The Issue of Child Labor During Industrial Revolution

The documentary 'The Children Who Built Victorian Britain' discusses the use of children slaves in the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. This documentary highlights the job the children had to do, where they came from, their inspiration, and the movement of laws against it. Before the Industrial Revolution, people used to makes their products in their homes utilizing basic machines, however in the late seventeenth century everything changed due to technology advancements. They began to execute new technologies utilizing which produced a merchandise at a bigger scale.

The steam motor, iron and material ventures were one of the numerous businesses that assumed a key job to improve economy, transportation and living conditions in the late seventeenth century. Without the mechanical transformation we wouldn't have the innovation that we have these days, yet the modern upset additionally brought a dim part for history, the misuse of children. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries creators and business visionaries had the option to be fruitful in view of their brains and developments because they used one key factor, children.

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These kids played a fundamental job in the modern upheaval and were the start of the first generation workers in Britain.

The producers and the innovators got the credit for the achievement of the Industrial Revolution. The eighteenth and nineteenth hundreds of years business people and designers utilized children since they could be made to adjust. That, however numerous machines were explicitly intended to be worked by youngsters with their agile fingers. As per Charles Bacon, child slavery was like bondage in that they remained in lines holding on to be offered to the most astounding bidder.

They were known as the white captives of England. There were more children to be employed in light of the fact that people were starting to wed more youthful, because of no remaining elder to give consent on when they could marry. With the marriage age lower, ladies were increasingly fruitful, could create two more infants than expected, and brought about more kids to be enlisted and a half raise in the population. They were treated poorly and were more vulnerable because, unlike the factories, they were far away from friends, family, or anyone to look after them or see how they were being treated. A “human scarecrow” was a job for a 6 year old, where they would spend all day by themselves in the fields scaring crows. When a girl tried to flee the factory in 1856, she was sent to the punishment room in the attic of the house, where she was locked for a week [1]. Here the windows were blacked out, and the bed was a blanket on the floor. Sarah Carpenter describes her boss as the devil because he kept them locked up for fear they would run away. When a girl attempted to flee the factory, he chopped off all her hair as punishment, which was severe for a female. “The dread of being beaten if we could not keep up with our work was a sufficient impulse to keep us to it if we could” [2]. Works like chimney sweeping caused rubbing and terrible blisters on the arms and feet of the children where they had to keep themselves suspended, which took weeks to heal. Also, breathing was difficult and they often inhaled soot and other fumes.

During William River’s time serving as a soldier, he was wounded twice in the arm, once in the face, and was shot in the leg. He boarded the ship Victory at the age of six, and served a total of ten years. The Marine Society was concerned with the growing number of teenage boys on the streets, so they thought to send them to the seas. Those who couldn’t learn a trade in the factories were also sent to the seas. William Parkers witnessed the sinking of a ship, a man’s head blown off, and his own crew crying. They couldn’t send boats to help, as they would have been sunk as well by too many people attempting to climb on. War and death gradually deteriorated a boy soldier's mental health over time, as while at sea they were fine, once they got out many were reported to lunatic asylums. Alexander Sommerville was a child worker who was kind and protected his siblings and friends by mending his siblings shoes until late midnight, and then rising early in the morning to do the heavy farm and animal work, as well as clean the house.

Some people might argue that child labor wasn’t entirely negative, as the children got regular meals, an education, a roof over their heads, and got to learn a trade. And would include Joseph Arch’s experience, which was more positive than others because he earned eight shillings a week, and worked harder to make something of himself rather than being forced. But the truth is that children as young as eight were not considered children because they had to tend to other children, help their mothers with chores, and had to worry about saving their money for a living rather than wasting it on sweet things or other items children would normally want. They considered when someone starts work, they cease to be a child anymore. “A survey of 982 mills in England and Scotland in 1835, before the Factory Act of 1833 had fully taken effect, indicated that 43% of the workforce was under eighteen” [3].