In what way was the push to end child labor a progressive reform

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To paraphrase an illustration used by the Webbs, the factories say to the community; you have educated the children in the public schools, now please give them to me for my factory. I will use them until they begin to demand an adult's wages and then I will turn them out again. If I have broken them down, the community will take care of them in the poorhouse and hospitals. The community which allows this allows itself to be most unfairly treated. Child Labor And Pauperism, May 9, 1903

The advent of industrialization in the early to mid 1800's introduced brand new conflicts in regards to the labor force. When industrialization began in the United States, labor conditions were dangerous and low-paying. Child labor became so commonplace that in 1900, 18% of all American workers were under the age of 16. Part of this was because children were able to fit in tight spaces and operate small machinery. Employers also were keen to pay the lowest wages possible, and they could pay a child less than an adult. Young children, many below the age of seven, would work twelve hour shifts for usually a dollar or less a day. These children were often injured or maimed in the factories. Many suffered from permanent injuries, losing fingers or limbs. Working class men, women and children had little choice but to accept these dangerous industrial jobs. In some cases, adults were unable to find work, and poor and immigrant families needed the income from child workers to survive. Some adults argued that child labor was 'good' for their kids, because they thought it would teach them responsibility, but in reality, children who worked did so at the expense of an education that might lift them out of factory work.

The rise of labor activism in the Progressive Era was a reaction to the worsening working conditions. In creating Hull-House, Addams and the other residents lived and worked among the poor and gained a better understanding of the challenges they faced. Addams fought for better labor conditions for all adults, and protection for women and children in the factories or doing piecework. Addams recognized that though children had always worked, the nature of the work had changed from agricultural work, which while physically hard, was usually in a healthful environment and had natural rhythms and pace, to factory work, which was dangerous, speeded up, and in unsanitary and unhealthful conditions. She believed that child labor laws had to be changed. The laws that did exist had exploitable loopholes, were not enforced, or were too lenient. One example, was in 1911 when theater managers sought an exemption from the law for child actors. They argued that stage work was artistic and creative and served as an apprenticeship, but Addams demonstrated that child actors were uneducated, worked late hours in immoral conditions, and that they were not taught the trade, just replaced by a smaller child when they grew too old. She argued that this lack of education and opportunity was exploitative and no different than the exploitation of the factory.

Addams wanted to establish a federal bureau to protect the needs of children. She woprked with the National Child Labor Committee, a group of activists, judges, and city officials who exposed the problem of child labor to a national audience. One of the ways they brought more attention to the topic was by hiring photographer Lewis Hine to really capture the horrific working conditions in which boys and girls toiled. In 1912, President Taft established the United States Children Bureau, an agency that gathered information, and advocated for the rights of children, including limiting child labor.  In 1916 Congress passed the tough Keating-Owens Act, which prohibited the sale of goods from factories or companies that employed children under the age of fourteen. Although this was a win for child labor reformists, it was deemed unconstitutional just a year later. Despite years of setbacks, the Fair Labor Standards Act finally passed in 1938, a law that prohibited the employment of minors, established a minimum wage, and introduced the 40-hour work week structure that is still in place.

Recommended primary sources:

Addams, Jane, "Child Labor and Pauperism, May 9, 1903," Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Addams, Jane, "Child Labor Legislation: A Requisite for Industrial Efficiency, May 1905," Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Addams, Jane, "Testimony Before State Judicial Committee on Child Labor," April 13, 1905 (excerpts), Jane Addams Digital Edition.>

Additional resources:

National Child Labor Committee Collection

Harvard University Library Open Collections Program

National Child Labor Committee - Social Welfare History Project

Bureau of Labor Statistics- History of child labor in the United States—part 1: little children working

Suggested subjects:

Addams, Jane, and child labor

Addams, Jane, and the labor movement

Addams, Jane, views on labor

child labor

child protection laws

child welfare

labor movement

People associated with the issue of child labor

Organizations associated with the issue of child labor

Events associated with the issue of child labor

Photo credit

Lewis Hine, 9 p.m. in an Indiana Glass Works, 1912, National Child Labor Committee Collection, Library of Congress.

