The History of Child Labor Laws
Child labor is the employment, use, or exploitation of a child's energies and activity to the end of fulfilling goals pursuant to monetary or material gains.
Historically child labor was not frowned upon. A child’s labor was considered a necessary part of familial employ. “In the late 19th centurychild laborwas such a large part of the economy that no one expected a ban on the practice. Families depended on the meager income of their children”
Children were able bodied members of a family, and most business took place on family farms or businesses were family owned. Children were expected to fulfill their share of the workload. Many children were given tasks that the family head felt they were capable of and expected to complete the given task without compensation.
In fact, the very first labor laws required children to work, “The colonists equated idleness with delinquency. A 1641 Massachusetts Bay Colony law required families, including children, to be industrious making clothing from wild hemp" During this time period there was no restriction regarding the age of the child involved, “Poor children, some as young as 3, were required by law to enter apprenticeships “
However, with the tides of revolution, changing sentiments, and the rise of industrialization; children’s employment shifted from familial farm work, to work within manufacturing and industry. "The industrial revolution changed America from a predominately rural population to an urban one. Factories were dependent on women and children for cheap manageable labor. “
The shift brought an increase in the abuses of children. Children were often subjected to horrible work conditions, had little compensation, and were deprived of a formal education. “Children as young as six worked up to 13-hour days in unhealthy and dangerous conditions for minuscule wages. “
The abuses had often gone overlooked and ranged in severity through accidents including disability and death. The needless deaths of many children began to sound alarms and increased awareness.David Wongpenned the sentiment well:
“... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever”
One may conclude, that perhaps it was education reform that brought along a rising awareness and a need for change and regulation. “In 1836education of youthbecame an issue, Connecticut passed a law requiring working children to attend school 3 months a year.”
It was evident that while times and systems had changed, practices which were common to the colonial landscape had bled into the new fabric; impractical, callous and careless as they were. It was quickly apparent that, “The industrial revolutionand the incidentally-sharp increase in industrial accidents created the need for new legal, social and economic systems to replace the quickly-outmoded societal structures of agrarian America.”
Legislature was enacted to protect children and preserve the “flickering candle,” of childhood. “By 1913, all but 9 states had passed laws setting the minimum age of 14 for factory work."
While the new legislature changed laws governing the age of employees, there was not yet legislation that protected the safety of children permitted to work by law. “Meaningful federal legislation was not enacted until 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA provides the guidelines for child labor. It sets guidelines for age, hours, types of jobs and working conditions for young workers.” Even the legislation of 1938 did not completely eliminate child labor or fully protect the safety of children with a right to work under the law.
“In 1990, then Secretary of Labor, Elizabeth Dole, conducted four separate three-day intensive investigations for violations of child labor called "Operation Child Watch. During the twelve days of discovery, there were 9500 investigations which discovered over 29,000 violations of child labor law. Over forty-one percent of the businesses investigated, were in violation of child labor law” (Sosin, p. 1216-1217).
Sadly enough, even two years after this study was conducted, it was found that many more children suffered from work related injuries or death. “Between 1992 and 1993, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics identified approximately seventy adolescent work-related deaths per year, and over 200,000 injuries to working teens, of which 64,000 injuries to those teens were severe enough to require hospital emergency room treatment.” (Sosin, p. 1185)
Such statistics are not merely relegated to the confines of the United States. Child labor remains a blight on the face of the world. “Child labor persists even though laws and standards to eliminate it exist. Current causes ofglobal child laborare similar to its causes in the U.S. 100 years ago, including poverty, limited access to education, repression of workers’ rights, and limited prohibitions on child labor.”
“... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.”David Wong.
