Warm UP (Think Pair Share)

• Please follow the instructions on the activity sheet youwere handed at thebeginning of class.

The Gilded AgeThe Gilded AgeChild Labor in Child Labor in

AmericaAmerica

Essential Question

• How did Industrialization impact the lives of Children in America?

Child Labor: the Lucky Ones

• Swept the trash and filth from city streets

• Stood for hours on street corners selling newspapers.

Child Labor: the Less Fortunate

• 10-hour shifts in dark

• Damp coal mines • Sweated to

dehydration while tending fiery glass-factory furnaces.

• Extremely Low Wages

A Matter of Survival

• Sons and daughters of poor parents or recent immigrants who depended on their children's meager wages to survive.

1870: 750,000 Child Laborers

• Under the age of 15

• Not including Home Business / Farms

1911: 2 Million Child Laborers

• By 1911, more than two million American children under the age of 16 were working

• 1938 Fair Labor Act• Limited Child Labor• Created Minimum

Wage

• Today 59,000 Children in America

The Good Old Days . . .• "The mill is close to the golf course, so on a nice day we

can look out the window and watch the men at play."• Glass factory: "...boys traveled a distance of nearly 22

miles in an 8-hour shift at a constant slow run to and from ovens... average pay of 72 cents per 8-hour shift...."

• Silk Mills: "...girl not 9 years old... cleaned bobbins for 3 cents an hour... must stand at their work... 12-hour shifts... by night... unceasingly...

• Garment Factory: "...to reach their quota, girls had to put in an 84-hour week at a wage averaging 5 cents an hour...“

• Soap-Packing Plants: "...girls were exposed to caustic soda that turned their nails yellow and ate away at their fingers..."

. . . They Were Terrible!

• Flower-Making Workshops: "...arsenic, liberally applied to produce vivid colors, wrecked the appearance and health... with sores, swelling of the limbs, nausea... complete debility..."

• Tobacco Stripping: "In their homes, ... women and children... endure the most sickening exhalations as they stripped the leaves... tobacco (dust) is everywhere... they sleep in it... (it) seasons their food and befouls the water they drink..."

• Cannery: "...children as young as six employed as headers and cleaners (of shrimp and fish)... stand for shifts of 12 hours and longer in open sheds... hands immersed in cold water..."

Breaker Boy Simulation

Photographer Lewis W. Hine

• Appeared in popular and progressive publications.

• The public turned a blind eye to the pervasive and cruel exploitation of children in the work place.

National Child Labor Committee

• Hine was hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), a social welfare organization founded in 1904, to document the working conditions of children who worked for pennies in fields, factories, textile mills, sweatshops, coal mines, canneries and on city streets.

Protested Conditions

• The NCLC was not alone in decrying child labor. Numerous organizations protested the crowded and unsanitary conditions in factories and factory dormitories where disease spread rampantly.

Arguments Against Child Labor• They argued that the

rigors of child labor weakened the future work force; and that at its worst, child labor caused death. They reasoned that children who were working 10-hour days were unfairly denied the universal education promised them by the state.

Keating-Owen Act• The tireless efforts

of reformers, social workers and unions seemed to pay off in 1916 at the height of the progressive movement when President Woodrow Wilson passed the Keating-Owen Actbanning articles produced by child labor from being sold in interstate commerce.The act was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court just two years later.

Dangers in the Mills

• Young girls continued to work in mills, still in danger of slipping and losing a finger or a foot while standing on top of machines to change bobbins; or of being scalped if their hair got caught.

Cave-Ins and Explosions

• And, as ever, after a day of bending over to pick bits of rock from coal, breaker boys were still stiff and in pain. If a breaker boy fell, he could still be smothered, or crushed, by huge piles of coal. And, when he turned 12, he would still be forced to go down into the mines and face the threat of cave-ins and explosions.

Fair Labor Standards Act

• Child labor continued unabated until the sweeping Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was passed, just two years before Lewis Hine died, and after countless children had fallen prey to disease, injury and premature death.

Minimum Wage & Limited Age

• The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a minimum wage and limited the age of child laborers to 16 and over, 18 for hazardous occupations. Children 14 and 15 years old were permitted to work in certain occupations after school.

Child Labor Still Exists• Child labor still exists in

agriculture, especially among migrant families; and U.S. companies who buy products made by child laborers abroad are often the targets of protest.

BibliographyAdapted from: Child Labor Reform Exhibits

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/library/special/child/childlabor.htm