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1.3: Child Labor in the United States

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    215390
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    Child Labor in the United States

    Killing children and using corporal punishment on children are not the only forms of child abuse and neglect that have been practiced through the generations. In early times, children were signed or sold as indentured servants. Parents apprenticed their children out to people who had a trade, with the idea that their children would learn that trade and eventually take over. The masters were free to use the child however they wished in exchange for room and board. Children were indentured at early ages and continued until they were 14 to 16 years old for males and 21 years old for females. These children occasionally were allowed to visit their families, sometimes on Sundays or holidays when work was not being done. Many of these children were taken advantage of and treated as slaves. As the United States entered into the industrial revolution children’s passage was paid to come here from other countries, in exchange for them working it off as indentured servants. Child labor was less expensive than paying adults to do the same job, and children were smaller and could fit into certain machines and places more easily than larger built adults. As a result, child labor became the norm in the United States.

    little children working in a cotton mill, child posing infront of machine .png

    "Child Labor: Carolina cotton mill, 1908." by Kelly Short6 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. | "Child Labor: A barefoot girl works in a New England textile mill, 1910." by Kelly Short6 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

    children covered in dirt from working in the breakers .png

    "Child Labor: Breaker Boys, Pittston, PA, USA, 1911." by Kelly Short6 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

    Child Labor was typical and legal in the United States until the early 1900s, and was not seen as abusive. By today's standards, many of the working conditions experienced would be inappropriate for any age. We look back on these conditions and see them as abusive, but they were typical of the times.

    children working in a factory .png

    "Child Labor in United States, coal mines Pennsylvania" by Janet Lindenmuth is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

    In 1890, 1.5 million children ages 10-15 years were employed. In 1900, 1.75 million children of the same ages were employed. By 1900, 16% of all workers were under the age of 16. Some may ask, “Why were there so many children working?” The answer to this question is multi-faceted. First, wages were very low for adults and families had difficulty paying bills and providing for their families. Second, public schools weren’t common during this era, and children weren’t busy learning. Third, as mentioned previously, children were smaller and more capable of doing certain jobs. The outcome was that children entered the workforce in masses, to help support their families and because they really weren’t doing anything else. The employment of children increased significantly during the Industrial Revolution, even with children as young as five years old.

    Concerned adults became aware of the horrid and unsafe conditions in which many of these children worked. Children often left sick, injured, deformed for life; some even died. In 1904 the National Child Labor Committee set out to create national guidelines and laws concerning the conditions and hours in which children could work. Books such as The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906 by John Spargo) described in detail the horrendous working conditions of children. In 1907 the National Child Labor Committee hired sociology teacher and photographer Lewis Hine to document through photographs the reality of child labor in America. Even with these efforts to raise public awareness, the federal government took no action on child labor laws, leaving it, instead, to the states. By 1929, every state had restrictions against children under the age of 14 working. Finally, in the 1930s, the federal government took action to govern child labor… not so much to protect the children but to ensure that adults would be able to find paid work during the Great Depression era. This led to President F.D. Roosevelt signing the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938; this act restricted child labor and protects child workers in the United States of America, still to this day. (NBC News Learn: Child Labor Reform in the Progressive Era; Ramage Teach, 2024)


    1.3: Child Labor in the United States is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.