I-Search Paper (Child Labor)

The Search Story

If it was a race for growth and profit for a whole nation, industrialization was the right call. With citizens working to earn the bare minimum wage to survive, everyone had to chip in so that the whole family would get to eat. Even children would have to work in dangerous work conditions, in factories, for long hours to help support their families. The children’s working environment during this time was only something that we’ve only lightly touched upon. From what we’ve already learned in Module 8 about life in the industrial era, many people have immigrated to America to “seek economic opportunity and to escape political turmoil at home.” With such a large population, there is sure to be competition for job opportunities. There were clashes between the people and the corrupted government. “Muckrakers,” a new type of journalism at the time, were used to reveal that issue, along with the “alliances between police and criminals, went undercover in sweatshops and slums to expose harsh living and working conditions, and taught consumers about food adulteration.” So the environments of these great cities that were created around these factories were terrible. Plus, the majority of the immigrants who worked in the factories were women and children. “In 1910, about 25% of all women, 14 years and older, were part of the labor force. They often worked in horrible conditions, for twelve-fourteen hours a day, in order to contribute their wages to their families.” Even if the immigrants were able to get a job, they could have gotten fire easily because of how strict the job was. “Workers were overseen by foremen who had the authority to fire them for speaking to each other, and who searched them when they left for the day, suspecting them of stealing materials.” If it was already that bad for the adults, can you imagine what it would have been for the children?

For this topic, I would like to find out what were the children's working conditions during the industrial revolution? And how did it change or affect child labor today? Overworking underage children is not legal in the U.S. but it doesn’t mean that other countries have those laws as well. Not to mention that there are still jobs that could still be doing this illegally in America. I want to see if the “rules” that we’ve put in place to prevent the work-like-environments of the industrial revolution today worked. The research and sources that I have found helped me answer the questions that I had, coming into this topic. They provided more than enough information that would answer why were the children forced into doing labor, what were the dangers of their jobs and work conditions, what laws were put into place to prohibit “child slavery” and did it work.

The Search Results

I started my research by checking the “padlet” to see what kind of website my classmates had provided for me. The first website was a “.edu” posted by Ariel Hicks in December of 2010. It provided some basic information on how child labor was seen as something beneficial, it was training the children to prepare them to become adults. Not only that, they were helping the family out and ensuring survival. It also mentioned what were the names these children were called when they were employed, “pauper apprentices” and “scavengers.” This source also highlighted the number of hours the children had to work, the danger of the machinery that they worked with, and the physical abuse that they had to deal with while working in factories. After reading this page, I’ve moved to the second website provided by the professor. This source provided me more concrete evidence and statistics on child labor, and from this website, I picked up the words “child slavery” and I agree with the similarity between those two names. The source introduced to me some of the groups that have plans to abolish child labor, the National Child Labor Committee, and the Children's Bureau. It also had photographs, primary sources, of working children in 1908. Although they were wonderful photographs, I wanted something else so I kept on looking. I went through the third website provided to me by the professor, and it provided me multiple links. Even though I had tabs of the ones that I saw was about child labor opened(“Child Labor”, “Children Labor Reform and the U.S. Labor Movement”, “Child Labor in New York City”, “Child Labor Photographs by Lewis Hine”, “Child Labor: Children at Work: 1932”, and “Children Wanted”), I only read the first three that I mentioned and skim through the fourth one.

I decided that I had gathered enough information about what happened in the past with child labor, and wanted to see what’s being done now. After scrolling pages of the search results on Google, I came upon my 10th website, which was a “.gov” by the Burea of International Labor Affairs. This source had data on child labor on a global scale as of 2017 to compare with the information that they had for the year 2000. After I was done with gathering the numbers that I needed on that website, I returned to search for more information about the present-day child labor situation and found another “.edu” source with more “recent”, 2006 and 2009, data on the number of children not in school because of limited opportunities and family conditions. It also had some photographs of children while working, but no direct links to those photos. The terms that I search on Google were very generic. For example, “how is child labor today” or “child labor in the U.S.” Once that was over, I determined that I had looked for enough background information on the topic and started looking for my primary sources. It didn’t take very long to find the one that I wanted after typing in “child labor industrial revolution primary sources” in the search bar. The two primary sources that I’ve chosen came from the first link of that search. On that site, there were 16 primary sources, all were photographs of children, illustrations, articles, newspapers, a page from a book and poem, and a postal telegraph.