1. J.P. Felt, Hostages of Fortune: Child Labor Reform in New York State (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1965)

2. A. Derickson, “Making Human Junk: Child Labor as a Health Issue in the Progressive Era,” American Journal of Public Health 82, no. 9 (1992): 1280–1290. Writing about the first 2 decades of the 20th century, Derickson concluded that statistical data on injuries and illnesses resulting from workplace exposures were important in winning the enactment of much protective legislation. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

3. Felt, Hostages of Fortune; V.A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); S. Mintz, Huck’s Raft (Boston, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004)

4. R.A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850–1929 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998). The crusade against infant mortality ongoing during the same period was to a large extent based on scientific arguments and drew attention to the issue of protecting the young and vulnerable.

5. J. MacLaury, “Government Regulation of Workers’ Safety and Health, 1877–1917,” http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/mono-regsafeintrotoc.htm (accessed May 20, 2012). State bureaus of labor statistics, established beginning in 1869, gathered data on numbers of workers and factory conditions. The US census first reported child laborers as a separate category in 1870; national statistics on child labor first became available in 1880; and the New York State Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its first report on the extent and conditions of employment of young children in factories of New York State in January 1885.

6. F.R. Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd Series 6, no. 4 (1905): 4–218; “Child Labor in US History,” https://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html (accessed February 2, 2011). The Child Labor Education Project is a program run by the University of Iowa Labor Center and the Center for Human Rights. The project aims to educate people about modern-day child labor, which may not seem relevant to the Industrial Revolution. However, there is a page with a lot of dates regarding the reform movement in the United States; G. Friedman, “Labor Unions in the United States,” in EH-net Encyclopedia, ed. R. Whaples, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/labor-unions-in-the-united-states (accessed February 2, 2010); L. Ashby, Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History (New York, NY: Twayne, 1990); C.D. Wright, “The Growth and Purposes of Bureaus of Statistics of Labor,” Journal of Social Science 25 (1888): 1–14; E.E. Backup, “Rights of the Child” Lend a Hand 4, no. 7 (1889): 516–520; “Toiling for Their Bread. Children Who Are Employed in Workshop and in Factory—Efforts of the Board of Education to Secure Attendance at School,” New York Times, December 26, 1882: 2; “Evils of Child Labor. Prof. Adler Calls Attention to a Menacing Danger,” New York Times, January 10, 1887: 8, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9900E4DC1639E233A25753C1A9679C94669FD7CF (accessed March 11, 2014); J.T. Smith, “The Children at Work,” The Catholic World 43 (1886): 619–625; C.L. Brace, “Little Laborers of New York City,” Harpers New Monthly Magazine, 47 (1873): 321–332; “Children’s Rights: The Proposed Factory Law,” New York Herald Tribune, January 30, 1874: 1; “Terrible Cruelty to a Child,” New York Herald Tribune, April 10, 1874: 2.

7. “Child Labor in US History.” The Massachusetts law passed in 1837 prohibited manufacturing establishments from employing children younger than 15 years who had not attended school for at least three months in the previous year.

8. Felt, Hostages of Fortune; Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York.”.

9. Friedman, “Labor Unions in the United States.”.

10. Ashby, Endangered Children.

11. “New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,” http://www.nyspcc.org/about/history (accessed May 1, 2012)

12. Ashby, Endangered Children.

13. “New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”.

14. “Children’s Rights.”.

15. Ashby, Endangered Children. In 1871, the Society presented a bill focusing primarily on child education. The 1871 bill was unsuccessful, but a compulsory, although weak, school law was passed three years later in March 1874 requiring that child workers younger than 14 years must have attended school at least 14 weeks of the previous year.

16. Ibid. In 1875, Gerry and Bergh founded the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, assembling a board of influential and affluent men, who like them, were well educated, strongly conservative, moved by the Mary Ellen story, and also concerned about the impending urban crisis; “Terrible Cruelty to a Child”; P. Stevens and M. Eide, “The First Chapter of Children’s Rights,” American Heritage Magazine 41, no. 5 (1990): 84–91, http://www.americanheritage.com/content/first-chapter-children%E2%80%99s-rights (accessed May 2, 2012). Mary Ellen Wilson had been abused by her caretakers. She attracted considerable attention in the press and quickly became a “poster child” for the vulnerability of the young. Although not herself a working child, she personified the vulnerable child needing special protection. The reporter and photographer Jacob Riis wrote: “The story of little Mary Ellen . . . stirred the soul of a city . . . and as I looked, I knew where the first chapter of children’s rights was being written.”.

