After thirty years of muckraking here in America, it is my pleasure to finally retire and have more opportunities to spend time with my loving daughter. I have had a wonderful experience here at Barnwell Inc., and it's a shame that it's going to end, but as they say, those times come. Before leaving, I would like to reflect on my experiences here and discuss child labor, a topic I have studied throughout my career.
Child labor is defined as the gainful employment of children below and age determined by law or custom. The rise of child labor began in the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, many families had to find someone to work for them to survive. Later, when European immigrants traveled here, they weren't strangers to hard working conditions. Along with this, they also suggested that children should work. By the late 1800s, there were 1,600 laws on child labor in the United States.
Throughout the history of child labor, children have worked many jobs. The most common child labor jobs include factory and mining work. In factories, if children are small enough to reach machines, they are made textile assistants. These poor children work six days a week, all year long, and put in anywhere from twelve to nineteen hours a day. For being the mother of a thirty-year-old daughter, this is, to me, pure child abuse. My daughter was lucky enough that she never had to go through the pain these poor children under the age of sixteen have to go through.
From my time at Barnwell Inc., working as a muckraker, I have studied extensively on child labor and on how we can help stop this abuse. Based on my research, Barnwell Inc. and I have identified two solutions to end this: the first is encouraging education. All children deserve a well-rounded education. They all need to learn to read, write, and develop social and professional skills, and only a good education can provide the nurturing skills that will help them as adults. Child labor, children working in factories and mines, will not provide them with these skills. For this solution, I believe we should provide children with free and compulsory education until they reach the minimum age for employment.
The second solution Barnwell Inc. and I have come up with, which will hopefully end child labor, is obvious. Child workers must be replaced by adult workers. In these tough times after the war, many parents are unemployed, and many children are still working. If these working children are replaced by their unemployed parents, it would most likely result in higher family incomes, since adults are generally paid better than children. To add to this, the resulting rise in production costs would have very little impact on export sales.
For these past thirty years working here at Barnwell Inc., I feel as if child labor has not gotten better. It has gotten worse. It has changed in a very negative way. Since the beginning of the 1920s, even after the war, it has become critical here in the U.S. that children work in factories all over the country. They are spinning cotton and making clothes, even though adults can clearly do it themselves. To add to this, working conditions for the children are terrible and unsafe. They get paid half as much as adults do, and they are not respected. I hope that as I leave Barnwell Inc. and as the century continues, child labor will become nothing more than a thing of the past. Children don't deserve to be treated the way they are. They deserve an education and a life that every child dreams of. A life that is stress-free so they are able to run around, make friends, play, and be, well, children. Until I return to you, Barnwell Inc., good luck, and I hope this gets resolved soon.
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Who am I, you ask?
My name is Fiona Willman. I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and moved to New York City in 1890 to work for Barnwell Inc. Since I first saw it in the factories, I have been against child labor, and I still am. I hope that in the future the abuse will end and children will be able to live happily, just the way children should.51Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPB7sg6ImEp
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