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Author: Carolyn Tuttle, Lake Forest College
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Great Britain became the first country to industrialize. Because of this, it was also the first country where the nature of children's work changed so dramatically that child labor became seen as a social problem and a political issue.
This article examines the historical debate about child labor
in Britain, Britain's political response to problems with child
labor, quantitative evidence about child labor during the 1800s, and economic explanations of the practice of child labor.
The Historical Debate about Child Labor in Britain
Child Labor before Industrialization
Children of poor and working-class families had worked for
centuries before industrialization - helping around the house or
assisting in the family's enterprise when they were able. The
practice of putting children to work was first documented in the
Medieval era when fathers had their children spin thread for them
to weave on the loom. Children performed a variety of tasks that
were auxiliary to their parents but critical to the family
economy. The family's household needs determined the family's
supply of labor and "the interdependence of work and residence,
of household labor needs, subsidence requirements, and family
relationships constituted the 'family economy'" [Tilly and Scott
(1978, 12)].
Definitions of Child Labor
The term "child labor" generally refers to children who work
to produce a good or a service which can be sold for money in the
marketplace regardless of whether or not they are paid for their
work. A "child" is usually defined as a person who is dependent
upon other individuals (parents, relatives, or government
officials) for his or her livelihood. The exact ages of
"childhood" differ by country and time period.
Preindustrial Jobs
Children who lived on farms worked with the animals or in the
fields planting seeds, pulling weeds and picking the ripe crop.
Ann Kussmaul's (1981) research uncovered a high percentage of
youths working as servants in husbandry in the sixteenth century.
Boys looked after the draught animals, cattle and sheep while
girls milked the cows and cared for the chickens. Children who
worked in homes were either apprentices, chimney sweeps, domestic
servants, or assistants in the family business. As apprentices,
children lived and worked with their master who established a
workshop in his home or attached to the back of his cottage. The
children received training in the trade instead of wages. Once
they became fairly skilled in the trade they became journeymen.
By the time they reached the age of twenty-one, most could start
their own business because they had become highly skilled
masters. Both parents and children considered this a fair
arrangement unless the master was abusive. The infamous chimney
sweeps, however, had apprenticeships considered especially
harmful and exploitative. Boys as young as four would work for a
master sweep who would send them up the narrow chimneys of
British homes to scrape the soot off the sides. The first labor
law passed in Britain to protect children from poor working
conditions, the Act of 1788, attempted to improve the plight of
these "climbing boys." Around age twelve many girls left home to
become domestic servants in the homes of artisans, traders,
shopkeepers and manufacturers. They received a low wage, and room
and board in exchange for doing household chores (cleaning,
cooking, caring for children and shopping).
Children who were employed as assistants in domestic
production (or what is also called the cottage industry) were in
the best situation because they worked at home for their parents.
Children who were helpers in the family business received
training in a trade and their work directly increased the
productivity of the family and hence the family's income. Girls
helped with dressmaking, hat making and button making while boys
assisted with shoemaking, pottery making and horse shoeing.
Although hours varied from trade to trade and family to family,
children usually worked twelve hours per day with time out for
meals and tea. These hours, moreover, were not regular over the
year or consistent from day-to-day. The weather and family events
affected the number of hours in a month children worked. This
form of child labor was not viewed by society as cruel or abusive
but was accepted as necessary for the survival of the family and
development of the child.
Early Industrial Work
Once the first rural textile mills were built (1769) and child
apprentices were hired as primary workers, the connotation of
"child labor" began to change. E.J. Hobsbawn called these
places of work "the dark satanic mills" and E. P. Thompson
described them as "places of sexual license, foul language,
cruelty, violent accidents, and alien manners" (1966, 307).
Although long hours had been the custom for agricultural and
domestic workers for generations, the factory system was
criticized for strict discipline, harsh punishment, unhealthy
working conditions, low wages, and inflexible work hours. The
factory depersonalized the employer-employee relationship and was
attacked for stripping the worker's freedom, dignity and
creativity. These child apprentices were paupers taken from
orphanages and workhouses and were housed, clothed and fed but
received no wages for their long day of work in the mill. A
conservative estimate is that around 1784 one-third of the total
workers in country mills were apprentices and that their numbers
reached 80 to 90% in some individual mills (Collier, 1964).
