Shocking images show conditions kids as young as FOUR worked in to earn under 40p a day in the US
SHOCKING images show the squalid conditions that children as young as four had to work in order to earn less than half a dollar a day.
Life for some youngsters in the United States in the early 20th Century was painfully grim with gruelling hours, backbreaking work and no playtime.
These remarkable photos were captured by Lewis Hine between 1908 and 1924.
He was working as an investigator for the United States’ National Child Labor Committee.
The organisation was designed to promote the rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and youth in relation to their work.
His photos show pre-teens smoking whilst rolling cigars in a factory and black-faced children working in dark and dangerous mines as coal “breakers”.
They could spend hours in the gloomy, dust-filled darkness patiently waiting to open trapdoors for mining carts to pass through.
GRIM LIFE
The pictures also show a four-year-old name Mary shucking oysters alongside her mother who is struggling to juggle her work and her new-born child.
Children were forced to work in factories, on farms, or mills which left little or no time for schooling or recreational activities.
Teachers would give lessons to empty desks as absent students toiled away to pick that season’s beet.
Hine’s photos and campaigning helped raise awareness of the plight many children of the age faced.
Although child labour in the UK was prevalent in the Victorian age the problem was arguably worse across the Atlantic.
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After many repeated and failed attempts to pass a Fair Labor Standards Act, it wasn’t until 1938 that the legislation was passed by Congress.
The act fixed minimum ages of 16 for work during school hours, 14 for certain jobs after school, and 18 for dangerous work.
Today all the states and the U.S. federal government have laws regulating child labour.
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