Child labor is defined as work that is mentally and physically dangerous to children, deprives children’s opportunity to attend school, and pays children less than adults. The rise of child labor in the United States began between the late 1700s and early 1800s and reached its peak during the Industrial Revolution. 18% of children, under the age of 16, labored. Poverty is the main cause why children are sent to work. Also, children have a lot of energy with quick fingers which could do the task fast and accurately. Business leaders treat children unkindly. Their inhuman reaction consists of the poor quality working surroundings which would endanger children’s life, leasing dirty, crummy, cold houses while they still have to pay rent back, and paying minimum wages that are only enough for keeping them alive. Still, the idea of child labor exists and is practiced nowadays. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, more than 25% of kids are engaged in child labor in the world’s poorest countries. Honestly, child labor is immoral and wrong. Here is my criticism from three different perspectives: health, education, and wage.
Child labor puts children in hazardous work; its working nature or the circumstances is likely to harm the health, safety, or morale of children when the work is carried out. Child labor inhibits mental and physical growth of children, eventually withering into a very weak person afterwards. For children in the mills who worked 11-12 hour days with 5-6 days a week, they frequently had broken fingers or lost their fingers while they were working on high powered machinery with little training. Children in the mine who worked 14 hours a day developed lung disease because of the bad ventilation. It is unfair that business owners treat children like a money-making tool, keeping them sitting in factories and running all day long doing boring tasks, which limit their physical growth. Working children were harmed because of industrial accidents on unsafe machinery. Children were even infected with diseases caused by the unsafe working conditions in which they were exposed. A 2019 study conducted in Tehran, Iran investigated the prevalence of viral infections (HIV, HBV, and HCV) showing that child labor with trading sex was significantly associated with infectious virus. Children are the hope of human beings and they need to grow and be protected, but unsafe working conditions put children’s life in danger.
Child labor hinders children’s education by exploiting children’s right to receive education, or forcing them to leave or stop school early for work. Child labor is often positively linked to the unavailability of schools or poor quality education. Business owners provided children little education regarding how to operate the machine safely. Even though education was nearby, children had no time to receive it because of the long working hours. A study of 450 families in Varanasi district in India show that 90 % of children between ages 5 and 14 are involved in saree weaving. Among 1200 and 1300 working children, only 52 students go to school. Child labor takes away children’s right to earn, which is unbeneficial for a child, as children would not know how to do the tasks, resulting in much harm. The long hours demanded by business owners make going to school practically impossible for children. Maybe children try to work and attend school at the same time, but they would find that they don’t have enough time to study or review, then forcing them to miss classes or get tired at schools, and eventually fall behind or drop out. Abou, a 15-year-old boy now, starting his work at a cocoa farm in Ivory Coast when he was 10, says that “ I came here to make money for going to school, but I haven’t been to school for five years.” Without proper education, children coming from poor families will have higher possibilities to continue the cycle of poverty and their future children might become child labor again.
Child labor provides business owners an opportunity to do economic exploitation to children with minimum wage just enough for them to cover the cost of living. Business owners pay children lower wages based on their own benefits of saving their own money. During the Industrial Revolution, children were paid less than 10 cents an hour for fourteen hour days of work. Children have no choice but to accept the low wage. Once children receive the payment, they would give it to their mothers and spend it in the interests of the family. Harvard University conducted a study “Tainted Carpets” in 2014 found that the carpet working children receive an average hourly wage of $0.211 to support their families. Children make up a majority of a business’s employees, and they deserve to have better pay. Some children are the main source of income for their families. Even though businessmen need to produce the most amount of products at the least amount of money, they still need to pay their employees to work. They assume children are small, so they can give small amounts of money to them. Low wages are unacceptable and would have working children to start a union and go on strikes. Minimum wages are unethical and unfair to children who support their families. Business owners should take the dangerous working conditions and long working hours into consideration.
Children in the industrial revolution were very mistreated, like having low wages, restraining physical and mental growth, and not having the right for education. Although children are full of energy and could do things quickly with their small hands, they still may get hurt because of the dangerous working conditions and with little or no educational background related to the work. This being said that education is needed for children to receive the knowledge and skills for the tasks. Business owners should not deprive children’s right to learn because education is the most effective strategy to break the cycle of poverty in poor families and pursue a better life in the future. Children make up a majority of the employees in factories and help business owners making money, so they demand better pay. Nowadays lots of children have Saturday jobs or part time work after school. It is not saying that children should not work. It is a valuable learning experience for children to work part-time jobs after school to learn how to be independent and understand the concept of making money. But the Government should make laws saying how long children can work for, the types of jobs they can and cannot do, and what the minimum age for working is.
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