Hard At Work In Factories And Mines

Children have worked for centuries and continue to work. The history of the economic development of Europe and North America includes numerous instances of child labor. Manufacturers in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Prussia as well as the United States used child labor during the initial stages of industrialization. In addition, child labor prevails currently in many industries in the Third World. This book examines the explanations for child labor in an economic context. A model of the labor market for children is constructed using the new economics of the family framework to derive the supply of child labor and the traditional labor theory of marginal productivity to derive the demand for child labor. The model is placed into a historical context and is used to test the existing supply-and-demand-induced explanations for an increase in child labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Evidence on the extent of childrens employment, their specific tasks and trends in their wages from the textile industry and mining industry is used to support the argument that it was technological innovation which created a demand for child labor. Certain mechanical inventions and process innovations increased the demand for child labor in three ways: increasing number of assistants needed; increasing the substitutability between children and adults, and creating work situations that only children could fill. Specific innovations in the production of textiles and in the extraction of coal, copper and tin are highlighted to show how they favored the use of child workers over adult workers. The book concludes with a look at the current situations in developing countries where child labor is prevalent. Considerable insight is gained on the role of child labor in economic development when this historical model is applied to the contemporary situation.

Beginning early in the nineteenth century, thousands of Canadian boys, some as young as eight, laboured underground - driving pit ponies along narrow passageways, manipulating ventilation doors, and helping miners cut and load coal at the coalface to produce the energy that fuelled Canada's industrial revolution. Boys died in the mines in explosions and accidents but they also organised strikes for better working conditions but were instead expelled from the mines and lost their jobs.Boys in the Pits shows the rapid maturity of the boys and their role in resisting exploitation. In what will certainly be a controversial interpretation of child labour, Robert McIntosh recasts wage-earning children as more than victims, showing that they were individuals who responded intelligently and resourcefully to their circumstances.Boys in the Pits is particularly timely as, despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, accepted by the General assembly in 1989, child labour still occurs throughout the world and continues to generate controversy. McIntosh provides an important new perspective from which to consider these debates, reorienting our approach to child labour, explaining rather than condemning the practice. Within the broader social context of the period, where the place of children was being redefined as - and limited to - the home, school, and playground, he examines the role of changing technologies, alternative sources of unskilled labour, new divisions of labour, changes in the family economy, and legislation to explore the changing extent of child labour in the mines.Robert McIntosh is employed at the National Archives of Canada.

"The World of Child Labor" details both the current and historical state of child labor in each region of the world, focusing on its causes, consequences, and cures. Child labor remains a problem of immense social and economic proportions throughout the developing world, and there is a global movement underway to do away with it. Volume editor Hugh D. Hindman has assembled an international team of leading child labor scholars, researchers, policy-makers, and activists to provide a comprehensive reference with over 220 essays. This volume first provides a current global snapshot with overview essays on the dimensions of the problem and those institutions and organizations combating child labor. Thereafter the organization of the work is regional, covering developed, developing, and less developed regions of the world.The reference goes around the globe to document the contemporary and historical state of child labor within each major region (Africa, Latin and South America, North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Oceania) including country-level accounts for nearly half of the world's nations. Country-level essays for more developed nations include historical material in addition to current issues in child labor. All country-level essays address specific facets of child labor problems, such as industries and occupations in which children commonly work, the national child welfare policy, occupational safety regulations, educational system, and laws, and often highlight significant initiatives against child labor.Current statistical data accompany most country-level essays that include ratifications to UN and ILO conventions, the Human Development Index, human capital indicators, economic indicators, and national child labor surveys conducted by the Statistical Information and Monitoring Program on Child Labor. "The World of Child Labor" is designed to be a self-contained, comprehensive reference for high school, college, and professional researchers. Maps, photos, figures, tables, references, and index are included.

Despite its decline throughout the advanced industrial nations, child labor remains one of the major social, political, and economic concerns of modern history, as witnessed by the many high-profile stories on child labor and sweatshops in the media today. This work considers the issue in three parts. The first section discusses child labor as a social and economic problem in America from an historical and theoretical perspective. The second part presents child labor as National Child Labor Committee investigators found it in major American industries and occupations, including coal mines, cotton textile mills, and sweatshops in the early 1900s. Finally, the concluding section integrates these findings and attempts to apply them to child labor problems in America and the rest of the world today.

The anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania, five hundred square miles of rugged hills stretching between Tower City and Carbondale, harbored coal deposits that once heated virtually all the homes and businesses in Eastern cities. At its peak during World War I, the coal industry here employed 170,000 miners, and supported almost 1,000,000 people. Today, with coal workers numbering 1,500, only 5,000 people depend on the industry for their livelihood. Between these two points in time lies a story of industrial decline, of working people facing incremental and cataclysmic changes in their world. When the Mines Closed tells this story in the words of men and women who experienced these dramatic changes and in more than eighty photographs of these individuals, their families, and the larger community.Award-winning historian Thomas Dublin interviewed a cross-section of residents and migrants from the region, who gave their own accounts of their work and family lives before and after the mines closed. Most of the narrators, six men and seven women, came of age during the Great Depression and entered area mines or, in the case of the women, garment factories, in their teens. They describe the difficult choices they faced, and the long-standing ethnic, working-class values and traditions they drew upon, when after World War II the mines began to shut down. Some left the region, others commuted to work at a distance, still others struggled to find employment locally.The photographs taken by George Harvan, a lifelong resident of the area and the son of a Slovak-born coal miner, document residents' lives over the course of fifty years. Dublin's introductory essay offers a brief history of anthracite mining and the region and establishes a broader interpretive framework for the narratives and photographs.

This gripping and intriguing Student Book combines an enquiry-led approach with factual narrative. Written by experienced Head of History, Aaron Wilkes in an approachable and understandable style, including: relevant and fascinating facts, interesting and motivating activities, and specific sections to extend or reinforce learning. Content has been thoroughly researched and revised in this popular 2nd ediiton.

This book studies the legal change in presumption of custody from fathers to mothers—a process that occurred between 1880 and 1920 in all Western countries that permitted divorce. Among other considerations, Friedman explores why a shift of such magnitude has been lost to the public memory in such a short time, and why fathers ceded custodial rights without duress or action of any kind. In focusing on the state's role in each instance and on the class character of divorce in earlier times, the author uncovers a diffusion of family responsibilities that had striking consequences for the welfare of children after divorce.