Child Labor
Child Labor is an evil that must be stopped
Starting young
children started working as young as 5 years old but most common ages were 8 or 9 years old.Some children had to crawl under Dangerous machines to repair things because they were small and were quick handed.There were children in coal mines who had to stay at air vents in the dark alone, they had to stay at these vents to open and close the door for coal carts coming through.
Working hours and wages
Working hours lasted from 12-16 hours and 6 to 7 days a week. The wages the children earned were needed to keep their families from starving. Child labor was the most cheapest labor of all. children was paid only 1/10 of normal wages. Most machines were so easy to work that even the children worked them. In 1789 Richard Arkwright's new spinning factory, two-thirds of the 1,150 factory was children. Children that worked in coal mines had to haul tons of coal carts behind them using only their own strength.
Children Health
The tedious and dangerous factory work had negative effects on the health of children. Doctor Tumer Thackrah described the children leaving the Manchester cotton mills as "almost universally ill looking, small, sickly, barefoot and ill-clad. Many appeared to be no older than seven. The men, generally from sixteen to twenty-four, and none aged, were almost as pallid and thin as the children." Children had to work in coal mines where the air was dusty and was poisonous. Poor families could not afford enough food to keep their children healthy, so children had weaker bodies and were more likely to get sick from the dusty air and become deformed from accidents with machines.
An Act to save children
Child Labor was getting to the extreme point where people started revolting against factory rules.Child labor reform laws called "factory acts" were passed in the early 1800s. These laws were passed to reduce a child's workday to twelve hours and to remove children under 9 years old from cotton mills and mines. Later laws were passed outlawing child labor entirely.
Child Labor stopped
Child labor is an evil thing that was happening for years until 1883 where children under 9 years old could not work. The "Factory act" is what made this possible saving children. In 1832, Michael Sadler sent interviewers to Factories to interview children and gather evidence about their working conditions. Sadler sought to pass a bill through Parliament to decrease child labor and regulate all factories to have a 10-hour work day.