Despite the First Factory Act of 1802 (which attempted to improve
the conditions of parish apprentices), several mill owners were
in the same situation as Sir Robert Peel and Samuel Greg who
solved their labor shortage by employing parish apprentices.
After the invention and adoption of Watt's steam engine, mills
no longer had to locate near water and rely on apprenticed
orphans - hundreds of factory towns and villages developed in
Lancashire, Manchester, Yorkshire and Cheshire. The factory
owners began to hire children from poor and working-class
families to work in these factories preparing and spinning
cotton, flax, wool and silk.
The Child Labor Debate
What happened to children within these factory walls became a
matter of intense social and political debate that continues
today. Pessimists such as Alfred (1857), Engels (1926), Marx
(1909), and Webb and Webb (1898) argued that children worked
under deplorable conditions and were being exploited by the
industrialists. A picture was painted of the "dark satanic mill"
where children as young as five and six years old worked for
twelve to sixteen hours a day, six days a week without recess for
meals in hot, stuffy, poorly lit, overcrowded factories to earn
as little as four shillings per week. Reformers called for child
labor laws and after considerable debate, Parliament took action
and set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry into children's
employment. Optimists, on the other hand, argued that the
employment of children in these factories was beneficial to the
child, family and country and that the conditions were no worse
than they had been on farms, in cottages or up chimneys. Ure
(1835) and Clapham (1926) argued that the work was easy for
children and helped them make a necessary contribution to their
family's income. Many factory owners claimed that employing
children was necessary for production to run smoothly and for
their products to remain competitive. John Wesley, the founder of
Methodism, recommended child labor as a means of preventing
youthful idleness and vice. Ivy Pinchbeck (1930) pointed out,
moreover, that working hours and conditions had been as bad in
the older domestic industries as they were in the industrial
factories.
Factory Acts
Although the debate over whether children were exploited
during the British Industrial Revolution continues today [see
Nardinelli (1988) and Tuttle (1998)], Parliament passed several
child labor laws after hearing the evidence collected. The three
laws which most impacted the employment of children in the
textile industry were the Cotton Factories Regulation Act of 1819
(which set the minimum working age at 9 and maximum working hours
at 12), the Regulation of Child Labor Law of 1833 (which
established paid inspectors to enforce the laws) and the Ten
Hours Bill of 1847 (which limited working hours to 10 for
children and women).
The Extent of Child Labor
The significance of child labor during the Industrial
Revolution was attached to both the changes in the nature of
child labor and the extent to which children were employed in the
factories. Cunningham (1990) argues that the idleness of children
was more a problem during the Industrial Revolution than the
exploitation resulting from employment. He examines the Report
on the Poor Laws in 1834 and finds that in parish after
parish there was very little employment for children. In
contrast, Cruickshank (1981), Hammond and Hammond (1937),
Nardinelli (1990), Redford (1926), Rule (1981), and Tuttle (1999)
claim that a large number of children were employed in the
textile factories. These two seemingly contradictory claims can
be reconciled because the labor market for child labor was not a
national market. Instead, child labor was a regional phenomenon
where a high incidence of child labor existed in the
manufacturing districts while a low incidence of children were
employed in rural and farming districts.
Since the first reliable British Census that inquired
about children's work was in 1841, it is impossible to compare
the number of children employed on the farms and in cottage
industry with the number of children employed in the factories
during the heart of the British industrial revolution. It is
possible, however, to get a sense of how many children were
employed by the industries considered the "leaders" of the
Industrial Revolution - textiles and coal mining. Although there
is still not a consensus on the degree to which industrial
manufacturers depended on child labor, research by several
economic historians have uncovered several facts.
Estimates of Child Labor in Textiles
Using data from an early British Parliamentary Report
(1819[HL.24]CX), Freuenberger, Mather and Nardinelli concluded
that "children formed a substantial part of the labor force" in
the textile mills (1984, 1087). They calculated that while only
4.5% of the cotton workers were under 10, 54.5% were under the
age of 19 - confirmation that the employment of children and
youths was pervasive in cotton textile factories (1984, 1087).
