Child Labor

Children at Work

Child labor resulted from several interrelated factors. To many observers, the employment of children in factories and other workplaces served a philanthropic function, as work kept poor children from becoming public charges, taught them the Puritan values of industry, and protected them from the sins of idleness. As industry developed more opportunities for low-skill and low-wage labor, factory officials began to aggressively seek out child workers who could do the work of adults but could not demand the same compensation. At the same time, throughout the country, family income was often so low that parents had little [Page 123]choice but to send their children to full-time employment to supplement their own meager earnings.

Even in agricultural regions, family welfare often took priority over the interests and aspirations of individual family members, with children helping out on the farm as soon as they could do the work. Still, these children often received at least minimal education, as their work was part time and seasonal, while industrial jobs demanded full-time attention, leaving urban children the clear choice between work and school. Also, while difficult, farm labor required tasks that varied from time to time, occurred mainly in the fresh air and sunlight, and allowed for occasional periods of rest. Industrial work was steady and year-round, making it difficult to reconcile work and school, and generally demanded mind-numbing attention to repetitive hand motions in an enclosed environment too often deafeningly loud, dirty, and dangerous.

To many, the solution to the problem of child labor appeared to be the passage and implementation of protective legislation that outlawed the employment of children in certain locations and at specific ages. Such laws evolved from pity for the exploited children, the sense that they were being prepared to act as informed citizens, and the recognition that the stunted intellectual and social skills that came from such labor cheapened and impaired industry itself. By the late 1920s every state had enacted some form of child labor legislation, even if it was honored only in the breach. Children under the age of sixteen were prohibited from engaging in most forms of dangerous factory work, and many companies had concluded that unschooled children were of marginal employment value in any case.

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