A History of Child Labor in the United States
Educational activity: What was life like for children 100 years ago?
One year, when I taught a class containing third through fifth graders, I engaged students in a thought experiment about children’s lives 100 years ago. This was an activity for the 100th Day of School that year. I showed them images of schools from the 1920s and shared pictures of kids and teachers alike. We talked about how children were expected to go to school in some places and/or work in other parts of the country. I had them imagine what it would have been like if they lived long ago.
We also worked together to co-create a venn diagram of things that were different or similar 100 years ago. The children were able to discuss many differences and similarities. At the time, I was teaching virtually due to the pandemic. We had several discussions about the prevalence of technology in our present time (Zoom, Google Classroom, Jamboard, and other virtual tools I used to teach) as contrasted with technology in the 20th century. They were predictably surprised that some of these tech tools were very, very new.
One interesting aspect of this was that these children all have disabilities, and all struggled with writing their ideas with pencil and paper. Some children took easily to typing their assignments in Google documents or putting their thoughts into a Zoom chat, and we talked about how these things were never available to kids in the past. The student insights were at times predictable, silly, and thoughtful. I think I enjoyed the activity as much as they did!
Artifact: One piece of the activity was the following worksheet:
Source: Little School on the Range, Teachers Pay Teachers Creator (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/100th-Day-of-School-Communities-Then-and-Now-FREEBIE-Print-and-Digital-1617860)
Aside from classrooms being different back then compared to how they are now, child labor is a lot different back then compared to now. According to Mintz (2004), “Lucy Larcmon, the ninth child in a family of ten, was eleven when she went to work in a Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mill in 1836” (p. 133). In PA, the legal age for working is 14. Some might feel that 14 is even young, but when it is compared to the age of 11 years old, it doesn’t seem so bad. Some might argue that you are barely old enough at both 11 and 14 years of age. According to Mintz (2004). “The first textile mill in the United States, Samuel Slater’s mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which opened in 1790, had a workforce consisting of seven boys and two girls, ages seven to twelve, who operated the factory’s seventy-two spindles” (p. 136). Aside from the obvious contrast which is the age, let’s focus on the role of their job – operating seventy-two spindles in the factory. That could be a very dangerous job and would require a focused, mature young worker. Some might argue that today, it is not possible for seven to twelve year old’s to focus long enough and be mature enough to operate seventy-two spindles in a factory. According to Mintz (2004), “Initially Lucy enjoyed the sense of independence and peer-group companionship she experienced in the mill…Soon, however, she felt frustrated by the low pay…, the long hours,…and the abysmal working conditions…” (p. 133). This is a point that can be easily comparable between the time periods. Young workers often feel this way even today. Young workers get excited and are motivated to start their new job, and after a while, they lack motivation to continue working their job.
A lot of the time, the excitement and “newness” of working their job wears off and they want to go to their roots of being a young teenager. Comparing and contrasting child labor often creates thought provoking questions about gender roles and work ethics. How can gender roles compare and contrast between the time periods? How can work ethics compare and contrast between the time periods? Gender roles back then were very much stereotypical – the females often had jobs that were domesticated while the males often had jobs that were focused about labor jobs. Today, as well all know, this isn’t the case. Job roles are more socially acceptable regardless of the gender. Back then, children were working as young as five or six. Today, children can legally begin working at the age of 14. Some could argue that the earlier you’re exposed to the workforce, the stronger your work ethic is. Some could argue that the longer you wait to join the workforce, the weaker your work ethic is. It is interesting to think about the correlation between work ethic and the age one starts working.
Works Cited:
Mintz, S. (2004). Huck’s raft: A history of american childhood. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Child Labor in America
Baltimore, Maryland, 1909” by Lewis Wickes Hines (U.S., 1874-1940), 1909. Currently held by Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This photograph pictures child laborers at work in Baltimore, Maryland in the early 20th century.
According to the article, children between the ages of 7-12 years were used as child laborers in factories in order for the employers to pay less for the jobs. The children were available to work because most of their parents needed the extra income to sustain the family. Nowadays, child labor might still be seen in society in a different way. Sometimes I do see children selling items like water and soda with their parents, doing fundraising for a sport on the streets and selling cookies in front of stores. I am assuming that if child labor is done along with the parents’ supervision, then it’s ok. Overall, child labor still exists in many societies, but sometimes with supervision.
