Child Labor In The Late 1800s

Improved Essays
In my community, you must be sixteen years old to get a job, and rarely does a sixteen year old work more than a couple hours a day, a couple shifts a week. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the issue of child labor, awful working conditions, and low wages were major concerns. By using a forceful tone, Kelly argues that child labor laws are important and necessary all around the country for the benefit of all the citizens. Kelly discusses the truth about the negatives of child labor by using specific word choice. In describing the dangers of the work force, she uses words like “deafening” and “toil” to emphasize the appalling conditions that these children were subjected to. By using these words with depressing diction, Kelly not

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Among all my essays that exhibited varying degrees of success from effectively investigating Pudd'nhead Wilson to neglecting half the prompt, my greatest essay analyzed Florence Kelley's rhetorical strategies in her speech denouncing child labour. Opening with historical background on the necessity for a workforce in the early twentieth century, the introductory paragraph investigated the era's controversy regarding child labour and Kelley's position on the topic, citing Kelley's "ardent and audacious tone… to the mothers of society." Following the SOAPS-tone of the exposition, my thesis utilized incendiary language decrying the "horrifying conditions of child labour" while also boldly highlighting Kelley's "allusive comparison between the…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Girls who worked in factories in the 1800’s believed that the working conditions were unacceptable. The historical fiction novel Lyddie by Katherine Patterson is based on what a typical factory girl in Lowell, Massachusetts goes through while working hard through poor and unsafe conditions to provide for their family. Lyddie feels the working conditions in her work environment are extremely poor. There is a petition that she would be able to sign to improve the working conditions she faces but she fears of being blacklisted and not being capable for providing for her family.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The late 1800’s and the early 1900’s was a time when poverty and growth was at a record high for the American people. America was growing and becoming a force to be reckoned with; but at the same time, some American’s were struggling to make ends meet. Throughout 1877, until the last third of the 19th century farmers and sharecroppers were not profiting from their crops. The deflation of crops made it almost impossible for farmers to own land. Those that didn’t own land became sharecroppers and they did not receive the number of crops they were promised.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Labor in the industrial/gilded age was severely harsh and the workers were not treated how they should have been. The first thing that had been used as child labor which they were 16 or less. Second, you had long hours with very little pay, where they even had pay cuts even though they already had the small pay. Third, the working condition was very dangerous and caused a lot of deaths a year.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the early 1800’s and early 1900’s child labor played a huge role in America, and has vastly impacted our society in many ways. The people and the Government sought to look deeper into the dirt that was being done to these young children in the work industry. America had to come together and look at the overview of child labor. There were many positive and negative effects that came into place when child labor was declared unconstitutional as a whole. Although children had been overpowered and used as servants throughout history At the time child labor was mainly looked at as a positive movement because of what children were capable of doing.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Industrial Revolution gave rise to a new system for the production of goods known as the factory system and as a result, thousands of factories sprung up throughout Britain in the late 18th to early 19th century. Despite the apparent benefits of increased production and employment, many factory owners took advantage of the lack of regulations regarding the running of these factories and exploited the labour of children as they could be paid up to 20 percent less than their adult counterparts. The children, often as young as five, worked up to 16-hour shifts in horrible conditions, often risking serious injury. Eventually, people began to realise how awful the conditions were and became strongly opposed to the use of child labour in the…

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime”-Kailash Satyarthi Child Laborer. The beginning of child labor had a very rough start especially in coal mines. In coal mines The coal was washed and sorted according to the beaker.…

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child Labor 1800s

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Although children were servants throughout most of human history, child labor reached new extremes during the Industrial Revolution. The Conditions children worked in were horrific and violated human rights, these practices needed to come to an end. Nineteenth century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working conditions but, it took a huge effort to sway public opinion. Forms of child labor such as indentured servitude and child slavery have existed all throughout American history, when industrialization forced workers to move from farms and home workshops into factory work children were often employed.…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the late 19th century the the muckrakers of the government did a lot of changes in the U.S. Such as the child labor laws. The relationship between big businesses and political machines. And unhealthy and unsanitary working conditions. Let me tell you a little something about theses things.…

    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although children have been like servants throughout most of history, child labor reached new limits during the Industrial Revolution (1820-1840). Children, under the age of 14, maybe some even under the age of 6 years old, worked long, tiring hours in dangerous factory conditions for a very little amount of money. Children were helpful as laborers because their size, being scrawny and young, allowed them to move in small spaces within the factories or mines where as the adults couldn’t fit as well so it was harder for them to move around. The Headmaster of the factory believed children were easier to manage and control and could be paid less than adults, which is most important. The children often worked more to help support their families…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Florence Kelley, as shown in her speech, views child labor as an injustice within our own people. Not only did she preach her distaste for the topic to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, but also worked with her fellow members of the same gender to eradicate child labor. In her speech, Florence Kelley uses repetition, facts as well as logical statements, and words and phrases that appeal to the reader's’ (or audience’s) feelings of either guilt or sorrow to convey her message of opposition to her audience. Within the beginning of her speech, Kelley repeats the phrase, “while we sleep” to target the guilt of those responsible, as well as the sorrow of those against child labor.…

    • 247 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the speech, Florence Kelley uses rhetorical strategies such as imagery, appeal to pathos, and appeal to logos to convey to her audience that child labor is pitiful, unfair, and hard on kids. Kelley uses imagery to paint the disaster that is child labor. She starts off with, “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through…” When reading this, it is quote conveys how unfair it is for these young girls who work for us while we do nothing to help them, but sleep. Kelley also uses imagery to describe a law in Pennsylvania.…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The 1900 census revealed that approximately 2 million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States. ”[1] Businesses wanted to hire children over adults because they knew that they could pay the children less and get the same work from them or more. Children also caught on to tasks quick, they would be taught things faster too. “Progressive Era reformers believed that child labor was detrimental to children and to society.…

    • 230 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    One of the biggest problems during the Progressive Era was Child Labor. The workers got angry and they started to form labor unions which were groups of workers who made a deal with business to get better payments and better working conditions. Another problem with child labor during the Progressive Era was that they worked short hours of 8 hours a day and they also had no sick days when they were working in the factories.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Life in this period has been described as “years of suffering and deprivation, as that “bleak age” in which the “evils of the Industrial Revolution” made themselves manifest”. However, this cold and unjust period gradually came to an end with the intervention of the government and implementation of new legislations that gave workers rights and privileges in their workplaces. The Coal Mines Act of 1842, for example, was passed to ensure that in coal mines “no female was to be employed underground [and] no boy under 10 years old was to be employed underground” . In 1833, The Factory Act was passed, requiring that “no child under nine should be allowed to work in textile factories; that children between nine and thirteen work no more than eight hours a day and receive a minimum of three hours of schooling per day; and that adolescents between thirteen and eighteen work no more than twelve hours a day.”…

    • 1773 Words
    • 8 Pages
    • 8 Works Cited
    Great Essays