The number of children under age 16 working in nonagricultural pursuits doubled between 1890 and 1900. Children that age composed 13 percent of the cotton industry’s workforce in 1900. Boys under 16 almost exclusively filled three occupations—slate picker, door tender, and mule driver— in the anthracite coal mining industry. Children worked in canneries, glass factories, and most other industries. Some worked in the streets selling newspapers and shining shoes. Others, particularly immigrants, worked with their families in sweatshops that often doubled as their living quarters.
Employers hired children because they were cheap labor. A slate picker in the anthracite mines earned between six and 10 cents an hour. Canneries paid children less than 14 years of age 2.5 cents an hour. When paid, youngsters in sweatshops received between one and two cents an hour. Cotton mills might pay an “experienced” 12-year-old five cents an hour. Some mills would give kids the opportunity to gain experience by allowing them to work without pay for a probationary period of up to six weeks. At the end of the period they would often be fired and replaced by another batch of eager learners.
Children worked long hours for their meager pay. A workday of 14-16 hours was common in the sweatshops. Canneries worked at least 12 hours during peak season. The workday varied between 10 and 12 hours in other industries. Supervisors kept the children working constantly though the day with shouts, curses, and, if necessary, corporal punishment. Some overseers held smaller children by their feet out of a window, threatening to drop them unless they behaved; other overseers simply beat the children with a rod or whip.
Children often resisted oppressive behavior. On an individual level they would throw stones or spit on abusive bosses when they were not looking. Supervisors were targets of practical jokes. Some were not above sabotaging machines to gain time to rest or play. Children also participated in concerted activities. Anthracite breaker boys, for example, would quit work collectively to go sleighing or swimming. The boys at a colliery in Moosic, Pennsylvania, refused to return to work until an objectionable boss was replaced. In 1899 newsboys refused to sell copies of the New York Journal and the New York World when the publishers increased the wholesale cost of their papers by 10 cents per 100 without a corresponding increase in the
Young boys were often a source of cheap labor in the mining
Industry. (Library of Congress) retail price. The strike ended with a compromise after two weeks: The new wholesale rate remained, but the publishers agreed to refund the price of all unsold copies. A strike of New York messenger boys earlier that year, however, failed because of poor organization.
With the exception of the United Mine Workers of America, which organized boys into separate local unions, trade unions did not attempt to recruit children, whom they regarded as cheap competition. Consequently, unions did join with reform groups in lobbying for laws that would make the employment of children cost prohibitive.
One reform tactic was to increase the number of years of compulsory education. As with many reforms, compulsory education addressed several concerns: It would Americanize immigrant children by teaching them English and giving them “correct” values while keeping children out of the workplace. But although the public schools proved effective instruments of acculturation, compulsory education failed to end child labor. Yielding to pressure from employers, school districts established special night schools for working children.
Labor unions and reformers also lobbied for laws restricting the hours a child could work. By 1900 eight states prohibited children from working at night. Most northern states mandated a 10-hour day and 60-hour work week for children. Many states also established a minimum age for industrial work.
The minimum-age laws, however, had little effect. Seeking cheap labor, employers did not inquire too closely into the ages of young people applying for work, and children lied about their ages with the blessings of their parents. Economic necessity forced many parents to make their children work. Wages were so low that most working-class and lower-middle-class families could not subsist on one income.
Technology, not laws, forced a decline in child labor. In the 1890s, mechanical devices began eliminating the need for door boys and slate pickers in anthracite coal mining, and the adoption of electric haulage locomotives eliminated the need for mules and their drivers. But children continued to work in industries where machinery could not perform their normal tasks. As late as 1938, many southern cotton mills employed children under the age of 16.
Further reading: Walter I. Trattner, Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in American (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970).
—Harold W. Aurand
World History
