Preview

Child Labor in the 1800s

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
880 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Child Labor in the 1800s
Hannah Lambach
Miss Johnson
American Literature
14 May 2014
Child Labor
Children today should be very grateful. They have school, sleep, and parents that give them almost next to no chores. Children in the 1800s and early 1900s worked in factories sometimes as young as 4. They received very little pay, as having children work in the factories was easier for the factory owner, for they did not have to pay as much and children were easier to manage. Many children were hurt in many ways from working in the factories, losing sleep and school. Even through these awful times, people were still fighting against it.
Humans, as of nature, want to make things easier and more profitable for him and him only. Employed children in factories and farms made owners more profitable. Children were not paid the normal and fair price for their work, thus giving the bosses more money, since they could keep the money not given to the little workers. Children usually work 12 to 18 hours a day, six days a week, getting in the maximum about $1.50, if the owner was feeling generous, which was very rare.
Many children rioting wouldn’t even make a dent. What did a bunch of three to ten year olds know about anything, especially about their jobs and salary? Children wouldn’t strike, and even if they did, it wouldn’t make any difference. They might get fired or mistreated, something no child could go through. Having children work in the factory made them much less likely to strike.
Children are sometimes easier to control than adults. This is the case especially if you control the money their getting, their resting time, and their jobs. Factory owners could tell a child to do something, and the child would, for the child receives money for what he does and doesn’t understand any better. The authority could tell a child to do something life-threatening and the child, not knowing any better, would do it. Children were simply easier to control and boss around.
Working in the factory hurt

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Throughout history and especially during the industrial revolution we have seen children work out in factories and fields. Factory owners hired children to work in factories because they were small enough to fit in places that were too tight for a grown adult to fit into and kids were cheaper for factory owners to pay. In the Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem babies are taken away from their birth mothers and put in a home with other children to be raised as a group.…

    • 411 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Children were payed much less than their adult counterparts. One source of a woman who worked in a cotton mill as a child writes, “We worked twelve hours a day for fifty cents. When paydays come around, I drawed three dollars. That was for six days, seventy-two hours. I remember I lacked fifty cents having enough to pay my board.”…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Coming out of the Age of Enlightenment, Europeans were filled with new ideas regarding economics. Grouped with those ideas was a desire to increase production and innovation. This is what ushered in the Industrial Revolution, a rapid development of industry in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the beginning of the revolution in the late 1700's, all ages and both genders were used as workers in mills and factories. More so than in previous eras, children were common employees alongside their elders. Being children, though, their needs were often overlooked or ignored completely. For the most part, the working conditions of children during the Industrial Revolution were extremely harsh and they received poor treatment. However, some…

    • 1385 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Immigrant Kids

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Children under sixteen also couldn’t be employed unless they could read and write in English, and it was illegal to employ anyone under the age of fourteen. Some children’s work wasn’t hard. They would finish the major items that someone gave them. When inspectors came into the work scene, the bosses made sure everything was up to code for that day, in other words: there was no children there, then they would transfer back to their old habits. When it was a busy season, children had to work seven days a week, and it was unacceptable to skip a day.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The labor was demanding and unfair. Children had to join the workforce to help support their families. Most of them worked in textile factories and were paid less than adults. The states tried to enforce laws that set a minimum age for labor, but most of the youth refused to acknowledge them.(Greenwood, 62)…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    My Cotton Dress Thesis

    • 206 Words
    • 1 Page

    Even though their employers didn't care about them and the bosses felt that if the children wanted to eat they had to work.Child labor is unfair and should have never happened because it was dangerous for the children to work in factories and coal-mines and they worked in the factories and coal-mines all day long.…

