Child Labor in the Progressive Era
At the beginning of the Progressive Era, children were often required to work long hours in factories, mills, and mines under unsafe conditions for wages that were much lower than those compared to adults. The Progressive Era, which covered the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, brought forth many reformers who set out to end the abuses of child labor and to force businesses to make improvements, such as reducing the number of hours that children could be required to work, and protecting children from working with dangerous machinery and other workplace hazards. The reformers succeeded in informing the pubic of deplorable workplace conditions for children, and to varying degrees, in getting laws passed to improve these conditions. However, progress was slow in getting industries to voluntarily make improvements that cost them money, and the laws that were enacted were often poorly enforced or were overturned by the courts. Nevertheless, the reformers provided a valuable service by turning the country’s attention to the injustices of child labor and laying the groundwork for substantial improvements in the future.
Working Conditions for Children During the Progressive Era
During the progressive era, the number of working children increased greatly. While the population increased by 50 percent from 1890 to 1900, the number of working children increased by 100 percent in the manufacturing industries. The increase in the number of girls working in the manufacturing industries increased by 150 percent. Increases were most dramatic in the South where the number of working children between 10 and 15 years old increased threefold.[1] Fueling these increases was the fact that businesses could hire children to work in factories for a fraction of what they had to pay adult workers. As adult workers stood idle in the market place, children worked inside the factories for low wages.[2]
In 1900, there were an estimated 2 million children working. This estimate may have been too low because the census for that year did not identify child workers under the age of ten, and omitted or underestimated several large occupations of children. Their work was totally lacking in skills, did nothing to educate, and was damaging to the minds and bodies. A study of children 14 to 16 years old at work in New York City during 1901 showed that of 106 children studied, 96 were in “dead end” occupations. Furthermore, the federal Bureau of Labor reported in 1910 that a study of child workers in seven cities showed that 90 percent of the children were in industries in which the average wage of all workers in the industry was less than $10 per week.[3]
Poor families in both the cities and the rural areas were dependent on their children going to work to supplement their meager incomes. While many poor families sacrificed so that their children could be educated, others sided with the employers that put the children to work at very low wages. Such children had no choice other than to spend their days in mines, mills, and factories, rather than attending school.
Although sometimes necessary for the families’ survival, child labor resulted in a brutal existence for the children of the poor families. Many of the working children of the Progressive Era were under 16 years old, and many were under 10 years old. They worked excessive hours under dirty and dangerous working conditions, had little educational opportunities, and worked in low skill jobs that did not offer opportunities to increase and develop skills and improve their job opportunities as they got older. Children in factories found it necessary to work 12 hours a day and keep pace with the speed of the machine. In a few years, the child was turned into a “ shaken, rickety, unskilled incompetent”.[4]
Several causes contributed to the child labor problems in America. Among the most important causes were (1) traditional European and puritanical American values regarding child labor, (2) families under great economic distress, and (3) the inherent benefits to businesses of using children--lower wages and a labor force more subservient to employers than adults would be. Edith Abbott, a teacher, social worker, and reformer, argued that using children in our factories was a consequence of the Puritan belief in the virtue of labor and the sin of idleness. Such beliefs stressed the importance of forcing people to be independent and preventing anyone, including children, from becoming a financial burden on the pubic. She said that the belief in using little children in work was influenced by English customs. In England, Elizabethan law provided for making apprentices of poor children. This philanthropic device of using cheap child labor was much approved. Thus, when the factory system came about, it was widely believed that child labor was a righteous institution, and it was inevitable that children would be employed in factories. However, conditions in the factories--dangerous, dirty, and oppressive--were far different than the environment children had experienced in earlier rural environments.[5]
The fact that parents were dependent upon their children working was among the primary problems in enforcing laws against abusing children in the workplace. For many poor families to survive it was absolutely necessary that their children work, even if survival came at the expense of denying the children the opportunity to go to school and develop the skills they needed to succeed in their lives. Many parents were desperate to obtain the additional income needed. For example, in Chicago in 1910 the packinghouse workers earned only 38 percent of the minimum needed for a family of four. Family income had to be supplemented in some way in order for the family to survive, and it was not until children reached the working age of fourteen that family income was able to meet the families’ needs.[6]
However, many families could not wait for their children to reach the working age of fourteen. In an annual report issued in 1901 on compulsory education in Chicago, it was noted that parents filed affidavits that their children were 14 years old or older in order that the children could leave school and go to work. The report showed, however, that the affidavit system “is a farce”. The age records shown at schools for these children in the fifth and sixth grades were at odds with the ages sworn to by parents to gain employment for them.[7]
While many families were willing to sacrifice for their children, many others sided with the employers and opposed any movement to remove children from the workforce.[8] The reformer Jane Addams pointed out that she was well aware that the child labor law in Illinois could bring hardships to many families that needed the extra income from their children’s labor. She said that her experiences showed, however, that there was a willingness among even the poorest families to take on extra work as needed to make ends meet for the good of their children. For example, Addams said that the opposition against child labor laws came not from poor families but from large glass factories that had used and abused children as a source of labor for so long that they were convinced that the manufacturing of glass could not be done without this exploited source of labor. [9]
One of the major shortcomings in New York City’s law against employing children less than fourteen years old was that it did not apply to work performed at home. The reformer, Mary van Kleeck, said that in New York City, manufacturers could not employ a child under fourteen, but they could give out work for a family to do at home. Often the workers at home were young children. Van Kleek gave as an example a family she knew that had six children working in a tenement room. The children were aged two and one-half, five, eight, ten, fourteen, and sixteen years old, respectively.&nb
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