By Yang Xu and Maddison Harrell
This picture is a young Indian child's hand. The child is a carpet weaver.
This Indian girl is a silk spinner, she spins silk every day to earn money to add to her dowry.
This young boy welds, in a factory, all day long.
These same conditions that were around for children during the Industrial Revolution are still around today in some countries around the world.
The Industrial Revolution affected America's economy in a very positive way and it made America the economic world power that it is today. But, as with all revolutions, it carried with it some depremental side effects. One of the main side-effects of the Industrial Revolution was widespread child labor. One of the main causes of child labor in the United States was that thew factory owners hired the cheapest workers and the children got paid less than the average adult worker. Wages weren't the only reason the factory workers employed children workers. Children were better suited for some jobs; for example, children were used to sort out rocks from mining carts. A mining cart is quite small, and a large person wouldn't be able to fit into the carts. Children were the perfect tools in that situation. Another situation in which children were useful was in the textile mills. The workers in the textile mills didn't need to be very knowledgeable about the machinery and they didn't need to be very strong either. There were many different jobs that children were suited for.
Children working in mines during the Industrial Revolution.
One of the major reason that child labor was so bad was the working conditions. The children often worked the same hours as the adults; this could be up to twelve hours a day. This is, of course, too much work for a child to do. Overworking often left the children vulnerable to diseases that ran rampant through the squalorous conditions in which they lived. The workplace was often dangerous to children also. Children are very curious by nature, and there were many machines in the factories that could easily mangle a young child. The long monotonous workday often bored the children, and when they got bored they eventually wandered around the factory which put them in a dangerous situation. Children working in mines often suffered respiratory problems from the dust and materials that floated through the air. This dust collected in their lungs and often killed them at an early age.
From this time period of massive child labor came most of our modern labor laws and workers' unions. The adult workers could strike in return for different benefits; e.g., higher wages, shorter hours, etc.; but children workers were too easily intimidated by their bosses to do anything organized like a strike. Eventually several wealthy, elderly women called upon the government to pass laws restricting children's labor hours from the usual twleve hours to ten. That was of course the starting point for today's restricive child labor laws.
There should be a lesson learned from evrey mistake and it seems that the United States has learned it's lesson about the cruelty of child labor from the Industrial Revolution. The government has passed a considerable amount of laws to insure that history doesan't repeat itself. From the Industrial Revolution the United States saw and understood the cruelties of child labor and has fought against it ever since, but it still doesn't bring back the dead and crippled children from the Industrial Revolution. In that sense the Industrial Revolution was a very dark chapter in American History indeed.
As the photos above show, our Industrial Revolution may be over, but other countries (such as India and China) are beginning their own industrial revolutions and our country is supporting their unethical labor practices by importing goods without pushing for certain humanitarian restrictions.
For more about the Industrial Revolution and Child Labor visit:
"Child Labor" - discusses the role of children in the English Industrial Revolution.
"The Life of the Industrial Worker in 19th-Century England"-The title on this one's pretty self explanatory
"The Industrial Revolution"-Gives a brief background on the Industrial Revolution.
"Modern-day Child Labor"-More photographed documentation of child labor practices in modern-day India.
"A Brief History of Labor in America-Part I." Working People. Fall 1996: Online. Internet. 1 Nov. 1997. Available WWW: http://www.woa.org/articles/laborhist.htm
Cronin, James E. "Book Reviews-Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution by Clark Nardinelli." Journal of Modern History. 65(1993): 591-593. Proquest General Periodicals. CD-ROM. UMI-Proquest,1997
Garraty, John A. The Story of America. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1991.
Norris, Michael. "Remembering the Labor in Labor Day." Pentagram. Aug. 1995. Online. Internet. 1 Nov, 1997. Available WWW: http://www.demilitary.comlarmy/pentagram
"A Short History of American Labor." Online. Internet. 1 Nov. 1997. Available WWW: http://unionweb.org/history.htm