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America's Child Labor Crisis: A Fight for Education and Rights

Discover the historical issues of child labor in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Learn about the harsh working conditions, low wages, and the fight for children's rights through the Progressive Era movements. Explore how the child labor movement intersected with the education movement, leading to significant social changes.

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America's Child Labor Crisis: A Fight for Education and Rights

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  1. What issues have we dealt with so far?

  2. Was this the worst of it??? • Long hours • 12 hour days, 7 days a week • Injuries & Death • 1880 and 1900, some 35,000 workers perished each year in factory and mine accident • Low pay • $400-$500/year = average income • $600/year = what was considered necessary for a reasonable amount of comfort

  3. Child Labor – America’s Greatest Shame…? • Child labor increased during and after Gilded Age • 1 million by 1890, 2 million by 1910 • Where children are used? • Coal mines; factories; agriculture, shucking oysters, domestic servants, et cetera • Why children are used? • Low wages, small hands/fingers, desperate, quick, easy to train • Some places whole family employed in factory town • Some local & state laws, usually ignored…South • By 20th century larger call to end child labor

  4. Who fights child labor? • lowered wages for adults (labor unions) • Protect the children • Protect America (education movement) • Exhibitions with images, statistics, stories • Lewis Hines (photographer) • injuries and development issues • Leaflets • Push politicians legislation – first state then national How do Progressives fight child labor?

  5. The Fight Goes National • 1904 – National Child Labor Committee – investigated child labor conditions • Mary Harris Jones, i.e, Mother Jones Children’s Crusade, “we want to go to school, not the mines” -march from Philly to NY • Keating-Owen Act – 1916 • Prohibit transportation over state lines goods that were made by child labor • Supreme Court declared Keating-Own Act unconstitutional • States did create own laws

  6. Why would the progressive child labor movement be closely tied to education movement? • Cannot be educated if they are working!!! • Why do we want them educated??? • Better future • Assimilate!! • Religion • Hygiene • Morals

  7. What does this tell you?? • More than 120 million copies of McGuffey’s readers, which emphasize the ideals of “literacy, hard work, diligence, and virtuous living,” are sold • Massachusetts Teacher article: “In too many instances the parents are unfit guardians of their own children … the children must be gathered up and forced into school” • “These Southern and Eastern Europeans are of a different type than north Europeans who preceded (came before) them. Illiterate, docile, lacking in self-reliance and initiative…their coming has served to dilute tremendously our national stock” – 1909 Stanford Professor Ellwood Cubberley

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