Primary Source #1: (The road to dividends; Library of Congress)

This illustration was created by an artist who goes by TAD (1877-1929) in 1913, although this drawing was not created during the Industrial Revolution, this timeline still has the lingering effects of that era. It was titled, “The road to dividends.” The image shows a child carrying a huge bag on their back while leading a group of rich businessmen that could be interpreted as the owners of the factories in the background of the image. On the ground where the child walked, lies the words “The road to dividends.” This means that the profit that these businessmen made with their shareholders all came from the harsh labor of poverty children. The child in that drawing looks like they’re wearing nothing but torn, sleeveless, thin clothes, and it’s the middle of what I believed is winter since the businessmen were wearing fur coats. During this period, we’ve already known that households had to send their children to work so that everyone could get feed. If there wasn’t anything they could do in the fields (if their family even own a field), they were to go into the city to look for a job. Let’s compare the job that the child in the image is doing to today’s standard. That bag looks too heavy and big for them to be carrying on their back, it wouldn’t be surprising if the majority of them grow to have back or spine issues. They should either have something to push the bag or they should be carrying something lighter. Not to mention that clothes that they are wearing in that weather condition, it’s not going to get tolerated. They need to be wearing or provided with some warm clothes, but I doubt that those businessmen are willing to give them any. This just comes to shows how these children were being mistreated and overworked. The jobs that they do are way past what’s consider jobs for children of their age. Children at their age should be going to school to get an education so that they would have a more successful future, not wasting their youth on working themselves to death.

Primary Source #2: (Vera Hill, 5 years old picks 25 pounds a day. See 4580. Location: Comanche County, Oklahoma; Library of Congress)

My second primary source is a photograph taken by Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940) on October 11, 1916. This piece is called “Vera Hill, 5 years old picks 25 pounds a day. See 4580. Location: Comanche County, Oklahoma.” The photo shows a little girl walking barefoot in a field of cotton plants while carrying a large bag strapped to her back, like those one strap backpacks except it a lot longer and bigger. It looks like it’s as tall as her if she were to hold it upright. The title of this image hinted to us that she, Vera Hill, had to pick up 25 pounds of cotton, or whatever plant it is in the photo, every day. How many of us even carry or pull that much every day? Not to mention the fact that she's outside in the heat, and what she’s wearing on her head in that photo isn’t going to be enough to protect herself from the humidity and sun rays. If she’s working in her parent’s field, which I doubt is, she might get a break every so often. However, if she’s working in someone else's field, she’ll be lucky if they’ll let her take some water breaks. They’ll probably be rushing her to get the jobs done. Since children were just a form of cheap labor, the plantation owners would want them to work as quickly as possible so that they could pay them less, if they were paying them by the hour. It’s terrible how children in the workforce are being paid half the amount of adults since they’re so young. What could they possibly do? When in fact, they do some of the same jobs as the adults and for the same amount of time. This shows that the owners of these plantations and factories are profiting so much from cutting down the wages, that is well deserved and earned, by these children who had risked their lives to get.

Reflection on Topic Question!

After researching this topic, I got a better understanding of the mindset and thoughts of the adults when it came to child labor at the time. They purely thought that it was beneficial for both sides, the adults, and the children. The children would be gaining the experience that they would need to survive in society while they help their parents with living expenses. However, their parents had no idea about the environment and pressure that these children are working in. Since the majority of the information that I had gathered on child labor is around the 1900s and nothing really during the Industrial Revolution in 1760 - 1840, the time range for my question changed a bit from what were the working conditions of the children during the Industrial Revolution to during industrialization. Along the way, I add a couple of “sub” questions like, what were some of the dangers of their work environment, what were some of the consequences of working too much, etc.

With the two primary sources that I had chosen, I conclude that even though children were “employees”, they were not being paid the same amount as the adults for doing some of the same jobs as them. They were being abused, both mentally and physically, by their employer, by having to work long, extensive hours with minimal rest and without being properly clothed for their line of work. The safety of these children in jobs that require them to work in the fields or run errands violate all kind of safety measures that we have today. They’re not wearing enough, because of their stage of poverty, for extreme environments. Any kind of weather that’s not cool and dry, they would not be prepared to dress for. They would faint from being in the heat for too long, freeze in the snow, or get seriously ill from the rain. They had to carry bags that are the same height as them on their back with barely any rest. If they ever tried to escape, they are beaten and shackled. Not to mention the danger of having to work with machines, they could easily lose limbs, the smoke in factories can become poisonous to them if they breathe it in for a very long time, the possibility of explosions, getting crushed under the machines or even getting burned. Jobs in the factories are exceedingly dangerous, but they had to risk their lives working in them to support their families. Comparing those facts with the working conditions that we have today in the U.S., it is definitely better so the associations that fought against child labor were able to replace the standard for working conditions for all age groups.

What is the children working condition during industrialization? This question is very similar to the question that I started with because it was the one that I was most curious about and wanted to get an answer to. Now my curiosity has been resolved.