only the action of the state can compel and enable all to conform to the requirements of humanity. In the mines and in many of the workshops the labor of the children is a saddening sight. All the cheer seems to have gone out of their lives. They have been robbed of their childhood and robbed of the educational opportunities that should be the birthright of every American boy and girl.
The argument often used that child labor deprives parents of employment is not usually a valid one. It is true that in cotton factory towns hardly any man over forty is at work, and his little children are in factories while he "totes" the meals. But this is largely due to the fact that the fingers of the father are no longer nimble, and that there is rarely much employment in the neighborhood of a cotton factory to which he can turn his hand. Where industry is diversified, the labor of a factory worker's children no more keeps him from working than the labor of children on the farm keeps farmers from working. The wages the children earn can not be spent without paying for the labor of some one else. This labor, therefore, is not the embarrassment to the employment of parents it is often asserted to be. As a rule, its worst effect upon the labor of adults is by increasing the number of those seeking jobs, without increasing the number of those giving them, and thus slightly reducing the level of wages. These material considerations, however, are of minor importance. The ground upon which child labor is to be prohibited is not the right of adults to be protected against competition, but the right of the child to be fitted for the competition which he must meet in after life. That which lifts this country industrially above the countries of Europe is chiefly the superior vigor and intelligence and ambition of our citizens. We cannot afford for the temporary gain from the labor of children to impair the foundation of our national superiority. We could not afford it, were the production of wealth the supreme end of the state; but since the supreme end of the state is the production of manhood, child labor that saps physical vigor and dwarfs mental growth must be regarded as a criminal waste of the nation's best resources.
Mike, thanks for that quotation. Back in the sixties, I first read Thomas Costain's novel The Tontine, which has a part that shows some of what child labor in England was--and how individuals who worked together were able exert pressure on a magnate to alleviate some of the misery the children endured. One difference between those involved in using child labor and those who held people in bondage is that that employers of children had nothing invested in the children.
Johnny
greyhounds For people to get out of misery they need wealth. Wealth is produced by commerce. Labor is a part of commerce, but it is not only element of commerce nor is it more or less important than the other elements. You don't like those facts because of your political ideology. I don't care. It's reality.
For people to get out of misery they need wealth. Wealth is produced by commerce. Labor is a part of commerce, but it is not only element of commerce nor is it more or less important than the other elements. You don't like those facts because of your political ideology. I don't care. It's reality.
1. Please don't try to pretend your comments are not ideological, just facts or reality. They are very ideological, as one can see in your selection of experts, such as Walter E. Williams. Yes, he is a distinguished economist. He is also a libertarian and because of that, a frequent guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio show. he also supports the right of secession. Facts.
2. I gave a dictionary definition of commerce. it is part of the process of creation of wealth, not just part of commerce. Fact.
3. You are free to say, believe, or cite whoever you want, but stop pretending to be a Jack Webb type, with your "Just the facts" responses as though they were not ideologically-based opinions and your interpretations of reality.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Doing a quick google search it looks like the anti child labor movement in America started in the 1830s, began really building steam in the 1880s, ultimately resulting in federal legislation in 1916(later ruled unconstitutional twice) with US finally passing in 1936 the Walsh-Healey Act making it illegal for the federal government to purchase anything made with child labor. The great depression ultimately ended child labor in the USA because of the competition for jobs between adults and children.
My question is the timing of the 1916 passage of legislation banning child labor. With that being right in the middle of WWI was there no labor shortages like what was experienced during WWII?
Is the Walsh-Healey Act still on the books?
Jay
Jay - Maybe a piece of the answer: Britain paid for supplies it bought from the U.S. early in the war by cashing in its large investments in U.S. railroads. The U.S. entered the war in 1917.
garr Doing a quick google search it looks like the anti child labor movement in America started in the 1830s, began really building steam in the 1880s, ultimately resulting in federal legislation in 1916(later ruled unconstitutional twice) with US finally passing in 1936 the Walsh-Healey Act making it illegal for the federal government to purchase anything made with child labor. The great depression ultimately ended child labor in the USA because of the competition for jobs between adults and children. My question is the timing of the 1916 passage of legislation banning child labor. With that being right in the middle of WWI was there no labor shortages like what was experienced during WWII? Is the Walsh-Healey Act still on the books? Jay
Jay:
To answer your questions this is what I found:
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act was a federal law that punished states for child labor. The law prevented "movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated." This law was declared unconstitutional in 1918 and was rewritten. The revised version was passed and put into law, then declared unconstitutional a second time. The law was a step in the right direction, but it failed to make any significant change other than to support later attempts to pass. .."
Read more: Child Labor Law Act | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6538631_child-labor-law-act.html#ixzz1aA1AFng1
Follow this link: THE HISTORY OF THE WALSH-HEALEY ACT of 1936 : [This was actually a law to control federal purchasing requirement and eliminate those goods manufactured with child labor}
and then in 1937: "...In 1937, a second attempt to make the federal government able to regulate child labor failed. However, 1937 was also the year when another federal sanction law was passed: The Sugar Act prevented beet growers from garnering benefit payments if they violated a state's work standards for minimum age and work hours. Right after that came the next success in 1938: The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, which meant that the U.S. federal government was finally able to regulate minimum age and work hours for children..."
Read more: Child Labor Law Act | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6538631_child-labor-law-act.html#ixzz1aA3Ia9Yx
Lastly from the Dept of Labor website: http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-pca.htm
The Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (PCA)
Probably all you will want to know about currrent Child Labor Provisions.
Folks,
may I remind you that this is not a political forum. While everyone is entitled to have his/her view on political issues , this is not the place to voice it. There are platforms much better suited for that.
Let´s move on to more railroad related topics now.
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