    • 206 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Industrial Revolution, children were forced to work in the factories. Many kids had to stick their hands in a moving machine to get a loose bolt out of the gears, if the kids weren't fast enough they could get their hands cut off. Although many great inventions were created, the children were very mistreated. Young girls would die from the sulfur in the match factories. The boys who worked in the coal mines worked from 4am to 5pm. For many kids from the age of four and up they had to work. The work consisted of selling newspapers, working in match factories, coal mining, and any type of factories. Many kids wanted to learn but couldn't. Many kids did not know their ABC's, some didn’t even know how to spell their own name. The parents of the children fought for their kids to have an education. The protest turned into a fight. The military got into the protest many parents fought with the Armed Force’s, many parents were beat to…

    • 2126 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Labour Force Dbq Essay

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Having the children work as most of the labor force is the catastrophic idea because children were being beat (Doc B). “Sarah Golding was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to her house, she was later found dead in her bed (Doc B)” explained by an unknown person who worked in the factory. They are kids if they are sick they can’t work as hard as adults that are sick. They should never be…

    • 481 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dbq 13

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages

    During the Industrial Revolution, child labor became a serious problem. The modern discovery of children working during the revolution is probably what led us to scrutinize it so much. There are some that would argue that child labor is down right wrong but there are also some that would say child labor was beneficial and harmless. In document 1, an excerpt from William Coopers testimony before the Sadler Committee has William Cooper admitting that he began working in the mills at the age of ten. He claimed that they working 16 hour shifts and were only allowed one 40 minute break for lunch. When asked about his education, it was found that Cooper can read but is unable to write due to lack of schooling. 16 hour shifts with only a short break and being deprived of an education may seem unfair but Document 3 argues differently. Document 3 is an excerpt from the Philosophy of Manufacturers by Andrew Ure and it states that of all the factories Ure had visited, he had never witnessed signs of beatings or exhaustion among the children. He claimed that children enjoyed the “light play of their muscles” and believes that children would thrive better in modern factories today than in schooling. This is a fairly unpopular opinion on child labor. People are quick to agree that child labor was bad but you must look at both sides. Yes they were worked hard, but would we have Industrialized if they hadn’t been?…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    segment one study guide

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Health hazards in the industrial revolution were great as people often lost fingers and hands. Some children also were killed by the machines. It was also hazardous because the people were more packed than a can of sardines which made space to work awful increasing the chances of injury. This soon became such an important issue that in 1833 a factory act was made stopping children from under 9 from working, children 9-13 could only work 8 ho8urs per day, ages 14-18 could not work more than 12 hours per day. Also all children were to go school for no less than 2 hours a day. In 1912 America made the children’s bureau and this made it the government’s responsibility to monitor children’s labor.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the 1800s there was a large increase of immigrants coming to America, starting with the Irish in the 1840s and proceeding after 1880 with people from southern and eastern Europe. Many of these families had kids and at the time many of these immigrants needed money and weren't against child labor. So these new immigrants would send their kids to work.…

    • 140 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Parents of the children supported bringing their children to work. They, the parents, believed that they needed children to work because they needed as many members of their family bring in a wage as possible. The role of parents reveals a conflict of interests because it was parents that would bring their children with them to the factories. One mother expressed that it would have been preferable “. . . to give her smaller children some education, besides rearing them in a better environment.”…

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the beginning of the 20th century, over two million laborers consisted of children under the age of twelve, contributing to over twenty-five percent of total workers (Trattner). The conditions children worked in were generally filthy, hazardous, and detrimental to their health. Committees arose and fought for reforms by enlightening the public through the use of dramatic photography, distressing posters, and personalized letters (Child…

    • 436 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Industry was thriving throughout the 19th century; farms were transformed into cities and work places which created a large work force- that even children as young as six was employed to work in mines and factories. There were a couple major problems that came with the idea of child labor. First, they were given empty promises to convince them to work in the factories. The children were promised good food, shelter, given better education, and a better living standard, but they were simply tricks to lure the kids in to work for them. Secondly, the children were underpaid.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    They chose children because factory owners saw them as cheap and less likely to go on strike. They also chose them because in coal mines they could fit in places were adults could not. They worked because most parents did not earn much money so they had to make their children work in order to gain enough money. They also picked them because they had smaller hands than adults so their…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays