During the early 1900’s and the years before, it was common for children to work in factories, mills, and any other industrial jobs. Families at the time depended on the income these children earned. Concern began to raise of the effects these strenuous jobs and long hours had on children. These long hours deprived these children of their education; children would work sixty to seventy hours a week. It was rare for working children to get fresh air, time to play and enjoy their youth. A few states passed laws prohibiting child labor, but the states were placed with restrictions at an economic disadvantage.
It was unjust for children 16 and under to work eight hours a day, overnight, or more than six days a week. Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act of 1916 in response to these concerns. This law hindered factories that employed children by ceasing their shipment across state lines.
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Dagenhart on behalf of his sons Reuben and John, in spite the Act passed. The law prevented his sons, who were 16 and under, from working in the cotton mill. He asked the U.S. District Court to remove the law because it was unconstitutional and it was taken to the Supreme Court. There he argued that the law was not a regulation of commerce (Commerce clause was a line separating state and federal laws), the Tenth Amendment (which reserves all powers that are not granted by the federal government to the states excluding forbidden laws) left the power to make rules to the states, and the Fifth Amendment (“ nor shall be compelled… to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property”) protected his liberty and property which included the right to allow his children to work to prove he couldn’t live without the earned income of his two
The speaker of the speech is Florence Kelley. She was a political and social reformer that fought heavily for the fairness of children’s rights in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The occasion for writing this piece was the amount of children working in factories during the period to support their families. The intended audience of the speech were America’s leaders since she wanted to give children regulations work hours. The purpose of writing this speech is to get her message across which is that children should have to be work in the factories, that is for older men and women.
As Kelley describes the rapidly increasing wage earning class of young girls, she uses parallel structure and repetition as she says that men, women, youth, and boys all “increase” (115). Asserting that age is not relevant in this work force by grouping men, women, and children all in the same list, Kelley is able to highlight the difference between these categories and make it seem unfair to her audience that they should all be thrown into the same work force. Using an oxymoron to describe how working all night may be beneficial for one person and unfortunate for another, she refers to the child’s work as a “pitiful privilege” (116). The contrasting nature of these two words emphasize the fact that work is inevitably something that must be done and while it is a privilege for men and women to have work to earn money, it is pitiful for children to bear the burden of this responsibility as they are so young. Expanding on this connection between the lives of the children and her audience, Kelley uses a hypothetical example of a child carrying “her pail of midnight luncheon” while an adult could carry “their midday luncheon” (116).
Back in the 60 's there was still childhood labor but now in the 20th century there still is some childhood labor today but not as much take a look at this chart median | 13.3%highest | 62% (Cameroon)lowest | 1% (Jordan)distribution | | (1999 to 2015)(based on 99 values; 141 unavailable)(fraction of children ages 7-14), also social conditions have changed effecting what children learn and what children do. We have also learned that the major psychiatric disorders of children--autism, panic disorder, major depression, and schizophrenia--have strong organic components and are not caused by bad parenting, mistakes in judgment, or a missed opportunity at some critical developmental stage. Over the last two decades socioeconomic conditions have changed the United States
Children are having their childhoods took away from them everyday due to many reasons, but a major reason is child laboring. Florence Kelley, United States social worker discusses the negative effects of child laboring using rhetorical devices such as imagery, credibility, and emotions to explain to the National American Suffrage Association the affects that child laboring has on a child’s childhood. In this speech Florence Kelley displays many different emotions such as guilt, anger, pity and sadness. “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night though, in the deafening noise……” Kelley reveals an emotion of sadness.
One of the tolls industrialization took was that children were being forced to work.
Many kids suffer, and didn’t have food and were very tired all day. According to Document 2 it explains that “people work at age 8 and kids would be severely beaten if caught sleeping or not doing the job right “as a result, kids had the hardest life then because they work for someone no matter what and never ever saw there
Kelly writes about children’s labor crises and women’s suffrage, and refers to pathos and ethos throughout the passage. Using these rhetorical devices the reader can get a feel for the writer’s opinion on the topics. The child labor aspect of the essay talks about how children are working night or day shifts that can last up to 12 hours. Kids starting at six years old work in mills to provide for their families at such a young age; Which is convenient for Kelley as she makes the reader feel pity and sympathy for the children.
Stated in The Factory Act of 1833, they say, “ The factory act of 1833 was a major accomplishment for the proper rights of child workers. With this act, children who worked in factories would now be given more safe regulations. Some of the new laws that would focus on the youth in the factories were no child workers under the age of nine, children are not to work at night, two hours schooling each day…” (Weebly). In other words, Factory Acts allowed rights to child workers and it limited their work hours.
The children were employed in factories, demanding long hours of work. This made their living and food conditions very
Child Labor was a huge flaw in the American system before the Progressive Era. Children were unskilled, but they could use their puny hands to reach in and under machinery. This became a problem, because fingers and sometimes limbs were lost. First, the National Child Labor Committee was formed to watch over the children. In 1916, the Keating-Owen Act was passed that made any good made by a child illegal to be transported out of state.
Unsafe working conditions plagued next to, if not, all factories during industrialization. Thousands of workers grew ill or suffered injuries as a consequence of their labor, and would yield their jobs, surrendering their source of income. Taken in the early 1900s, “Lewis Hine’s picture depicts two children working on a very dangerous machine” (Document 8). The matter that children were allowed to manage these machines is awful enough, ignoring just how dangerous the machines were. In addition to this, the children did not appear to be well supervised, which made it all too easy for a disastrous injury to occur.
Many children began working before the age of 7, tending machines in spinning mills or hauling heavy loads. The factories were often damp, dark, and dirty. Some children worked underground,
Child labor was a great concern in the Industrial revolution but very few people did something to stop it. Women and Children were forced to work more than 10 hours a day with only forty minutes to have lunch. Elizabeth Bentley once said that they didn’t have any time to have breakfast or drink anything during the day. They worked standing up and if they didn’t do their work on time they were strapped (whipped). Children were treating like they were not important, like they didn’t deserve a better life.
To begin this piece, I researched the topic and chose three different jobs that children were often forced to do in the 1800’s—chimney-sweeping, bird chasing, and sewing textiles in mills. I also researched artists to draw inspiration
But not all work done by children should be accepted as child labor. In other words, if a work doesn’t harm child’s health or personal development (educational issues), it is generally accepted as something positive and useful. Such activities develop children’s skills, provide experience and formulate them to be part of society. The term “Child Labor” is when children do work that damages their health or hamper mental or physical