17. American Economic Association, “The First Factory Act,” in Publications of the American Economic Association (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1905), 44.

18. “Children’s Rights”; “The First Factory Act.”.

19. Mintz, Huck’s Raft.

20. Felt, Hostages of Fortune; “The First Factory Act.”.

21. “The First Factory Act.”.

22. Ibid. p. 44.

23. “The First Factory Act.”.

24. Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York.” The law as passed was weaker in many important respects from the bill first advocated. These included the lowering of the age limit for child laborers from 14 to 13 years and the omission of the ban on employment of children younger than 16 years in the use of dangerous machinery or in specified occupations.

25. Felt, Hostages of Fortune.

26. Fairchild, “The Factory Legislation of the State of New York.”.

27. United States Department of Labor, “Factory Inspection Legislation,” http://www.dol.gov/dol/aboutdol/history/mono-regsafepart02.htm (accessed May 11, 2012)

28. “Factory Inspection Legislation”; New York Bureau of Factory Inspection, “Annual Report” (1886): 36–37.; New York Bureau of Factory Inspection, “Annual Report” (1887): 6–7, 10–13, 42, 45; New York Bureau of Factory Inspection, “Annual Report” (1889): 72–73; US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin, no. 12 (BLS Bul. 12): 563.

29. Felt, Hostages of Fortune.

30. Stevens and Eide, “The First Chapter of Children’s Rights.”.

31. A. Fyfe and B. Lightman, eds. Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth –Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007)

32. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child.

33. N. Krieger, “Epidemiology and Social Sciences: Towards a Critical Reengagement in the 21st Century,” Epidemiologic Reviews 22, no. 1 (2000): 155–163; D. Ross, “The Development of the Social Sciences,” in eds. A. Oleson and J. Voss, The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979)

34. A.B. Smuts, Science in the Service of Children, 1893–1935 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006)

35. Ibid. The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 by G. Stanley Hall, an American psychologist at Clark University, whose empirical research on child development demonstrated that children were psychologically distinct from adults and also underwent distinct stages of development—infancy, childhood, adolescence; E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, 8th ed (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1895)

36. Smuts, Science in the Service of Children.

37. S.D. Stellman, “Issues of Causality in the History of Occupational Epidemiology,” Sozial- und Präventivmedizin 48, no. 3 (2003): 151–160. [PubMed]

38. R. Gordon, The Alarming History of Medicine (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1993)

39. B.W. McCready, “On the Influence of Trades, Professions, and Occupations in the United States, in the Production of Disease. Institute of the History of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins University,” Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York, 4 (1837): 91–150; J.S. Felton, “200 Years of Occupational Medicine in the US,” Journal of Occupational Medicine 18, no. 12 (1976): 809–817. Although the very first essay in the United States on the diseases of work, by Benjamin McCready, had been published in 1837, it was not until 1914 that the US Public Health Service Office of Industrial Hygiene and Sanitation and the Conference Board of Physicians in Industrial Practice in the Eastern States were established. The first American text on industrial toxicology, by Alice Hamilton, was published in 1929.

40. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child; Felton, “200 Years of Occupational Medicine in the US”; J. Goldberg and W. Moye, The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1985)

41. M. Miss Landon, “Eloquent Extract,” Common School Assistant; a Monthly Paper, for the Improvement of Common School Education 3, no. 4 (1838): 28; “Public Schools in New-York,” The Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine 6, no. 6 (1835): 510; “Legal Provision Respecting the Education and Employment of Children in Factories,” Connecticut Common School Journal 4, no. 13 (1842): 141; B. Fosgate, “Social Influence of Manufacturing,” The New World 6, no. 22 (1843): 651; “Horace Mann: Analysis of Mr. Mann’s Reports as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education,” American Journal of Education, no. 15 (1858): 610A.

