CHILD LABOR LAWS.
In the early days of the 19th century, great ma chines were invented in England to do the work that was formerly done by hand at home, and great factories were built to house the machines. All that was needed was work ers to tend these great iron monsters and feed into them the carded cotton that came out as thread, to be spun into cloth. But many Englishmen were away at war fighting Napoleon, and someone dis covered that little children could do much of the work about the machines as well as grown men and so the manufacturers were advised to " take the children." So they took the children when they were seven years old; they took them when they were six years old; and sometimes they even took them when they were only four years old. They crowded them into factories where there was barely room for the little bodies to slip between the great whirring wheels and under the swiftly moving belts. They worked them 12, 14, and sometimes even 15 hours a day, and they kept overseers to whip them if they became drowsy and made mistakes.
The children became stunted and deformed and sick.
One out of every three or four was killed or crippled for life. But the manufacturers could go to the orphanages and the poorhouses and get more. Only they must take one idiot child for every 20 strong and healthy ones. But then, even a feeble-minded child could do something, and the rags that they wore and the food that they ate did not cost much. Even was the life led by the children who worked in the coal mines.
And while this was going on in England, Parliament was prohibiting the African slave-trade and preparing to abolish slavery in the West Indies though, as the poet Robert Southey wrote, " The slave trade was mercy compared with the child-trade in factories." "The Cry of the Children" Finally the attention of the good people of England was called to these terrible conditions in their own land. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote her pathetic poem ' The Cry of the Children', in which she these children grown " old beyond their years." And Lord Shaftsbury, Richard Oastler, and others began their agitation in Parliament to save the child-slaves of England. It was a long fight and a hard fight.
The manufacturers did not want to give up the profitable labor of the children if they could help it, and many well-meaning people were blinded by maxims to the effect that " government should not interfere with industry." At first the best that could be done was to procure a law prohibiting the work of children under 9 years of age, and limiting the hours of those under 16 to 12 hours a day. But the fight was kept up, and today no child under 12 years of age can be employed in factory or mine in England, and the hours and conditions of labor of those above that age are strictly regulated by law.
Child Labor Laws in the United States Other countries have followed in the footsteps of England in protecting their children. In the United States practically all of the states have such laws. In many manufacturing states of the North, children under 14 are not allowed to work at all, while those between 14 and 16 must get a permit to do so, and their hours are limited. By such laws as these and by others requiring children to go to school, the nations are saving their boys and girls, so that they may become useful men and women. (See Factories and Factory Laws.)