Children working harder than adults
March 11, 1920 Written by: Mr. Muckrake-Bear
Children's Fingers Swelling and Falling off after Aganizingly Hard Work
These labor intensive coal mines in PA forced children to work 14 hours a day in not very ideal conditions at all. These kids had to get used to the mean tyrants that watched over them to see if they worked to their expectations. Most kids job was to separate the coal from the hard rocks as they slid down the shafts and banged off their hands. Although some of the older and stronger children were forced to actually mine the coal out of the rocks in the dust filled caves with hardly any clean air to breathe.
How was it changed?
Child labor committees helped reform through state legislations. Soon many laws that restricted child labor were passed during a movement in this time period.