CONDI/T/WP. 1/1995
Working Conditions and Environment Department
Working Paper
Child labour and industrialization
Hugh Cunningham
Professor of Social History
Darwin College
University of Kent at Canterbury
United Kingdom
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Contents
1.
Traditional views of child labour and industrialization
1
2.
Children in the labour market before industrialization
2
3.
The child labour market in the process of industrialization
2
4.
The reduction of child labour
4
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Labour power
Family strategy
Technology
Legislation
Ideology
4
5
7
8
9
5.
The informal child labour market under mature industrialization
11
6.
Conclusion
11
Child labour and industrialization
In this paper I will review and reflect on recent publications on the relationship between
industrialization and child labour in the western world from the eighteenth to the early
twentieth centuries. I shall be particularly concerned with the reasons for the decline in child
labour.
1.
Traditional views of child labour and industrialization
In the first half of the twentieth century and beyond there was a consensus of opinion
that industrialization had led to an unprecedented use and exploitation of child labour. No
one pretended that children had not worked before industrialization, but that work was seen
as happening within the family and paced by the rhythms of pre-industrialization work
practices and not by the demands of the machine. Industrialization disrupted this age-old
pattern, taking children out of the family, placing them in factories, and subjecting diem to
hours and conditions of labour unimaginable in previous centuries. The locus classicus for
this exploitation of child labour was the British textile industry, and images of the 'slavery'
endured by children in Lancashire and Yorkshire became deeply embedded in the
consciousness of the west. But equally well-known was the response of philandiropists, like
the Evangelical Lord Shaftesbury, who, with the support of the factory workers, campaigned
for an amelioration of conditions, and eventually achieved it by the passage of laws which
forbade labour in factories for children under nine, and restricted its extent for older
children. These laws, once they were backed up by an inspectorate from 1833 onwards,
were seen as effective in ending the worst abuses of child labour. And from the textile
factories they could be extended to other forms of child labour which were seen as
exploitative, such as the 'gang' labour of children in agriculture, or die work of children in
the mines or the pottery industry. In this perspective, then, a campaign by philandiropists,
most of them external to the industries concerned, had eventually succeeded in putting
sufficient pressure on governments to ensure die passage of effective laws. The final cap on
this was the passage of laws which compelled children to attend school. Child labour became
a thing of the past, relatively benevolent and understandable in its pre-industrial context, but,
as it manifested itself in the industrial revolution, an offence against the nature of childhood
itself.
From a late twentieth-century perspective mis kind of account is likely to appear as
well-meaning but naive — and me account of it which I have given above accentuates the
naivety by omitting the complexity of developments which were often incorporated into
traditional accounts. An approach which is basically similar to me traditional one can still
be found, for example in Trattner (1970) where me author rejoices that "we have travelled
far along the road toward the elimination of one of the gravest social injustices in American
life" (p. 10), or in Weissbach (1989) which "tells me story of child labour reform in early
industrial France" (p. xi), or in me account of conditions in England given in Rose (1991).
The basic assumption in this approach is that child labour conditions under early
industrialization were an unmitigated evil, and mat, almough otiier factors might play a part,
properly enforced laws were me key to ending the evil.
2
2.
Children in the labour market before industrialization
The traditional view, as we have seen, assumed that prior to industrialization children
worked, but within the family and as a contribution to the family economy. Typically, if
they were boys they would be working in conditions suited to their age in agriculture, scaring
crows off crops, or keeping an eye on cows or sheep, and if they were girls they would be
helping around the house. They might also play some part in industrial production within
the home. This rather cosy view has been challenged from two rather different quarters.
First, the emphasis on a phase of proto-industrialization prior to industrialization proper has
highlighted industrial production within the home. In nearly every European country it has
been possible to identify rural or scattered village areas where industrial production (nearly
always textiles) became a dominant economic activity, and where child labour was a crucial
ingredient — so much so that any sensible couple would have a large number of children,
so valuable were they, from a very young age, as workers.1 David Levine argues that it
was in this period of rural industrialization that there was maximum use of child labour, the
demand for it dropping off with the introduction of more complex machinery and the move
into factories.2 Secondly, and somewhat at odds with the first view, it has been argued that
there was, as contemporaries saw it, a major problem of unemployment and underemployment of children before industrialization, and a considerable effort to find work
suitable for children.3 Both these views disturb the comfortable assumption of a more or
less static use of child labour before industrialization, one in which there was always
something useful which a child could do, and that, by and large, children were not asked to
do more than might reasonably be required of them in an economy which could not afford
universal schooling.
