Karma Nordstrom's List: Child Labor

• In the book Baines attacked those who had campaigned against child labour. He accused them of providing a false picture of what it was like to work in a textile factory. Baines claimed in his book that "factory labour is far less injurious than many other forms of employment". He went on to argue that many of the factory children were born in bad health and that they "sink under factory labour, as they would under any kind of labour."

•   Advert that appeared in The Derby Mercury on 20th September,   1781.

   

  Wanted   at Cromford. Forging & Filing Smiths, Joiners and Carpenters,   Framework-Knitters and Weavers with large families. Likewise children   of all ages may have constant employment. Boys and young men may have   trades taught them, which will enable them to maintain a family in   a short time.

• Many   parents were unwilling to allow their children to work in these new   textile factories. To overcome this labour   shortage factory owners had to find other ways of obtaining workers.   One solution to the problem was to buy children from orphanages and   workhouses. The children became known as pauper   apprentices. This involved the children signing contracts that virtually   made them the property of the factory owner.
• Pauper apprentices were cheaper to house than adult workers. It   cost Samuel Greg who owned the large Quarry   Bank Mill at Styal, a £100 to build a cottage for a family, whereas   his apprentice house, that cost £300,   provided living accommodation for over 90 children.
• The children also signed a contract with Courtauld that bound them   to the mill until the age of 21. This helped to reduce Courtauld's   labour costs. Whereas adult males at Courtauld's mills earned 7s.   2d., children under 11 received only 1s. 5d. a week.

1 more annotation...

• The term “child labour” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

    

  It refers to work that:

    
  • <!--• -->is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and
    
  • <!--• -->interferes with their schooling by:
    
  • <!--• -->depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
    
  • <!--• -->obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
    
  • <!--• -->requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.
    

  
   In its most extreme forms, child labour involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities – often at a very early age. Whether or not particular forms of “work” can be called “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries. The answer varies from country to country, as well as among sectors within countries.