Child Labor & the Industrial Revolution

• What laws govern labor in general?– Minimum wage– Safer working conditions

• What laws govern child labor today?– Have to be 16 – Can only work a limited amount of hours– Cannot work late on school nights

Industrial RevolutionChild Labor Facts

• Factory wages were so low that children often had to work to help support their families.

• The number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910.

• Businesses liked to hire children because they worked in unskilled jobs for lower wages than adults

• Their small hands made them more adept at handling small parts and tools.

Lewis Hine

"There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."

-- Lewis Hine, 1908

Garment Workers

Basket Sellers

Radish Sellers

Shoe Shine Boy

Glass Factory

Girls at Weaving

Machine

Boy Picking Berries

Children Stringing

Beans

Boys in a Cigar Factory

Boys Shucking Oysters

Girls in a Box Factory

Boys Working in a Bowling Alley

Child Labor Laws

• By 1916, Congress passed the Keating-Owens Act that established the following child labor standards: – a minimum age of 14 for workers in manufacturing

and 16 for workers in mining; – a maximum workday of 8 hours;– prohibition of night work for workers under age 16;

and a documentary proof of age. • Unfortunately, this law was later ruled

unconstitutional on the ground that congressional power to regulate interstate commerce did not extend to the conditions of labor. Effective action against child labor had to await the New Deal (1930’s).

Nine Year Old News Girl

Newsies

Newsies

Newsies

• Newsies were the boys and girls who sold newspapers on the streets

• Newspapers were the main form of information in this period

• Newsies did not work for a specific company, but rather they bought the papers and then sold them and kept the money – any unsold papers = no profit

The Newsboy Strike of 1899

• In 1898 the Spanish-American War helped increase newspaper sales

• Sales and profits were up so the Newspaper giants Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raised the price of papers from .50 a bundle to .60 a bundle.

• When the war ended the papers were not selling as well and the price per bundle did not decrease

The Newsboy Strike of 1899

• The Newsies rallied and refused to sell Pulitzer’s and Hearst’s papers in July of 1899.– For Two weeks they went on strike and even

managed to stop traffic several times on the Brooklyn Bridge

– During those two weeks the sales of the papers were cut in half = profits were cut in half

The Newsboy Strike of 1899Outcomes

• The newspapers agreed to buy back unsold papers, but the price did not go down.

• The strike was a social labor success– It influenced other strikes– It helped improve working conditions for

newsies all over the country– Helped with the passing of national child labor

laws a decade later

Disney’s Newsies

• Based on the events of the Newsboy Strike, BUT there are some “Hollywood” liberties….