7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

Sheldon Rozean
HIS 200: Applied History
Southern New Hampshire University
February 19, 2023

Preliminary Writing Plan

Introduction

For my historical event analysis, I have chosen to focus on Child Labor in the United

States and the Child Labor Reform Movement. Child Labor was a common occurrence, almost a

necessity for the survival of immigrant families. With the quickly growing economy and the start

of the industrial revolution, children were prime candidates for the workforce; not only due to the

cheapness of their labor but the need for the parents to be at work as well. Schuman (2017)

states, “With the advances in machinery, not only could society avoid the issue of unproductive

children, but also the children themselves could easily create productive output with only their

rudimentary skills”. This event is significant because it plays a huge part in building the United

States economy, great cities, and industries that put America at the forefront of power and trade

in the 1900s.

Thesis Statement

Although most scholars of the industrial revolution have argued that child labor was

necessary to reach the progress and growth that was achieved, further research shows that labor

reform and educating the youth of America would have been more beneficial. The researcher

will demonstrate that child labor reform initiated the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and from

the dust bowl, a fresh start for the children of this country.
7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

Causes

One cause of the Child Labor Reform Movement was the Industrial Revolution in the

U.S. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain with the increase in demand for goods and

services and the quick growth of international trade. It spread throughout Europe, China, and

eventually, the U.S. With the growth of factories, mines, and processing mills labor needs were

larger than could be accommodated by the adult workforce.

A secondary cause of the Child Labor Reform Movement was the dangerous conditions

and hours that children were required to work. Machinery was unguarded, and children were

rarely trained on the safest ways to operate them. Mines exposed them to health hazards as well

as higher death rates. One study found that they were three times more likely to die than adults.

About 75 percent of slate pickers who were killed were children under sixteen (Schuman, 2017).

Children were required to work the same hours as adults, and night shifts were commonly filled

by children. This was because at night the boys were too scared to run away.

Course

The National Child Labor Committee was directly responsible for multiple bills and

attempts to stop child labor. In 1906, a federal child labor bill was introduced in Congress by

Republican Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana (Shuman, 2017). This brought national

attention and media coverage of the child labor issues happening in each state.

In the early 1900s the National Child Labor Committee hired photographer Lewis Hine to

take pictures of children at work across the country. These pictures brought national attention to

the child labor movement and exposed the horrible conditions and work environment that the
7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

children were exposed to. This helped gain backing and funding to continue to push for reform.

(Schuman, 2017).

A survey done in 1906 found that 63 percent of owners thought that children did not help

improve business due to decreased productivity and increases in injuries. Only 20 percent said

they desired to continue to hire children. Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act and President

Woodrow Wilson signed it into law. Later, …” the Supreme Court ruled that it was

unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart 247 U.S. 251 because it overstepped the purpose of the

government's powers to regulate interstate commerce.” (Schuman, 2017).

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 would also be challenged in the Supreme Court.

This time, the movement to end child labor was victorious. In February of 1941, the Supreme

Court reversed its opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart and, in U. S. v. Darby (1941), upheld the

constitutionality of the Fair Labor Standards Act (Schuman, 2017).

Consequences

Child labor had many consequences that affected the economy as well as families. In

Curtis Guild’s The Eight Hour Day for Children Under Sixteen, he talks about how families

desperately needed the income of these children to survive. “If all children sixteen and under had

been released from working, poverty and adversity would have fallen on ten to twenty percent of

the families receiving supplemental income from these children.” (Guild, 1913).

Evidence

The 1900 census revealed that approximately 2 million children were working in mills,

mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States (National Archives,

2022). I find the pictures showing children in the mines and factories to be substantial evidence
7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

of the real conditions and environmental struggles that these children had to suffer daily. Pictures

capture the reality of a single moment, and this translates to today through our association of

putting ourselves in their place. As the pictures below show, no guarding on the belting, and the

child with no shoes, both standing on some tittering platform to troubleshoot machinery that is

moving, this is no safe place for children.

Message

Child labor is an old ideology that reaches back as far as slavery has existed.

Slaves would work long days, and their children would be put to work as soon as they were old

enough to walk and follow simple orders and commands. Tending to animals, gathering food

and wood, fetching water, and farming were the main tasks assigned to young children. In many

of these societies, children as young as 13 were perceived as adults.

Here in the U.S., child labor grew rampant due to the Industrial Revolution. Children

were paid less, their size allowed them to perform tasks in tight spaces, and lacked the sense to

unionize, so they were prime candidates for factories and mundane labor jobs. In 1900, 18
7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

percent of all American workers were under the age of sixteen. Working children were typically

unable to attend school, creating a cycle of poverty that was difficult to break Lack of schools

and quality education is a major factors driving children to work. Children worked because they

had nothing better to do. The International Labour Organization states in its latest World Report

on Child Labour that there are around 265 million working children in the world. That is nearly

17 percent of the worldwide child population (Esteban, 2016).

Conclusion

Growing up in a low-income household, I found the need to join the workforce at a

young age. From 13 years old, I would hold at least a part-time job through high school and

college. The need for school clothes and shoes, and then later all the expenses that come with

owning a vehicle, I worked to get the things I wanted. My sisters and I also helped our

grandmother with bills when necessary. Luckily for us, there was a state-run program at the time
7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

that would help find jobs for low-income family members. The necessity for children to work is

not a thing of the past, it is a current necessity for not only Americans but other nationalities as

well. Education still must be our first goal, so that the next generation of children can learn from

our mistakes by studying our past and history.

“Let us realize before it is too late that in this age of iron, of machine-tending, and of

sub-divided labor, that we need, as never before, the untrammeled and inspired activity

of youth. To cut it out from our national life, as we constantly do in regard to thousands

of working children, is a most perilous undertaking and endangers the very industry to

which they have been sacrificed”. -- Jane Addams, Child Labor Legislation: A Requisite

for Industrial Efficiency, May 1905.

7-3 Historical Analysis Essay Progress Check Sheldon Rozean

References

Child labor. Jane Addams Digital Edition. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2023,
fromhttps://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/exhibits/show/debate-and-diplomacy/dd-
theme/dd-child-labor#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20ways%20that,to%20win%20over
%20public% 20opinion
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - "Child Labor". Published online at
OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor' [Online
Resource]
Gordon, M. S. (1959). The Labor Force Under Changing Income and Employment Clarence D.
Long. The American Economic Review, 49(4), 793–795.
Guild, C. (1913). Address of Curtis Guild: the eight-hour day for children under sixteen: Boston,
December 4, 1913. Boston: Massachusetts Child Labor Committee.
MindEdge, 2023. Learning Module 2, Secondary Sources, Module Two: Approaches to History,
continued, Learning Block 2-2, Page 2 of 4. https://snhu.mindedgeonline.com/content.
National Archives and Records Administration. (2022, February 8). Keating-Owen Child Labor
Act (1916). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved February 16, 2023,
from https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/keating-owen-child-labor-act
Schuman, M. (2017). History of child labor in the United States--part 1: little children working.
Monthly Labor Review, 1–19. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.21916/mlr.2017.1
Schuman, M. (2017). History of Child Labor in the United States - Part 2: The Reform
Movement. Monthly Labor Review, 140(1), 1–23.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Labor. (1916). Child-labor bill: Hearings before
the committee on labor, House of Representatives, Sixty-fourth Congress, first session,
on H.R. 8234, a bill to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor, and for
other purposes. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print.