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Rebecca Lowery

Professor Bill Kamil

Western Civ

27 September 2019

Child Labor

Child labor is unethical and caused the wrongful death of many children in

the 1900’s. “A total of 1,752,187 (about 1 in every 6) children between the ages of 5 and

10 were engaged in "gainful occupations" in the United States of America” (Child). Many

people thought child labor was great for business as they were cheaper and a lot easier to

scare than adults. Which was true. Children made anywhere between 10-20% of the

average adult pay for the same workload. Looking at that from a physical standpoint,

children should make double that as they are much smaller carrying the same weight on

their shoulders that adults twice their size was. Not only were children at such young ages

still developing physically, but they were also still developing mentally. The mental strain

and stress of these types of jobs were much more intense on children as they still don’t

understand how to cope with stress and things of that nature. 5-year-olds should be more

worried about how much time they get to play outside and what they’re going to have for

lunch instead of working with heavy, dangerous machines. With the brain still developing

school is very important in these age groups. Many children who were forced into labor

and factory jobs never get the chance to go to school and learn. Without being able to go

to school these children are never able to thrive in life and get better jobs as many jobs

require schooling. This traps the children into working in factories all their lives. Many
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people tried to argue that children had decent working conditions and should be happy to

be given the opportunity to earn money. This is not true at all. The children were motivated

to work by the use of “Intimidation, 70-hour weeks, quota pressures, psychological and

physical abuse” (Washington). They were forced to work in dark, smoky rooms with

dangerous machinery.

Child labor is unethical and should not be allowed. They were forced to work in

bad conditions with very low pay. It causes physical and mental pain on children, some of

which, are too young to even understand what a job is. It prevents children from getting a

proper education, which in turn, traps them from getting a different job in the future.