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.
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