42. New York County Medical Society, Regular Meeting, February 27, 1882. The Medical Times and Register (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1882), p. 403; “Report of the Seventy-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Medical Society of the State of New York,” The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 106 (1882): 166–168; Medical Society of the State of New York. Seventy-Sixth Annual Meeting, Held in Albany, February 7, 8, and 9, 1882. The Medical News (Philadelphia, PA: Henry C. Lea’s Son & Co, 1882), 160.

43. A.P. Stevens, “Child Slavery in America, Part I,” in ed. B.O. Flower, The Arena (Boston, MA: Arena Publishing Co, 1894)

44. Smith, “The Children at Work,” p. 620.

45. Stevens, “Child Slavery in America, Part I.”.

46. Ibid. p. 123.

47. Ibid.

48. Brace, “Little Laborers of New York City,” p. 326.

49. L. Whites, “The De Graffenried Controversy: Class, Race, and Gender in the New South,” Journal of Southern History 54, no. 3 (1988): 449–478.

50. A.F. Scott, Making the Invisible Woman Visible (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984)

51. C. DeGraffenried, “Child labor,” Publications of the American Economic Association 5, no. 2 (1890): p. 214.

52. Brace, “Little Laborers of New York City,” p. 327.

53. DeGraffenried, “Child labor,” p. 216.

54. Stevens, “Child Slavery in America, Part I,” p. 123.

55. DeGraffenried, “Child labor,” p. 259.

56. Ibid. p. 252.

57. Ibid. p. 259.

58. Ibid. p. 220.

59. “Toiling for Their Bread,” p. 2.

60. Backup, “Rights of the Child”; “Evils of Child Labor.”.

61. “Evils of Child Labor,” p. 8.

62. Wright, “The Growth and Purposes of Bureaus of Statistics of Labor,” p. 1.

63. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child; Mintz, Huck’s Raft; Ashby, Endangered Children.

64. Ashby, Endangered Children.

65. I. Harwarth, M. Maline, and E. DeBra, “Women’s Colleges in the United 65: History, Issues, and Challenges” (Washington, DC: DIANE Publishing Co, 2006)

66. Ibid.

67. “Women’s History in America,” in Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia [CD-ROM] (Carlsbad, CA: Compton’s NewMedia Inc, 1994, 1995), http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm (accessed November 12, 2012)

68. Smuts, Science in the Service of Children. The chief aim of social feminism during the Progressive Era in the United States was to promote and protect the welfare of women and children. Moving far beyond early efforts such as the Fresh Air and Exercise Movement to become a national political force, these reformers eventually succeeded in 1912 in founding the Children’s Bureau, the first governmental agency in the world created solely to consider the problems of children. In fact, along with infant mortality, it was the cause of child labor that most energized the reformers from the latter 19th century until 1938 when The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited most employment of minors. How much of the motive power for child labor reform was driven by women representing maternal feminism is another aspect of this issue but outside the scope of the present article; M.W. Rossiter, Struggles and Strategies to 1940: Women Scientists in America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); M.W. Rossiter, “Writing Women Into Science,” in ed. J. Monroe, Writing and Revising the Disciplines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002)

69. Brace, “Little Laborers of New York City,” p. 327.

70. E.N. Agnew, From Charity to Social Work (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004)

71. DeGraffenried, “Child labor,” p. 195.

72. Ibid. p. 200.

73. A.L. Woodbridge, “Child Labor an Obstacle to Industrial Progress, Part II: Child Slavery in America,” in ed. B.O. Flower, The Arena (Boston, MA: Arena Publishing Co, 1894)

74. Ibid. p. 138.

75. Smith, “The Children at Work,” p. 621.

76. DeGraffenried, “Child labor.” DeGraffenried decried the evil of indifference to the suffering of children: “Think of it, parents, who kiss your pampered darlings of nine and ten years in rosy slumber tucked away at 8 o’clock in the soft, warm bed after a day of romp, wholesome food and wisely managed study! On Sunday mornings the writer has seen at their homes scores of cash-girls and boys heavy-eyed, listless, dragging their tired limbs or asleep in the stupor of exhaustion. Where are the graces, the joys, the innocence of childhood?” [p. 204]

