CHILD LABOR
dangerous work for children
Children started to work at age seven or eight, a few as young as five. They worked in textile mills, coal mine, match dipper, and chimney sweepers.
They changed spools in the hot and humid textile mills where sometimes they couldn't see because of all the dust. They would crawl under machinery to repair broken threads. Some of the children incurred serious injury as they fell asleep and into the machines. Others incurred scalping as the machine parts caught their hair, ripping it off their heads. In coal mines they had to work in the intense heat pulling carts of coal or they were opening and closing air vents. in coal mines there were fears of explosions, flooding, and collapsing tunnels. A match dipper would be a child whose job it was to dip matches into an element called phosphorous, which is deadly if a person inhales too much of it into his lungs. Chimney sweepers were exposed to soot and other materials which damaged there lungs.
sources
text book, and placard.