SECTION VI.-CHILD LABOR. OUTLINE 1. HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT FOR THE PROHIBITION AND REGULATION OF CHILD LABOR. Child labor is not a new problem, resulting solely from the development of the modern factory system. Child labor has always been cheap labor, and wherever its employment has not been regulated, employers have tended to use it excessively. The apprenticeship system of the mediaeval guilds imposed regulations which, where adequately enforced, were in many respects beneficial to the child worker. With the decline of apprenticeship and the growth of the modern factory system, the conditions under which children worked became increasingly hard. Beginning with the early years of the nineteenth century, the public began gradually to recognize the evils of child labor and to provide for its regulation through the passage of legislation. During the past hundred years laws regulating the employment of children in industrial and commercial pursuits have been enacted in practically all civilized countries, and the standards of regulation have been gradually raised from decade to decade. I. THE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND. A. Child labor and its regulation prior to the industrial revolution. 1. Not only were children employed in large numbers from early times in agricultural and domestic pursuits, but also in practically all trades and handicrafts. 2. While in mediaeval times young children were probably employed in large numbers for as long hours, and at as arduous tasks, as under the factory system of the early nineteenth century, their working conditions were in general better because of the regulations of the apprenticeship system under which many of them were employed. 3. The apprenticeship system, established by the craftsmen of the thirteenth century and made compulsory by the mediaeval trade guilds and later by national law, imposed the earliest regulations on child labor. This system when adequately enforced insured to the child. indentured as apprentice: (a) A sound technical training for a skilled trade. A. Child labor and its regulation, etc.-Continued. 3. The apprenticeship system, etc.-Continued. B. The effect of the industrial revolution on child labor. (a) The removal of all regulation of conditions of work and of all provision for technical training which had been part of the apprenticeship system. (b) The greatly increased demand for child workers as cheap labor, following the invention of machinery, and their increased use in fatiguing and uneducative repetitive machine processes. C. Beginning of the public recognition of the evils of child labor and the legal regulation of its abuses. 1. Up to the close of the eighteenth century there had been no public recognition of the evils of child labor. It was, in fact, generally regarded as a matter of course that practically all children should go to work as soon as they were physically able to do so. 2. Through the investigations of abuses of the system of pauper apprenticeship under the poor law, by which paupers were bound out to mill owners, the bad conditions under which not only these but also other children were forced to work were first brought to public attention. 3. During the first half of the nineteenth century a series of parliamentary inquiries which gave striking testimony to the abuses attending the unregulated employment of children in many industries, together with the efforts of such reformers as Lord Shaftsbury, Robert Owen, Sir Robert Peel, and others, gradually aroused public opinion to the need of legal regulation. C. Beginning of the public recognition of the evils, etc.—Continued. 4. The process of legislative reform was, however, very slow. (a) In 1819 the first act applying to other than pauper apprentices was passed regulating child labor in factories. It applied only to cotton mills, prohibiting the employment of children under 9 years of age and limiting the working hours of children under 16 to 12 hours a day. (b) In 1833 an act was passed prohibiting the employment of children under 9 in all textile mills, limiting the working hours of children under 13 to 9 hours a day and 48 hours a week, and that of young persons between 13 and 18 to 12 hours a day, or 69 a week, and providing for the appointment of factory inspectors. This was the first law to provide for a system of factory inspection. (c) In 1842, as the result of a striking parliamentary inquiry into the conditions of labor in mines, an act was passed prohibiting the employment of boys under 10, and of all girls and women in mine pits, and requiring the appointment of inspectors to enforce the law. (d) By the act of 1844 work on certain dangerous machines was prohibited for children. At the same time the "half-time" system in the textile industries was established, whereby children worked and attended school alternately. (e) In the period 1845-1878 acts were passed raising the age and hour standards and gradually extending their application to all kinds of manufacturing industries. (f) In 1876 the first compulsory school law was passed, requiring the attendance at school of children up to 10 years of age, with certain exemptions. (g) Laws relating to child labor passed during the period between 1878 and the present day have been chiefly concerned with raising the age, hour, and educational standards of child labor in factories and workshops and in extending such standards to mercantile pursuits, street trades, and other occupations. By an act C. Beginning of the public recognition of the evils, etc.-Continued. 4. The process of legislative reform, etc.-Continued. (g) Laws relating to child labor, etc.-Continued. passed in 1901 the employment of children under 12 years of age was prohibited in factories or workshops. (h) In 1918 the Fisher Education Act was passed, which provides for the first time for the regulation of the employment of children in all gainful occupations, including agriculture and domestic service. It not only prohibits the employment of all children under 12, but also requires compulsory full-time school attendance of all children up to 14 years of age, and compulsory continuation school attendance of all children up to 16 years, the age to be raised to 18 at the end of seven years from the time the act becomes effective. (See Section VI, Outline 3, Topic III, A, 1.) II. THE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.1 A. Child labor up to the nineteenth century. 1. As in England prior to the establishment of the factory system, child labor was very common. The conditions under which children worked were not obviously harmful, and provision was usually made for a certain amount of education. Since work made children selfsupporting and kept them from the temptations of idleness, child labor was regarded by practically every one as economically necessary and morally desirable. 2. The effect of the industrial revolution was similar to that in England, although the exploitation of children at the expense of their health and education was possibly not quite so great. B. Early regulation of child labor by the States. 1. Early legislative efforts, as in England, failed to establish adequate standards or to make necessary provision for enforcement. Prior to 1830 no effective regulation of child labor was accomplished. 2. The lack of education among working children was the first evil to be recognized and the first for which legislative remedies were sought. 1 information regarding to laws passed before 1920, secured mainly from the following sources (full titles given in the Reading References): Abbott, Carlton, Ogburn, Summary of the Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States. B. Early regulation of child labor by the States-Continued. 2. The lack of education, etc.-Continued. (a) Connecticut, in 1813, passed a law providing (b) Massachusetts, in 1836, provided that children 3. The regulation of hours of work was the next step in (a) In 1842 Connecticut and Massachusetts passed laws restricting the employment of young children to 10 hours a day in certain manufacturing establishments. (b) Prior to 1860 similar legislation was passed in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio. 4. Commencing about the middle of the century, legislation began to be passed prohibiting the employment in manufacturing industries of children under certain ages in Pennsylvania (12 to 13 years), Rhode Island (12 years), Connecticut (9 to 10 years), and New Jersey (10 years). 5. By 1860 some public recognition of the abuses resulting from early child labor and of the right of the State to correct these abuses by legislation had developed in the industrial States of the North. Only a few laws had as yet been passed, however, for the purpose of correcting and regulating these abuses, and these were for the most part found to contain inadequate provision for enforcement. C. State child-labor legislation, 1860-1920. 1. Laws prohibiting the employment of children below certain specified ages have in these years gradually been extended to include at least factories and in many cases a large number of other occupations in almost all States (see Section VI, Outline 4, Topic II, A), while the specified age minima have gradually been raised from 10 and 12 to 14, and in a few States to 15 and 16 years. |