77. Ashby, Endangered Children; J. Winthrop, “City on the Hill” [sermon] (1630), http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/charity.html (accessed November 12, 2012). The notion of responsibility to protect one’s needy brethren was part of America’s founding history. However, in the 17th century it was linked with the belief in the inevitability and even the value of suffering. By 1850, many churches had shifted from a theology of suffering to one of a benevolent God (see also Ashby, Endangered Children). Evangelists emphasized religion of the heart, evoking moral sympathy, with the result that there was increased sympathy for the poor and afflicted. The abolitionist movement, leading to the Civil War and ultimately the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, further reduced the national tolerance for cruelty and suffering. Therefore, by the 1870s and 1880s, the prevailing moral and religious principles supported interventions to protect children.

78. Smith, “The Children at Work,” p. 619.

79. Stevens, “Child Slavery in America, Part I,” p. 138.

80. Ibid. p. 135.

81. Derickson, “Making Human Junk.”. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

82. United Nations General Assembly, “Convention on the Rights of the Child” (1989), http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx (accessed January 14, 2014)

83. F.P. Perera et al., “Prenatal Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) Exposure and Child Behavior at Age 6–7,” Environmental Health Perspectives 120, no. 6 (2012): 921–926. [PMC free article] [PubMed]

84. A.G. Fassa, Health Benefits of Eliminating Child Labour (Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization, 2003)

85. N.O. Witherspoon, “Are We Really Addressing the Core of Children’s Environmental Health?” Environmental Health Perspectives 117, no. 10 (2009): 428–429.

86. Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009)

87. Ibid.

88. L.M. Anderson et al., “Critical Windows of Exposure for Children’s Health: Cancer in Human Epidemiological Studies and Neoplasms in Experimental Animal Models,” Environmental Health Perspectives 108, suppl. 3 (2000): 573–594; National Research Council, Toxicity Testing and Strategies to Determine Needs and Priorities (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1993); F.P. Perera et al., “Biomarkers in Maternal and Newborn Blood Indicate Heightened Fetal Susceptibility to Procarcinogenic DNA Damage,” Environmental Health Perspectives 112, no. 10 (2004): 1133–1136; International Programme on Chemical Safety, Principles for Evaluating Health Risks From Chemicals During Infancy and Early Childhood. The Need for a Special Approach (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1986); P. Grandjean and P.J. Landrigan, “Developmental Neurotoxicity of Industrial Chemicals,” Lancet 368, no. 9553 (2006): 2167–2178; F. Perera and J. Herbstman, “Prenatal Environmental Exposures, Epigenetics, and Disease,” Reproductive Toxicology 31, no. 3 (2011): 363–373.

89. Perera et al., “Prenatal Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon”; Perera and Herbstman, “Prenatal Environmental Exposures, Epigenetics, and Disease”; R.C. Bagot and M.J. Meaney, “Epigenetics and the Biological Basis of Gene × Environment Interactions,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 49, no. 8 (2010): 752–771; J.P. Curley and R. Mashoodh, “Parent-of-Origin and Trans-generational Germline Influences on Behavioral Development: The Interacting Roles of Mothers, Fathers, and 90. Grandparents,” Developmental Psychobiology 52, no. 4 (2010): 312–330; M.K. Skinner and C. Guerrero-Bosagna, “Environmental Signals and Transgenerational Epigenetics,” Epigenomics 1, no. 1 (2009): 111–117.

90. Perera and Herbstman, “Prenatal Environmental Exposures, Epigenetics, and Disease”; P.J. Landrigan, V.A. Rauh, and M.P. Galvez, “Environmental Justice and the Health of Children,” Mt Sinai Journal of Medicine 77, no. 2 (2010): 178–187; A.D. Kyle et al., “Use of an Index to Reflect the Aggregate Burden of Long-Term Exposure to Criteria Air Pollutants in the United States, Environmental Health Perspectives 110, no. 1 (2002): 95–102; Toxic Chemicals and Vulnerable Populations: New Opportunities (Warrenton, VA: American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Workshop, 2008); M.A. Rothstein, Y. Cai, and G.E. Marchant, “The Ghost in Our Genes: Legal and Ethical Implications of Epigenetics,” Health Matrix (Cleveland, Ohio) 19, no. 1 (2009): 1–62.

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