The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era was an era of reform.  Muck-racking journalists to the corruption in city governments, brutal business practices employed by businessmen, and most importantly the exploitation of child labor.  Progressives enforced minimum wage laws for women workers, instituted industrial accident insurance, restricted child labor, and improved factory regulation.  The 1900 census reported that nearly 2 million children were working, making up six percent of America’s labor force.  Progressive reformers became alarmed at the growing number of child workers. They formed organizations in the early 1900s devoted to the healthy development of children.  Lewis Hines was one of the main contributors, he was hired by The National Child Labor Committee to photograph these children’s in their harsh work conditions. Hines was a school teacher who believed a picture could tell a powerful story, with that belief and his strong feeling against the abuse of children as workers he set out to be an investigative photographer. Hines also believed if the people could see the abuse and injustice of child labor then they would try to enforced a law against this cruelty. Grace Abbot was another progressive who promoted the end of abuse of child workers. She joined the department of labor and was assigned to the children's bureau. She soon started working on a law the would implement the first child labor federal law the would restrict child labor. Abbot also headed, in 1921, the children's bureau and led the the campaign for a constitutional  amendment limiting child labor. Although this amendment was never added it set a precedent for the new deal legislation regulating the labor of children under the age of 16. These people made a huge contribution to child labor. Without the progressive movement and everyone who contributed to it i am sure that child abuse in the working area would have gone on for much longer. We owe all of these people our thanks for what they did for our society in the 1800’s.


http://icue.nbcunifiles.com/icue/files/icue/site/pdf/6225.pdf

http://www.eiu.edu/eiutps/childhood.php

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/hine.htm

Everyday lives for the children

There is no doubt that the everyday lives of these children were very difficult. From dusk till dawn these kids worked their buts off. They usually spent most of their day working in the factories, mills, mines, or farms. When they got home they were greeted with less than exciting circumstances. Most of these children lived in poor conditions; their homes were dirty, they had no source of ventilation, and they usually lived with 12 other people in a extremely small room.As you can imagine these homes had to heat nor windows, therefore on hot summer days the heat would be unbearable and on cold lonely nights it would be chilling cold. To give me an idea of how these children lived i skimmed the book “how the other half lives” by Jacob Riis. I can the pictures that i saw in the book and the little bit that i read saddened me. Just to know that these children woke up and couldn't even take a shower on most days and then went to slave it in a job to come back home to miserable conditions gave me a feel of melancholy . These following pictures show the disgusting neighborhoods and homes these kids lived in:

FARM WORK AND INDUSTRIAL WORK: DIFFERENT OR THE SAME?

It is no secret that during the industrial revolution child labor wasn't out of the ordinary and was with the norm. Children who lived in the city worked in factories while children who worked in rural areas worked on farms. While the work they were doing were different, the amount was the same.

Farm work consisted of working long hours in the blazing sun using dangerous equipment to cut crops, hulling and shucking, planting, weeding and hoeing, topping and carrying loaded containers to central points. The children worked with their parents on farms. While the parents working with the heavy loads, the children were working with the smaller loads. Children pay was even different on farms than in a factory. In a factory children would get payed 3 cents a week, but in farms the owner does not pay the children but in this case the head of the family depending on how much cotton based was produced in that season, or the number of cartons filled with berries in a day. This caused the parents to want to get their children working as soon as possible for long hours a day.

In factories children were subjected to long hours just like in the farms, however, unlike the children who work on farms they were working with heavy machinery. The factories owner liked having  young children because they did not have to pay them much and their little hands and fingers could get into small places of the machines. Their work varied from lighting matches and putting them in the chemical phosphorus to sewing simple clothing. Their pay was very little (3 to 6 cents a week) and was barely enough to get them something to eat. In these factories children would inhale many toxic fumes and smoke coming from the machines. They were stuck in a crowded room with no ventilation and barely any windows which led the work place to not have a clean air supply.

In my opinion they are both the same and different. They both required the same amount of time and made children work hard. However working in a factory is more dangerous than working in a farm. With so many toxins in an unventilated place and dangerous machinery its hard to imagine not one child not being harmed. Lets also remember how much these kids got payed; while the farm children were getting payed depending how much they mad per day or season, the factories children were getting payed 3-6 cents a week. We can both say that the factories children had a much more stable pay than the farm children.  

http://books.google.com/books?id=lrKec5YTVYAC&pg=PA479&lpg=PA479&dq=difference+between+working+in+agriculture+and+working+in+factory+for+children&source=bl&ots=z-ux5UsC50&sig=99z0HFIgC5X3MdcdPqRsCNbkE7I&hl=en&ei=et4bTYeEC8TflgfeqLTdCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false