At the turn of the 1900s, children’s use in the labor force was extensive and permeated many industries. As the country developed and expanded the industrialization at the turn of the Twentieth century, no rules were governing how the workers were to be treated. The business was conducted as the owner saw fit. If the owner wanted a good wage and working conditions for the company, that is what the workers received. Vice versa to the bad was more often the situation. The wages were barely enough or not enough to live on in most cases.
Injuries and even deaths happened with striking regularity to adults and children alike. In a 1912 congressional hearing, Camella Teoli, age fourteen, testified how she got into the factory work and was involved with the strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.[1] She testified that she started working just a few weeks and was seriously injured by one of the machines. It pulled her hair so severely that she lost part of her scalp. She told the congressman that she was in the hospital for months. This testimony became the focal point of a movement that strove for better working conditions in factories and textile mills.
The need for improved wages was another element of the same strike and testimony by Teoli. She admitted that she regularly received $6.55 a week but received as little as $2.64 in pay. Her father received just $7.70 a week. Given the type of factory, the work was seasonal in that more hours in certain parts of the year and fewer hours in others. Teoli answered when asked why she was part of the strike that took place at American Woolen Company, “because I didn’t get enough to eat at home.”[2] With the strike that made national headlines on the topic of the committee meeting, obviously, many others felt the same as Teoli did and were tired of being hungry.
This research is to be folded into a more extensive assignment for the History of Entrepreneurship course in the 1900s. One cannot possibly look at factory work in the early Twentieth century without seeing the difference in how workers were addressed at that time of the early 1900s and then later after Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office in 1932-1945. The challenge for stopping child labor in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century laws is that each state, which is often the best approach for these types of things, was getting in the way in this particular topic.[3] The problem at hand was those small children, not even teenagers yet, worked in terrible conditions for long hours. They were not given the benefit of a good education because they spent too many hours working.
When The New Deal era began in the 1930s, labor improvements were already underway, though they had not fully arrived. The First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a particular focus on children and women in the workforce.[4] Unions had picked up usage in factories and other textile businesses, giving the workers a certain level of leverage even before the Roosevelts took office at the height of the Great Depression. The conditions were improved, but child labor was still not moved on a national level until the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938.
Even though Teoli testified in 1912 about the terrible conditions, wages, and injuries, congress did not act until 1938 to improve workers’ needs substantially. With so many people trying to find work after the Great Depression, employers had the upper hand until the government acted on the workers half to do more than even unions could.
Bibliography
Bickford, John H. and Brigid O’Farrell. “Exploring Eleanor Roosevelt’s Labor Advocacy using Primary and Secondary Sources.” Social Studies Research and Practice 14, no. 1 (2019): 64-77, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fexploring-eleanor-roosevelt-s-labor-advocacy%2Fdocview%2F2243925249%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
Ebert, Justus. The Trial of a New Society. Ohio: I.W.W. Publishing Bureau, n.d. The Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600–1926 (accessed November 18, 2021). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/Q0100336916/MMLT?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-MMLT&xid=db7d32b9&pg=1.
Knight, Michale. Special to The New York Times. “Lawrence, Mass., Reliving 1912 Strike: Strike was a Watershed Emerging from Long Decline Memory of a Common Bond the New Immigrants Coming in.” New York Times (1923-), Apr 27, 1980. 26, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fhistorical-newspapers%2Flawrence-mass-reliving-1912-strike%2Fdocview%2F121235613%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
Kornbluh, Joyce L. Hearings on the Strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, National Archive – House Document No. 671, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 181–184.
Robbins, Mark W. “Bread, Roses, and Other Possibilities: The 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike in Historical Memory.” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 40, no. 1-2 (2012): 94.
Schuman, Michael. “History of Child Labor in the United States—part 1: Little Children Working.” Monthly Labor Review (2017): A1.
Schuman, Michael. “History of Child Labor in the United States—part 2: The Reform Movement.” Monthly Labor Review (2017;1915;): B1.
[1] Joyce L. Kornbluh, Hearings on the Strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, (National Archive – House Document No. 671, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 181.
[2] Ibid., 183–184.
[3] Michael Schuman. “History of Child Labor in the United States—part 2: The Reform Movement.” (Monthly Labor Review, 2017;1915: B1).
[4] John H. Bickford, and Brigid O’Farrell. “Exploring Eleanor Roosevelt’s Labor Advocacy using Primary and Secondary Sources.” (Social Studies Research and Practice 14, no. 1, 2019): 64-65.