“Child labor was still legal in many parts of the United States for 29 years after this photograph was shot. A national child labor law was passed in 1938 – by that time thousands of young girls had spent their formative years toiling in factories, likely hoping that things would be different for their own daughters.”
Work Cited:
Child Labor in Baltimore, Maryland, 1909 – Girl Museum
https://www.girlmuseum.org/child-labor-baltimore-maryland-1909/
Child Labor in the United States (Today) and the Disparities faced by Migrant Workers and Undocumented Immigrants
A quick Google search on Child Labor in the United States today shows shocking results. On the U.S. Department of Labor website, the page leads with the headline “Violations Have Increased.” Further reading shows that “In FY 2023, we concluded 955 investigations that found child labor violations, a 14% increase from the previous year” (Dept. of Labor). The info-graphic below shows major cases that the Dept of Labor have fined in the past year, and the trend appears to show that the major violators are Meat Processing Machinery and Sawmill Operations, which are both extremely dangerous jobs.
A study from the Harvard Law School, corroborated the evidence from the Dept. of Labor, and in its abstract says: “Global child labor is on the rise for the first time in 20 years. Unfortunately, the United States is no exception. The Department of Labor has reported a 44% increase in children employed illegally between October 2022 and July 2023. A February 2023 New York Times investigation highlighted the harrowing situations and dangerous jobs that children face in supply chains across the United States. Some well-known companies are implicated – where children below the legal minimum age are employed, are allowed to work long hours, or work in hazardous conditions. These conditions violate child labor laws and the rights of children – both under domestic and international law.”
It should be not glossed over that some of the rise in U.S. Child Labor is taking place in the MeatPacking industry. In fact, when searching the OSHA, website section on the Meatpacking industry, it says that “There are many serious safety and health hazards in the meat packing industry. These hazards include exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculoskeletal disorders, and hazardous chemicals (including ammonia that is used as a refrigerant).” This data goes to show a common theme in this course: that is, that Childhood is not created equal.
Unsurprisingly, the Economics Policy Institute of America, in a paper titled Who are America’s meat and poultry workers? writes that “[Meatpacking is] One of the most dangerous and exploitative industries in the country, the slaughter and processing of the meat we eat relies heavily upon rural workers—disproportionately immigrants, refugees, and people of color—who have few better options.” (EPI).
Some further resources to explore: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2001); This NPR story from March 5, 2023 titled “Hundreds of migrant children work long hours in jobs that violate child labor laws”. There resources expand on how the disparities faced by minorities when it comes to Child Labor are far more prevalent.
Works Cited:
- Child labor enforcement: Keeping young workers safe. (n.d.). DOL. Retrieved February 11, 2024, from http://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data/child-labor
- Dreier, H., & Luce, K. (2023, February 25). Alone and exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the u. S. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
- Rascoe, A. (2023, March 5). Hundreds of migrant children work long hours in jobs that violate child labor laws. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/05/1161192379/hundreds-of-migrant-children-work-long-hours-in-jobs-that-violate-child-labor-la
- The resurgence of child labor and the rights of the child in the united states. (n.d.). Harvard Law School. Retrieved February 11, 2024, from https://hls.harvard.edu/events/the-resurgence-of-child-labor-and-the-rights-of-the-child-in-the-united-states/
- Who are America’s meat and poultry workers? (n.d.). Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved February 11, 2024, from https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographics/
American Child Labor vs. Global Child Labor
For as long as the Unites States has been a country, child labor had a large presence in the development of many economically beneficial tasks; from helping on a farm, to mining for coal, to even working in large textiles pre WWII. Child labor has been a form of cheap labor that the economy had for so long relied on, and it was not until the end of the 1930s that we saw an initial distribution of child labor laws, yet child labor was not truly outlawed, rather it was just more regulated. Though child labor is heavily regulated at this time, we must ask ourselves why is it still present in America and other countries?
