Victorian Lives : The Problem of Child Labor in Victorian America

Young boys working in textile mile Public Domain

During the industrial revolution in the late 1700's the United States and England replaced a great deal of manual labor with crude machinery. Slowly, almost as manufactured goods were made in factories instead of family owned workshops. The greed of factory owners was an incredible threat to the Victorian working class family in urban settings. These newly enterprising capitalists saw child labor as a source or cheap and obedient laborers. Children of the under classes had always worked on family farms and in cottage industries. Many children were loaned out in their early teens to neighboring farms and craftsman to learn trades. Industrial work was insidious as poor families allowed children below the age of seven to be employed for up to 14 hrs. a day for what amounted to slave wages in dangerous and dirty working conditions.

Children worked in factories 12 to 18 hours a day many times in spinning mills or hauling heavy loads.

Some of the worst conditions were those of young children; sometimes under the age of seven who, worked in coal mines. In 1810 there were an estimated 2,000.000 what we would consider school aged children working up to 70 hours a week. When poor parents could no longer feed their children they many times turned their care over to factory owners who essentially forced work upon them. A glass factory in Massachusetts used barbed wire to keep it's young male employees inside. These children were paid wages as low as forty cents a night to haul hot glass.

Church groups and labor reformers spoke out against child labor. In England, people such as Charles Dickens dramatized the plight of poor working class children in Oliver Twist. Britain and eventually the United States passed laws improving working conditions, shortening hours, and raising the age limit of those who could be employed. In the 1830's some U.S states passed laws prohibiting the employment of very young children in factories. Many times these laws were not enforced by local officials because of the belief that work for poor children would the family and the community at large.

Two girls protesting child labour (by calling it child slavery) in the 1909 New York City Labor Day parade. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It took several decades for the United States to in some ways restrict child labor. Connecticut in 1813 had passed laws stating that children engaged in labor should receive some sort of schooling . At the turn of the century only 28 states had laws restricting child labor. In the United States it took many years to outlaw child labor. Connecticut passed a law in 1813 saying that working children must have some schooling. By 1899 a total of 28 states had passed laws regulating child labor Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938 setting a minimum wage for child workers and restricting most work to children over 16 years of age and hazardous work to those who were legally adults.

This ended the unfair labor practices such as companies hiring whole families, requiring them to live in company towns and pay all their wages for substandard housing and food. It also increased the number of children in poor communities that could actually attend school to the eighth grade. The children of migrant workers have little protection from exploitation in the United States , some receive schooling, but many moved to often to get a good education