3.
The child labour market in the process of industrialization
No one disputes the fact mat the early factory masters relied heavily on child labour.
Whether or not this amounted to an increase in the overall extent of child labour depends on
the interpretation given to the pre-industrial and proto-industrial situation. But few would
dispute me conclusion reached by Berg and Hudson mat "factors both on me supply and on
the demand side of the labour market resulted in a labour force structure with high
proportions of child and female workers. They were me key elements in me labour intensity,
economic differentiation, and low production costs found in late eighteenm century
industries".4 In the British cotton industry in 1835, 43 per cent of the workers were under
18.5 In the north-eastern United States me percentage of women and children in me
manufacturing labour force rose from 10 per cent to 40 per cent from the early nineteenth
1
Medick
2
Levine, pp. 112-114, 119-120
3
Cunningham, 1990; Goldin and Sokoloff, pp. 759 and 767; Trattner, pp. 25-26
4
Berg and Hudson, p.36
5
Nardinelli, p. 109; see also Bolin-Hort, pp. 44-45
3
century up to 1832.6 From the perspective of those who had wrestled with what they saw
as the problem of child unemployment, it was one of the more positive factors in favour of
textile factories that they offered work opportunities for children. In 1852 in Manchester and
Salford, 76 per cent of all 14-year old girls and 61 per cent of all 14-year old boys were
employed in mills.7
In the 1830s it began to look as if one of the features of industrialization would be a
constant preference for child as against adult labour. It was in the cotton factories that this
scenario first emerged, either as a stick with which to belabour the whole process of
industrialization as unnatural, or as an inevitable law with which one had to reckon. Thus,
from this second perspective, the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children in
Factories in 1833 noted "the tendency of improvements in machinery to throw more and
more of the work upon children, to the displacement of adult labour". To others the causes
of this were "as steady in their operation as a physical law", and there was a prospect of the
"entire exclusion" of adults from manufacturing within a few years.8
This fear (or in some cases hope) of the displacement of adult labour by child labour
was not confined to the 1830s, nor to the textile factories. There are two other contexts in
which it was especially notable in nineteenth-century England. The first of these was the
London artisan trades which were investigated by Henry Mayhew in mid-century. The point
put to Mayhew by the tailors and the boot and shoe makers and the woodworkers was not
that machinery or technological innovation was leading to the substitution of child for adult
labour; rather the cause lay in competition and the division of labour. Masters were driven
to reduce their costs in order to survive. "Twenty years ago", a small master in the
woodworking trades told Mayhew "I don't think there was a young child at work in our
business". Now, "our trade's come to such a pass that unless a man has children to help him
he can't live at all".9 This London evidence points to a process whereby in some workshop
industries competition drove down the cost of labour by the increasing use of child labour.
In the overall process of industrialization, therefore, child labour could take on increasing
importance beyond textiles in which it had always had a base.
The second instance is a similar but late nineteenth-century fear that boy labour was
being used to break down skills, reduce labour costs and make the labour force more docile.
In the boot and shoe industry, for example, the subdivision of labour and the introduction
of machinery led to "the wholesale flooding of the market with boys, and the wholesale
discharging of men", in some cases fathers being replaced by sons. The same process was
at work among compositors, engineers and ironmoulders.10
6
Goldin and Sokoloff, p. 743. For French figures for those under 16, see Heywood, p. 104
7
Tilly and Scott, p. 83
8
Cunningham, 1991a, pp. 83-84; see also Heywood, p. 98
» Mayhew, pp. 226, 289, 302, 404 and 477-478
10
Webb, pp. 482-489; Childs, pp. 54-58
4
One might hypothesize from these examples that the process of industrialization under
conditions of relatively open competition will lead to an increasing use of child labour unless
there are strong countervailing forces. Of course this is not true of all industries; in
building or in heavy industry children could never be extensively employed, and the
possibility of substituting them for adults was strictly limited.11 But in the finishing
industries where work could be subdivided, and in some forms of mechanized work,
substitution was always a possibility and often a fact.
