Building a Great Nation on the Backs of its Youth

 When is child labor a useful and healthy introduction to work?  How do you distinguish between freedom and idleness, which may be less wholesome than some other types of work?  Is some work suitable for young children? How do you distinguish “suitable?”

 Reflected socio-economic class stratification  Immigration and tenement living  Availability of children and economic forces

 In 1870, the first U.S. census to report child labor numbers counted 750,000 workers under the age of 15, not including children who worked for their families in businesses or on farms.  By 1911, more than two million American children under the age of 16 were working

 Street Trades- newsies, delivery and errand boys, shoe shiners  Industrial factory workers  Textiles, food preparation, garment/ piece goods  Breaker Boys- coal miners  Agriculture/Farm labor

Young Mine Driver, works 7 AM to 5:30 PM daily Breaker Boys, Pennsylvania Work at breaking up large chunks of coal

Six year old picking cotton in Oklahoma Boy working in berry fields outside Baltimore.

 hour work weeks  From “Can till Cain’t”  Lived in company owned houses, towns  Paid in company script for overpriced goods at the company store

 Tenement living in slums  Homework after shifts were over  Immigrant families targeted because some state laws did not apply to immigrants

 Started slowly at the state level banning employment of underage children  Motivations for regulation varied:  Economic  Humane  Social  Children were viewed as a source of low- wage labor that was in competition with adults

 Products of child labor competed against adult made products causing market pressures to force down wages and living standards  Health and safety hazards as well as exhaustion left children ill prepared for education  As adults they were ill-prepared for employment elsewhere, which led to cyclical poverty

 AFL leader Samuel Gompers favored child labor laws  1904 the National Child Labor Committee was formed to end child exploitation in the workplace  State labor laws were loosely constructed and difficult to enforce

 Arguments:  Unavoidable stage of development  Necessary for survival  Essential for regional competition  Southern manufacturers viewed labor restrictions as an “effort of northern agitators to kill the infant industries of the south”

 “I believe there are just about as many children spoiled by indulgence as there are by overwork.”  -Daniel A. Tompkins Carolina mill owner  “There is such a thing as too much education for working people sometimes.”  -Charles Harding, Merchants Woolen Co.

 Set a 40 hour work week  Minimum wage of 40 cents per hour  Prohibited child labor under 16 and restricted when and for how long children could work