Figure 1: Data on prevalence of child labor provided by UNICEF (accessed 2/12/24)
It was discovered by the US Department of Labor that there were an estimated 5,800 known cases of child labor within the states in the past year (DOL, 2023) which is an 88% increase from 2019. Today, as establish in the previous section, American child labor takes the form of sawmill operations and meat processing which are identified by OSHA as hazardous occupations, which in turn violated the plethora of Child Labor laws established. That said, child. labor in other countries looks incredibly different. For example, child labor in poorer countries subject slightly more than 1 in 5 children to child labor, with the leading cause being a product of poor economies. It was written by the International Labor Organization (ILO) that, “… in the world, there are 211 million children laborers, 73 million under 10 years of age, 126 million children work in the worst forms of child labor, and more than 8 million are kept as slaves for domestic work, in trafficking, armed conflict, prostitution, and pornography.” (Radfar et al. 2018) the ILO also identified what is classified as “worst forms of child labor” in a convention held in 1999 as forms of labor such as slavery or sex trafficking. (Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999) Though the statistics on global child labor indicate large scale cases of “worst forms”, 56.4% of child labor is agricultural and 33.1% is industrial (American cases mentioned previously)
There have been arguments that child labor is not always a product of poor economies, rather there are other situational factors to consider such as natural disasters, or a lack in quality education. Countries who do not have sufficient amounts of teachers or proper school structures are the countries who have higher cases of child labor reported. For more information on global scale child labor statistics and areas to help prevent the increase in child labor, please visit UNICEF to educate yourself!
Works cited:
Radfar A, Asgharzadeh SAA, Quesada F, Filip I. Challenges and perspectives of child labor. Ind Psychiatry J. 2018 Jan-Jun;27(1):17-20. doi: 10.4103/ipj.ipj_105_14. PMID: 30416287; PMCID: PMC6198592.
“Child Labor.” UNICEF Data: Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women, 2023, data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/child-labour/.
“Child Labor Enforcement: Keeping Young Workers Safe.” DOL, www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data/child-labor#:~:text=In%20FY%202023%2C%20we%20concluded,increase%20from%20the%20previous%20year. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024.
Team,
I really enjoyed your side exhibition. Child Labor was a very normal part of childhood up until the mid 1900s, and as your reading states, immigrant children are still used for very difficult labor. I wonder what that says about our idea of American Childhood. Is the innocent American Childhood only accessible to American citizens? Is that why employers are okay letting immigrant children work in difficult conditions? Thank you for sharing your side exhibit. It again makes me wonder who can access the American Childhood.
Carrie
Great job everyone on their contribution to this week’s side exhibit!
The first section of your side exhibit discussed how schools used to look over 100 years ago versus a more recent example of education. This is something I have a connection to. My mom and I go, every couple of years, to this local museum/settlement and within this historical environment, there is an old schoolhouse. I remember going there when I was probably 12 years old and was fascinated by the setup and the history of education. To imagine a single educator in charge of so many children ranging in ability and age which such limited guidance and supplies blew my mind. It is so amazing that we have come so far within such a small time frame and it brings me hope for our future where our education could take us.
Your first pictures reminded me of the days I spent in the local Amish school because I found myself comparing it to the typical “English” school. There were many similarities – seasonal decorations in the windows, motivational posters and children’s artwork hung on the walls, two alphabets posted above the chalkboard (English and German), bookshelves with different kinds of books, a job chart, baskets with playground toys like balls and jump ropes, cubbies for everyone’s belongings, desks arranged in rows from first grade in the front to eighth grade in the back, and a teacher’s desk. The differences included a large sports-type cooler for drinking water, a corner stove for heat (and for hot lunches if you placed something on it in the morning) and of course, the outhouses.
On another note, while many people in the US respond quite strongly to the thought of child labor in industries, other countries do not seem to share this viewpoint. The US Department of Labor website lists multiple countries and the goods they provide that are still using child labor (as of 2022). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-goods-print. The children of those countries most definitely experience a different form of “childhood” than we do.
