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Child Labor (Chicago Citation) Sample

Running Head: CHILD LABOR

Child Labor
[Name of Student]
[Name of Institution]

Child labor has a long, complex, and controversial history in the United States. Its roots begin in the traditions and practices of the Old World. Children have always worked, whether in their masters' fields, in the homes of their parents, or in the shops of local artisans. In colonial America and before, children's work was not considered child labor. It was a child's duty to help his or her parents and family in any and all possible ways. Usually this took the form of manual labor, such as lending a helping hand around the house or on the family farm. Parents instilled the very young with the Protestant work ethic with which they had grown up. Work was considered good for a child. It provided him or her with experience, valuable knowledge and skills, a respect for hard work, and a desire to earn the fruits of one's labor. In essence, children learned to earn their keep and the values in doing so.

As the country moved from rural, agrarian farms to industrialized, urban communities, child work was increasingly divided by gender. The separation of the public and private sphere laid the groundwork for the kinds of work that female and male children were expected to perform. In the early 19th century, for example, middle-class daughters worked inside the home, watching younger siblings, cleaning the house, or cooking meals. In some instances, girls were hired out to mend, wash laundry, and make clothes piecemeal, all activities easily accomplished within the confines of the home. On the other hand, a young boy adapted to the world outside of the home and to the physical challenges it demanded of him, often apprenticed to a nearby artisan or to the nearest

Clark, C. (1996). “Child labor and sweatshops.” CQ Researcher pp. 723–730.

relative who could provide for him. Charged with providing services much like a common servant, as well as making time for study of a particular trade or craft, these children worked twice as hard for their room and board.

European children of more modest means were brought to the colonies under indentured servitude, in which they pledged seven years of service in exchange for passage to the American colonies. Frequently, these children had a hard journey across the Atlantic Ocean, in cramped, diseaseridden ships, only to come to a country where the promise of opportunity disappeared under the often cruel tutelage of the rich who bought their passage tickets. Similarly, African children and their African American counterparts slaved away day after day without pay or sympathy.

Prior to the 19th century, however, the abuse of child work, which eventually led to its label as child labor, was not systematically documented or readily noticeable. The personal experience of one or two children was not alarming enough to alert the nation. With rapid industrialization, however, the notion of child labor appeared. As dangerous factories opened up, businessmen looked to the young, knowing that they could exploit their labor by paying them less than the average adult male. With more and more children leaving the house to work arduous hours in the factories, social concern arose. Reformers were concerned not only about the children's diminishing quality of life, but also about the kind of prospects these youth heralded. As children were seen as the key to the future, the broken bodies and uneducated minds of these youngsters, results of long hours in backbreaking labor, represented a bleak fate indeed.

Sanderson, A. R. (1974). “Childlabor legislation and the labor force participation of children.” Journal of Economic History vol. 34 no. (1) pp. 297–299.

Levine, M. J. (2003). “Children for hire: The perils of child labor in the United States.” Westport, CT: Praeger.

Equally spurred by working conditions of the very young and the seemingly dim future these children foreshadowed, progressive reformers such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley truly began to take notice and commit themselves to action in the late 19th century. As a result of public outcry in 1904, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was organized. The NCLC, along with various other state organizations, developed the methodology used for years to come that documented and transcribed the often tragic lives of child laborers through photographs, investigations, pamphlets, and lobbying. The NCLC began the campaign for state legislation with a ringing victory, as many states enacted childlabor laws without federal involvement. Realizing that many states were resistant to childlabor laws, reformers recognized the need for federal legislation. In 1916, federal legislation passed, only to be revoked by the United States Supreme Court, which declared the legislation unconstitutional in the Hammer v. Dagenhart case of 1918. Undeterred by this setback, another piece of legislation was adopted that same year. Once more, however, the Supreme Court overruled the legislation, this time in the Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company case in 1922.

Now fully aware of the power, capabilities, and techniques of the detractors of such federal legislation on child labor, reformers tried to fight back with a Constitutional amendment. Adopted by Congress in 1924, a childlabor amendment went to the states for ratification. By 1925, only four states, Arkansas, Arizona, California, and Wisconsin, had signed the amendment. It was never ratified.

As much as progressive reformers and sympathizers fought for childlabor regulation, lasting reform was not created until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Once the Depression hit, millions of strong, ablebodied American men were out of work. This tragedy provided the single most effective catalyst in pushing children out of the workforce and into the classroom. Every state had adopted a compulsory schoolattendance law by 1933, requiring children 14 years old and younger to attend school regularly. These state laws, coupled with the legislation of such acts as the Public Contracts Act (1936) and the Beet Sugar Act (1937), increasingly edged children out of the workforce. They provided a minimum age of employment, prohibited children from certain hazardous or dangerous jobs, and set standards on the number of days and/or hours children could work. Yet this type of legislation was too exclusive, by not providing federal regulation for children in all parts of the country employed in a variety of occupations. This was soon remedied with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. This federal mandate fixed the minimum age requirement across the nation at 16 years old during school hours.

Since then, child labor has increasingly declined, and only relatively recently has it resumed its position as child work. The abolition of child labor, however, has never been fully achieved; it has merely been transformed. Today, children are once again encouraged to work outside the home. Many students of all ages work a parttime job at the local mall, gas station, or restaurant. Youth continue to be exploited by their employers, as many of them work for minimum wage to earn “spending cash” of their own. Children also are working and are often employed inside the home as well, earning wages or “allowance” money in exchange for completing household tasks. These kinds of child labor are viewed as beneficial to both children and the American society they will one day inherit and transform.
Furthermore, although many American children now spend their mornings behind a desk in school and their evenings working comfortable and relatively light labor in sales, for example, their immigrant counterparts are found in the fields with their parents. Involved with exhausting agricultural labor and usually paid well below the minimum wage, these children and their conditions are habitually ignored by federal legislators and the public alike. Finally, although many American children are no longer employed in dangerous factories performing menial and tedious tasks, U.S. companies continue to relocate outside of the country, where children can still work freely in such conditions and at pitiful wages.

Taylor, R. (1973). “Sweatshops in the sun: Child labor on the farm.” Boston: Beacon Press.

Zelizer, V. A. (1985). “Pricing the priceless child: The changing social value of children.” New York: Basic Books.

Endnotes

Clark, C. (1996). “Child labor and sweatshops.” CQ Researcher pp. 723–730.
Levine, M. J. (2003). “Children for hire: The perils of child labor in the United States.” Westport, CT: Praeger.
Sanderson, A. R. (1974). “Childlabor legislation and the labor force participation of children.” Journal of Economic History vol. 34 no. (1) pp. 297–299.
Taylor, R. (1973). “Sweatshops in the sun: Child labor on the farm.” Boston: Beacon Press.
Zelizer, V. A. (1985). “Pricing the priceless child: The changing social value of children.” New York: Basic Books.

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