Child Labor During The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era was a huge time period in US history. Many changes had occurred during this time period. Amendments 16-19 were ratified between 1890-1920. WWI comes into play for women’s rights in the early 1900s and child labor drops during the Progressive Era. Iconic people in the time period made impacts to help change America and make it equal for everyone who lived there. The food that was made in the nation from meat shops had been shut down. Monopolies had been taking over the Senate overruling the rest of the senators. Things had started off bad but eventually became better and the United States started to look a lot better. Discrimination against African Americans was still a major problem. All of these concepts would be looked
One of the biggest issues was child labor at factories.Child labor means to use children for work on factories so that the factory could make a bigger profit by paying less to their employees which in this case are young children.Child labor started on the 1890’s with a percentage of 18.1 and it icreaesed to 18.2 during 1900’s.Most of the workers were under the age of 16 which was good for the factory because the child did not needed more pay to support a family but the average worker has a family and more necessities.Child labor was working out for several factories and were able to make a bigger profit than when they hired the average workers.Factories and different businesses wanted to sought out a constitutional amendment authorizing federal child labor legislation,but then some church groups and farm organizations feared a possible increase of federal power in areas related to children and prevented many states from ratifying it.After this child labor started to decrease,At the 1910’s child labor went from 18.2 to 15 percent and at 1920’s it went from 15 to 11.3 percent.This means that child labor was about to be solve,but there was more problems that came up such as immigrant situations on the United States.Jacob Riis, a photographer and writer who took several pictures of immigrants in the slums but also wrote the book “How the Other Half Lives” which led to the revolution of social reform.Riis’ photos appeared in books,newspapers and magazines that were used for social reform.This caught the attention of police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt and said to Riis,”I have read your book,and I have come to help.” Riis and Roosevelt went around NY and Riis showed Roosevelt the conditions in which many people lived.Roosevelt demanded that city officials pass the first significant legislation to improve state's affairs in immigrant neighborhoods.Roosevelt became president later on and helped with other issues