Child Labour In America
America’s Unseen Child Labor Issue.
In 19th century America hundreds of thousands of children toiled to bring home a paycheck to their families. Now, workers in the U.S. who are less than 16 years of are protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. These, known as child labor laws help insure that children are not harmed in unsafe jobs and have the opportunity to attend school. Although child Labor in America seems to have been "solved" or eradicated, American companies are still outsourcing labor to children in other countries with poor working conditions and low pay that children in the 19th century experienced.
The book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is about a Lithuanian Family that moved to America in hopes of prosperity. In this book, one of the children is sent to work to support the family. “At the end of the week [little Stanislovas] would carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour...” If a week’s pay for a child was $3 a week for an 8-9 hour work day, according to the Dollar Times inflation Calculator, in 2015 they would be bringing home about $70 per week. In a full time (40 hour) one week, the median weekly income for an adult in 2015 …show more content…
At the time, the country saw no problem with children going to work until unions brought into light the conditions working children faced. In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was formed, and advocated for abolishing child labor. It really wasn’t until the start of the great depression until the country’s political views on child labor shifted. It was decided that jobs that children were holding should instead be occupied by adults. So with the help of the NCLC and other aggressive unions against child labor, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1936 became federal law. This was the first time in the U.S that age and pay restrictions were governed by federal law in the United
In 19th century America hundreds of thousands of children toiled to bring home a paycheck to their families. Now, workers in the U.S. who are less than 16 years of are protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. These, known as child labor laws help insure that children are not harmed in unsafe jobs and have the opportunity to attend school. Although child Labor in America seems to have been "solved" or eradicated, American companies are still outsourcing labor to children in other countries with poor working conditions and low pay that children in the 19th century experienced.
The book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is about a Lithuanian Family that moved to America in hopes of prosperity. In this book, one of the children is sent to work to support the family. “At the end of the week [little Stanislovas] would carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour...” If a week’s pay for a child was $3 a week for an 8-9 hour work day, according to the Dollar Times inflation Calculator, in 2015 they would be bringing home about $70 per week. In a full time (40 hour) one week, the median weekly income for an adult in 2015 …show more content…
At the time, the country saw no problem with children going to work until unions brought into light the conditions working children faced. In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was formed, and advocated for abolishing child labor. It really wasn’t until the start of the great depression until the country’s political views on child labor shifted. It was decided that jobs that children were holding should instead be occupied by adults. So with the help of the NCLC and other aggressive unions against child labor, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1936 became federal law. This was the first time in the U.S that age and pay restrictions were governed by federal law in the United