In the United States, there were over 750,000 children under the age of 15 working in 1870. In the United States, a real effort to regulate and put an end to child labor began in the early 1900s. Many businesses were against it because they liked the cheap labor. Some families also needed the money their kids brought home.
Full Answer
How did poor children support their families during the Industrial Revolution?
The initial move against sending children out of the home to labor on their own has its origins well before Camella Teoli and the Lawrence Textile Strike. In England at the turn of the 19th century, the movement toward child labor legislation was the hard work of a few reformers. They, like the later reformers in the United States, faced obstacles.
How many children worked in factories in the early 1800s?
In 1833 the Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children working in factories. Young children were working very long hours in workplaces where conditions were often terrible. The basic act was as follows: no child workers under nine years of age; employers must have an age certificate for their child workers; children of 9 ...
What did child labor reform emphasize during the period from 1902-1915?
Child labor was especially common in the late 18th century, during the early years of the Industrial Revolution. At the time, industrial cities and towns grew dramatically due to the migration of farmers and their families who were looking for work in the newly developed factories and mines. The living conditions in the cities and towns were miserable and characterized by: …
How did the child labor movement start?
Putting an End to Child Labor In the United States, a real effort to regulate and put an end to child labor began in the early 1900s. Many businesses were against it because they liked the cheap labor. Some families also needed the money their kids …
When did child labor stop?
How did child labor end during the Industrial Revolution?
What led to the decline in child labor?
When did child labor in the Industrial Revolution start?
When was the idea of child labor first introduced?
Why did child Labour start in the Industrial Revolution?
How did reforms change working conditions?
How old were child workers during the Industrial Revolution?
When did child labor start in England?
Child Labor in The United States
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 often of smaller stature so could attend to more minute tasks and were less likely to organize and strike against their pitiable working conditions. Before the Civil War, women and children played a critical ro...
Immigration and Child Labor
- Immigration to the United States led to a new source of labor—and child labor. When the Irish Potato Faminestruck 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 primary school education was a necessity if the nation were to advance as a whole. Several states established a minimum wage for labor and requirements for school attendance—though many of these laws were full of loopholes that were readily exploited by employers hungry for cheap labo…
The Great Depression
- The Great Depression left thousands of Americans without jobs, and led to sweeping reforms under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Dealthat 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 Rec…
Automatization and Education
- 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 decrease of children in the workforce. Semiskilled adults took their place for more complex tasks. Education underwent reforms, too. Many states increasing the number …
Does Child Labor Exist Today?
- Although child labor has been significantly stalled in the United States, it lingers in certain areas of the economy like agriculture, where economically impoverished migrant workers are more difficult to regulate. Employers in the garment industry have turned to the children of illegal immigrants in an effort to compete with imports from low-wage nations. Despite laws limiting the number of h…
Sources
- Child Labor in U.S. History. The University of Iowa. History of Child Labor in the United States. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Child Labor. Britannica.