Tuttle's research using a later British Parliamentary
Report (1834(167)XIX) shows this trend continued. She
calculated that children under 13 comprised roughly 10 to 20 % of
the work forces in the cotton, wool, flax, and silk mills in
1833. The employment of youths between the age of 13 and 18 was
higher than for younger children, comprising roughly 23 to 57% of
the work forces in cotton, wool, flax, and silk mills.
Cruickshank also confirms that the contribution of children to
textile work forces was significant. She showed that the growth
of the factory system meant that from one-sixth to one-fifth of
the total work force in the textile towns in 1833 were children
under 14. There were 4,000 children in the mills of Manchester;
1,600 in Stockport; 1,500 in Bolton and 1,300 in Hyde (1981,
51).
The employment of children in textile factories continued to
be high until mid-nineteenth century. According to the British
Census, in 1841 the three most common occupations of boys
were Agricultural Labourer, Domestic Servant and Cotton
Manufacture with 196,640; 90,464 and 44,833 boys under 20
employed, respectively. Similarly for girls the three most common
occupations include Cotton Manufacture. In 1841, 346,079 girls
were Domestic Servants; 62,131 were employed in Cotton
Manufacture and 22,174 were Dress-makers. By 1851 the three most
common occupations for boys under 15 were Agricultural Labourer
(82,259), Messenger (43,922) and Cotton Manufacture (33,228) and
for girls it was Domestic Servant (58,933), Cotton Manufacture
(37,058) and Indoor Farm Servant (12,809)
(1852-53[1691-I]LXXXVIII, pt.1). It is clear from these findings
that children made up a large portion of the work force in
textile mills during the nineteenth century. Using returns from
the Factory Inspectors, S. J. Chapman's (1904) calculations
reveal that the percentage of child operatives under 13 had a
downward trend for the first half of the century from 13.4% in
1835 to 4.7% in 1838 to 5.8% in 1847 and 4.6% by 1850 and then
rose again to 6.5% in 1856, 8.8% in 1867, 10.4% in 1869 and 9.6%
in 1870 (1904, 112).
Estimates of Child Labor in Mining
Children and youth also comprised a relatively large
proportion of the work forces in coal and metal mines in Britain.
In 1842, the proportion of the work forces that were children and
youth in coal and metal mines ranged from 19 to 40%. A larger
proportion of the work forces of coal mines used child labor
underground while more children were found on the surface of
metal mines "dressing the ores" (a process of separating the ore
from the dirt and rock). By 1842 one-third of the underground
work force of coal mines was under the age of 18 and one-fourth
of the work force of metal mines were children and youth
(1842[380]XV). In 1851 children and youth (under 20) comprised
30% of the total population of coal miners in Great Britain.
After the Mining Act of 1842 was passed which prohibited girls
and women from working in mines, fewer children worked in mines.
The Reports on Sessions 1847-48 and 1849 Mining Districts
I (1847-48[993]XXVI and 1849[1109]XXII) and The Reports on
Sessions 1850 and 1857-58 Mining Districts II
(1850[1248]XXIII and 1857-58[2424]XXXII) contain statements from
mining commissioners that the number of young children employed
underground had diminished.
In 1838, Jenkin (1927) estimates that roughly 5,000 children
were employed in the metal mines of Cornwall and by 1842 the
returns from The First Report show as many as 5,378
children and youth worked in the mines. In 1838 Lemon collected
data from 124 tin, copper and lead mines in Cornwall and found
that 85% employed children. In the 105 mines that employed child
labor, children comprised from as little as 2% to as much as 50%
of the work force with a mean of 20% (Lemon, 1838). According to
Jenkin the employment of children in copper and tin mines in
Cornwall began to decline by 1870 (1927, 309).
Explanations for Child Labor
The Supply of Child Labor
Given the role of child labor in the British Industrial
Revolution, many economic historians have tried to explain why
child labor became so prevalent. A competitive model of the labor
market for children has been used to examine the factors that
influenced the demand for children by employers and the supply of
children from families. The majority of scholars argue that it
was the plentiful supply of children that increased employment in
industrial work places turning child labor into a social problem.