Awesome job on your side exhibition ! I really enjoyed reading through your thoughts and analyzing the photographs. One aspect that really caught my attention was the ideas regarding young individuals feelings towards working. I got my first ever job when I was 14 / 15 years old at a local shop in my town. It was the first time I had my own thing and was making my own money. While my working conditions were good (nothing like what Lucy Larcmon described) it wasn’t everything I thought it would be. We worked for several hour shifts, you didn’t get a break unless your shift was over a certain amount of hours and the pay wasn’t great. I thought I was making a lot (minimum wage) but once I got my first paycheck and saw all the taxes that got removed it was kind of like a wake up call. It made me not want to keep working and / or find another job. That was all over ten years ago, but nothing has really changed – I see teenagers (aged 17-20) struggle with the constraints of working and eventually leave despite the situation being good. Interesting to think about how a lot has changed in regards to teenagers working but still there are similarities.
Hi Megan! I can relate to you and your experience with seeing the taxes removed from your first paycheck. I first saw mine at 15 and thought to myself “where and who does all this money go to?” “I worked for this money just for a chunk to be taken from me.” I could not imagine being a teenager today working a minimum wage job and seeing all the deductions taken out. I really wonder how those who live on their own and do not have anyone manage to live off of the money they make. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thank you for sharing this NYT article
There are so many quotes from it that are shocking. I’ll just share this one “Mr. Gilmer teared up as he recalled finding 13-year-olds working in meat plants; 12-year-olds working at suppliers for Hyundai and Kia, as documented last year by a Reuters investigation; and children who should have been in middle school working at commercial bakeries.” The article mentions that this is happening in all 50 states.
For me, and this is just my subjective reaction to child work in general, but if someone wants to do paid work at 16 or maybe even at 15, I feel like they are developmentally old enough to make that choice, but… 12-14 year olds definitely are not.
To think that we are consuming goods produced by middle school age children who arrived in the US alone, unaccompanied, is totally heartbreaking.
One thing I have been thinking about as we read about the history of childhood labor is that today we deem childhood labor as being inhumane but that we except it as a reality of adults. I’m particularly thinking of the grueling physical labor of early industrial factories. Why is it that we accept this as a humane thing even for adults to go through? I am of course by no means saying that child labor is acceptable. In fact I think quite the opposite – that even adults shouldn’t be subjected to such labor. Perhaps this is too idealistic. I wonder in the face of automated labor if we will look back on difficult manual labor of adults 100 years in the future and think of it in the same way we think of child labor today.
Hi everyone,
you did a great job with this side exhibition.
I was honestly thinking along the same lines as Jack’s comment above. I’m obviously horrified by the sources detailing not only the prevalence of child labor but the harrowing situations in which this labor is taking place. No one should be working in some of the hazardous conditions outlined here- let alone children, especially. Unfortunately, America’s over endorsement of capitalism and wealth inequality has led to some truly disturbing work practices for all.
Lizzie I appreciated your emphasize on the over endorsement of capitalism and wealth. We [as a collective society] have to truly pause and truly look at what is happening especially as the technology and wealth gap increases
Thanks for this exhibit. I especially loved the teaching example at the beginning. I love Venn Diagrams and using one to compare the two types of school experiences is terrific. Connecting students in this way helps them internalize the similarities and differences of ways of being a student.
I am thinking about rural workers. I am not in favor of using children under the age of 14, or even any school-age child having to work full-time. However, historically, families have always had children work in their own agricultural businesses. I did this. My father had greenhouses. My siblings and I all worked to water, take cuttings, plant, weed, and more. One summer we did maintenance jobs as a family–mowing and weeding fancy houses and businesses. My elementary-age brothers also worked. The money we made paid for a family road trip we took at the end of the summer. The difference for me is that this work did not interfere with our schooling. My parents wanted us to know how to work, and we contributed to our family income. However, our work did not prevent our education.
Marylynne, I can relate to your agriculture story. My aunt and uncle have a 40-acre horse farm in Michigan. My cousins all had odd jobs from a young age – feeding horses, filling water buckets, polishing tack, etc. But they also knew how to drive the various pieces of machinery before the “legal” driving age so that they could help during hay time – tractors, grain elevator, baler, etc. It wasn’t necessarily their primary role, but if another worker was sick or weather was coming and they had to work round the clock, at least they knew how to do it all. I remember being there visiting while in elementary school and being put to work. For me it was fun and different, for them it was a way of life.
