Early 20th Century Child Labor

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From chapter 17's reading, I learned a tremendous amount about exactly how business owners treated children laborers and immigrant employees in the 19th and early 20th century. I learned a great deal of the businesses that worked children and immigrants, as well as the effects that it had on them. This topic gave me the opportunity to put an abundance of thought into child labor and immigrant employees in today society. The use of child labor and immigrant workers was predominate during the late 19th and early 20th century. Many children had worked on family farms so children were already used to working, but when the Industrial Revolution hit it seemed as if child labor had reached new extremes. While reading the text, I came across …show more content…
Even though nothing became of this and ten of the 24 Molly Maguires were hung, there would be more revolts and protests to come against child and immigrant workers being employed. Some of these included: The Great Railroad Strike, The Sand-Lot Incident, the Haymarket Riot, and a woman who often protested child labor named Mother Jones. There were groups created such as the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor to help create equality with in the workforce. During the Great Depression, many individuals eventually began to have a different political attitude in the United States towards child labor. Most the codes that fell under the National Industrial Recovery Act were majorly reformed to reduce child labor. Another change that was made to restrict child labor laws was to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Act set in place a wage that would be nationwide, and would include minimum wage and maximum hour standards for workers. Overall, employing children for manufacturing or mining under the age of sixteen was prohibited. (Tindall, …show more content…
However, I do believe that child and immigrant labor does still exist. I believe often there are cases of young children that are employed for construction companies or other labor companies and it simply goes unnoticed. When I did more extensive research on the topic I could easily pull up numerous credible articles where young children are still being employed, and one specific example was where a union organizer was on a job site. He specifically stated “He saw something surprising: a boy, who appeared to be about 12 or 13, wearing jeans and a fluorescent work vest, smoothing mortar on a brick wall.” (Semuels, 2014) In the case of immigrants being employed, today often it is illegal immigrants that are employed for a very low pay. An article I found stated that most immigrants have jobs in agriculture and they earn less than individuals who are native-born. On average a median weekly pay in the United States for an individual who was foreign-born is $511, the median weekly pay for an individual who is a native-born is $677. (Gross, 2006) I personally believe that one possible solution to child labor still existing, would be the employment of more health and safety inspectors. With the employment of more inspectors they could visit jobsites more often
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