The most common explanation for the increase in supply is poverty
- the family sent their children to work because they desperately
needed the income. Another common explanation is that work was a
traditional and customary component of ordinary people's lives.
Parents had worked when they were young and required their
children to do the same. The prevailing view of childhood for the
working-class was that children were considered "little adults"
and were expected to contribute to the family's income or
enterprise. Other less commonly argued sources of an increase in
the supply of child labor were that parents either sent their
children to work because they were greedy and wanted more income
to spend on themselves or that children wanted out of the house
because their parents were emotionally and physically abusive.
Whatever the reason for the increase in supply, scholars agree
that since mandatory schooling laws were not passed until 1876,
even well-intentioned parents had few alternatives.
The Demand for Child Labor
Other compelling explanations argue that it was demand, not
supply, that increased the use of child labor during the
Industrial Revolution. One explanation came from the
industrialists and factory owners - children were a cheap source
of labor that allowed them to stay competitive. Managers and
overseers saw other advantages to hiring children and pointed out
that children were ideal factory workers because they were
obedient, submissive, likely to respond to punishment and
unlikely to form unions. In addition, since the machines had
reduced many procedures to simple one-step tasks, unskilled
workers could replace skilled workers. Finally, a few scholars
argue that the nimble fingers, small stature and suppleness of
children were especially suited to the new machinery and work
situations. They argue children had a comparative advantage with
the machines that were small and built low to the ground as well
as in the narrow underground tunnels of coal and metal mines. The
Industrial Revolution, in this case, increased the demand for
child labor by creating work situations where they could be very
productive.
Influence of Child Labor Laws
Whether it was an increase in demand or an increase in supply,
the argument that child labor laws were not considered much of a
deterrent to employers or families is fairly convincing. Since
fines were not large and enforcement was not strict, the implicit
tax placed on the employer or family was quite low in comparison
to the wages or profits the children generated [Nardinelli
(1980)]. On the other hand, some scholars believe that the laws
reduced the number of younger children working and reduced labor
hours in general [Chapman (1904) and Plener (1873)].
Despite the laws there were still many children and youth
employed in textiles and mining by mid-century. Booth calculated
there were still 58,900 boys and 82,600 girls under 15 employed
in textiles and dyeing in 1881. In mining the number did not show
a steady decline during this period, but by 1881 there were
30,400 boys under 15 still employed and 500 girls under 15. See
below.
Table 1: Child Employment, 1851-1881
| Industry & Age Cohort |
1851 |
1861 |
1871 |
1881 |
Mining
Males under 15 |
37,300 |
45,100 |
43,100 |
30,400 |
| Females under 15 |
1,400 |
500 |
900 |
500 |
| Males 15-20 |
50,100 |
65,300 |
74,900 |
87,300 |
| Females over 15 |
5,400 |
4,900 |
5,300 |
5,700 |
Total under 15 as
% of work force |
13% |
12% |
10% |
6% |
Textiles and Dyeing
Males under 15 |
93,800 |
80,700 |
78,500 |
58,900 |
| Females under 15 |
147,700 |
115,700 |
119,800 |
82,600 |
| Males 15-20 |
92,600 |
92,600 |
90,500 |
93,200 |
| Females over 15 |
780,900 |
739,300 |
729,700 |
699,900 |
Total under 15 as
% of work force |
15% |
19% |
14% |
11% |
Source: Booth (1886, 353-399).
Explanations for the Decline in Child Labor
There are many opinions regarding the reason(s) for the
diminished role of child labor in these industries. Social
historians believe it was the rise of the domestic ideology of
the father as breadwinner and the mother as housewife, that was
imbedded in the upper and middle classes and spread to the
working-class. Economic historians argue it was the rise in the
standard of living that accompanied the Industrial Revolution
that allowed parents to keep their children home. Although
mandatory schooling laws did not play a role because they were so
late, other scholars argue that families started showing an
interest in education and began sending their children to school
voluntarily. Finally, others claim that it was the advances in
technology and the new heavier and more complicated machinery,
which required the strength of skilled adult males, that lead to
the decline in child labor in Great Britain. Although child labor
has become a fading memory for Britons, it still remains a social
problem and political issue for developing countries today.
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