Child Labor
Child labor during the 1800s was brutal. Children were being used
to do labor that no one else wanted. Dangerous deadly work that put their
lives at rick everyday. Working conditions were terrible consisting of dirty air, germs, and moving hazardous machinery. The use of child labor
during the industrial revolution was tolerable because it was no problem
to take advantage of children, parents supported it, and no one argued for
the rights of children. Factory owners had the life. They had all their work
done for them for usually less than $5 a day. The problem arose from
mines and factories employing children under the age of 10. Children
were being used for farm based agriculture, service industries, prostitution,
manufacturing, and even soldiers, most under the age of 10.
One main reason children were forced to work at such young ages
was because they were easy to take advantage of. Children, for the
most part are easy to control, helpless, vulnerable, and weak. The
government knew this and used it to their advantage. Governments
wanted more children than adults and needed child labor considering the
conditions some countries were in at the time. Factory owners treated
children as slaves and give them no cleansed or safe working
environment. There were some major effects of child labor such as brutal
conditions, STDs, violence, no education, and in some cases, death.
"Police recently raided a Bangkok sweatshop that produced paper cups
and rescued 31 children who had been locked in a small room. Not one
was older than 13....They were emaciated and suffering from malnutrition.
They had been beaten so badly that they needed to be carried to
freedom....They told of being thrashed if they failed to make 700 cups a
day, by hand....the owner....gave them amphetamine tablets [to keep them
awake and working longer hours]....One 13 year old told police he had
been beaten unconscious twice when he tried to...