What if you had to send your child to work everyday? I hate that child labor was a thing because it is too cruel. Children worked 72-108 hours per week for as little as $1. Machine work in factories caused many injuries and fatalities; because of work, many children could not go to school.
It is not okay for children to work so many hours for many reasons. They couldn’t go to school and get an education. Children worked such long hours they barely had any time to rest or play. Those children had to work six days a week from sunup to sundown which was 11-12 hours each day with less than an hour break. I think the kids were being over-worked. This amount of work is not healthy because they couldn’t get enough sleep.
Machine work was unsafe causing injuries and fatalities. Some of the unsafe conditions in factories included inadequate airflow, poor safely techniques, and no guardrails. In 1900 there were 35,000 deaths and one million injuries, some of which were children. Sometimes hands got caught in machines and were cut off. I saw an example of a boy who lost an arm and a leg. Some kids even died from unsafe conditions.
Children should be in school and not at work in a factory or mine. School is a safer place to be. Children need to learn to read, write, and do basic math. Children are missing their childhoods, don’t take someone’s childhood away. Children started working as young as 5 and worked in child labor jobs until 16. This took up all of the years children would be going to school, playing, and spending time with friends. Since children weren’t getting an education, they couldn’t get better jobs as adults.
Even though child labor is a thing of the past in this country, I’m disappointed to know that this is still going on in other parts of the world. Children should be able to go to school, get plenty of rest, and spend their time in places with safe conditions.
