Little children.

My dad born 1903; this must be probably 1905; he was one of the lucky ones, he did not have to work as a child. He went to school and was an excellent student.

 Shocking Photos Of Child Labor Between 1908 And 1916

 February 1911. Port Royal, South Carolina.

Josie (6 years old), Bertha (6 years old), Sophie (10 years old), were all shuckers at the Maggioni Canning Co.

As the United States industrialized, factory owners hired young workers for a variety of tasks. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with their parents. Children had a special disposition to working in factories as their small statures were useful to fixing machinery and navigating the small areas that fully grown adults could not. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities.

The impact of these images, by photographer Lewis Hine, were instrumental in changing the child labor

laws in the U.S.

Child Labor in U.S. History

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike.

Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. which shared goals of challenging child labor, including through anti-sweatshop campaigns and labeling programs. The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

1938 Federal regulation of child labor achieved in Fair Labor Standards Act

For the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law.

19th century: Industrialization

Switzerland and as in many other countries, child labour affected among the so-called Kaminfegerkinder ("chimney sweep children") also children working  in spinning mills, factories and in agriculture in 19th-century Switzerland. In the Swiss pre-industrial society, as well in other European countries, the children often were part of the family economy, earlier were integrated into the worker process and often indispensable contributed income.  Because the wages of the parents were so miserable,  and there were not yet  Unions to negotiate a fair wage. The industrialization forced family members to look for an income outside the traditional housekeeping. Work on the machines was often easy and physically not very challenging, what favoured the 'use' of women and children. Thus, the exploitation of the labor of children took new forms and extended dimensions, and spread at the beginning of the 19th century rapidly, particularly in the canton of Zurich and in Eastern Switzerland.

 In the cotton mills, six- to ten-year-old children worked in miserable conditions, up to 16 hours per day and often at night. 

Child labour became a social problem on which the authorities responded with investigations, so in 1812 in the canton of St. Gallen and one year later in the canton of Zürich. Issued in 1815; night - and factory work before the finished ninth birthday was prohibited and the daily working time limited on 12 to 14 hours. These rules were not to enforce in practice, but marked the beginning of the child protection legislation, followed by laws in Zürich (1837) and in the other cantons.

What a miserable life many children had to endure. If we would not have social reforms, children would still live in these dark ages.

 Many countries in the world still do not have children protection laws, so children still can be exploited in any way. 

...and on a happier note 1967, my three, smiling daughters enjoying their new seesaw.








(original picture, building a new home in the countryside,)