Diane, your cousins are probably good workers! They know how to work. I am glad that I learned to work. It has benefited me throughout my entire life.
One thing that stood out to me regarding child labor in America was other countries that face this same occurrence. Immediately child labor in Ecuador came to mind. Children are used for the purpose and production of banana’s. Child
Labor starts as young as the age of 8 and children are worked for 12+ hours a day. This diminishes human rights. This is not to mention the inadequate work spaces and other forms of harassment these children face. Overall, child labor extends throughout the world and is an ugly reality.
Hi everyone! Wow. You did a great job with this side exhibition! I had thoughts similar to Carrie. I also started to wonder how did the shift in child labor switch more towards immigrants? How is child labor becoming more immigrant based? Is it because American children were being guided towards an American childhood? What about “The American Dream?” Immigrant parents could do everything they can for the child/children… but is it enough for them to live the “American Dream?”
I had the same question as well. This is a topic of discussion I’m personally researching more about as I am working in more marginalized communities and being exposed to different conversations and cultures
Great side exhibit! I remember loving the musical Newsies when I was in middle school. I had not considered the realistic child labor conditions surrounding that institution until revisiting the idea in your post! I also appreciated your idea for engaging today’s children in comparing and contrasting education from now to the past. I think a social justice lens could also support students in analyzing the differences between schools in different places both domestically and abroad, as well. Thanks for your thoughtful side exhibit!
Cara,
I loved the Newsies too! I rewatched the Disney version with my kids just a little while ago, which was fun. But this time, I had more clarity about what was going on around them. It added something for me.
Wow! Wonderful job on your side exhibit! It was very well though out and put together. Reading about child labor in Mintz’s book, Huck’s Raft, was very sobering. Although I knew children worked at jobs like selling newspapers, I had no idea of the full extent of how much they worked and how abused they were. Reading through your side exhibit reminds me that we need to continue to be vigilant in protecting our children from abuses such as those experienced by children of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Hi all,
As I was reading your side exhibition, I couldn’t help but consider the ways that child labor have changed in the US since the early part of the 20th century, particularly since the point is made early on in your exhibit. I appreciated the girl scout cookie example pictured as I don’t really think of that as child labor, but rather as a fun fundraiser that children get to participate in. This led to be wondering what constitutes labor, then, in the US. If a child wants to go and earn a few dollars shoveling driveways for the neighbors, is that child labor? If a child is really interested in a parent’s job and goes along one day to help, is the parent allowing/engaging in child labor? Where is the line?
Hi Group C! I love the way you begin with the educational activity about classrooms 100 years ago and share this background about your students’ needs. As soon as I start thinking about pre-internet classrooms, I can remember the smell of mimeographed worksheets!
The photographs from Lewis Hine are powerful. In a resource I’ve seen, I was struck by the insight that Hine’s “photographs, therefore, represent one of the first instances of photography helping to enact social change.”
Source: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/23336/sadie-pfeifer-a-cotton-mill-spinner-lancaster-south-carolina
I want to share a resource that’s gives us a wealth of information about Hine’s work. It’s “Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor” on the United States National Archives website. There’s an option to click on images to enlarge them.
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos
You’ve done a wonderful job providing a lot of information about this important topic of child labor and sharing resources such as UNICEF’s child labor webpage so we can further educate ourselves. Thank you!
Excellent job on this exhibit! I love the attention to detail and explanation. The artifact that particularly stood out to me and deepened my understanding was the Girl Scout cookie example and the strategy behind that fundraising effort, along with its connection to a society that tolerates the blurring of lines concerning child labor. Reflecting on my own personal experience as a Girl Scout, I found it incredibly challenging, and my experience selling cookies as a young Black girl was markedly different from that of my counterparts in my troop. This discussion further extends to children from marginalized communities, prompting us to question why society is comfortable with children taking orders, working in nail salons, engaging in construction, and other labor-intensive jobs. Great job once again on this exhibit!