Looking at the child labour market as a whole, the most striking feature is the extent
to which the occupations of children were determined by gender. For girls the bulk of work
was concentrated in domestic service, textiles and dressmaking: in England and Wales in
1871, 88 per cent of girls under 15 who were in employment were in these three categories.
Boys, by contrast, were spread over a much wider range of occupations, with substantial
numbers working in mines and quarries, in metal works, in transport, and in the building
trades, as well as in the two main occupational categories, agriculture and textiles.12
By the late nineteenth century a worrying aspect of child employment was that in
certain employment categories there was a heavy concentration of children who had no
prospect of remaining in their jobs as adults. This was particularly true of the employment
of boys as messengers. In England and Wales in the early twentieth century about threequarters of all messengers were under the age of 19. This form of child labour was seen as
having no redeeming features as it had within it no educative function, and no element of
training. It is clear that there was a child labour market, distinct from other labour
markets.13
4.
The reduction of child labour
I have hypothesized that with industrialization the extent of child labour was likely to
increase unless there were strong countervailing forces. Although there remains a certain
amount of child labour in industrialized countries, no one would dispute that the level of it
is very considerably less than in the early stages of industrialization. In both Britain and
France the proportion of the age range in employment was in decline from around the midnineteenth century.14 Why did this happen? Five factors need to be considered:
a.
Labour power
The argument here is that adult male workers, confronted with a severe threat to their
skills and livelihood, had sufficient power to prevent the substitution of child labour. The
case has been most strongly argued by Lazonick who, in the context of British textile
production, showed how the mule spinners maintained their position despite technological
advance which theoretically would have undermined it. They did so partly through active
11
Heywood, pp. 104-106
12
Best, pp. 110-117; Heywood, p. 104
13
Hendrick, pp. 34-35
14
Heywood, pp. 106-107
5
resistance, but their success can also be attributed to capitalists' willingness to accommodate
a new technology (the self-acting mule) to an existing organization of labour wherein young
workers were controlled and supervised by the spinners.15 The power of labour can
therefore help to explain why the predictions of the 1830s about the substitution of child for
adult labour were not wholly realized. As an organized movement, whether internationally,
nationally, or locally, labour had an interest in controlling the supply of labour, and in using
that control to maintain or improve the wages. It was therefore likely to be opposed to any
extension of the use of child or female labour precisely because such an extension would put
pressure on adult male wages. It is not surprising to find the International Working Men's
Association in 1866 calling for international limitations on the work of children, wanting a
maximum two-hour day for those aged 9-13, and no more that six hours for children as old
as 17. The labour movement has probably been the key pressure group working for
international limitations'on child labour in the twentieth century.
On the other hand, although at an official level the labour movement has been opposed
to child labour, it has not always had die support of its members. The classic example of
this is the continued support by adults for children's half-time labour in cotton mills in early
twentieth-century England. Here the work of children was so obviously subordinate to, but
linked to, the work of adults that it posed no threat to those adults; rather the opposite.16
b.
Family strategy
The case of the half-time workers in cotton reminds us that it is important to see how
people perceive their situation in the context in which they find themselves. The family
strategy approach to child labour aims to do this.
Some historians approach family strategy from a neo-classical economic perspective,
derived from the work of Gary Becker and his belief that the goal of all households is to
maximize their own consumption. The most prominent of these with regard to child labour
is Clark Nardinelli. Nardinelli's argument is that it made economic sense for working-class
parents to take advantage of the opportunities for child employment which came with the
industrial revolution. Equally, as economic conditions improved, and as new jobs requiring
literacy became important, it made sense to withhold children from the labour market and
invest in their education. Although Nardinelli allows that legal changes and technological
advance had some impact, it was essentially on the margin, affecting the timing of change,
not its direction. With increasing prosperity and a changing economic structure, child labour
was doomed because parents so decided. Evidence from France, Germany, Japan and the
United States as well as Britain is brought together to argue that the decreasing supply of
children, as parents made decisions to keep them in education, was "most responsible for the
declining employment of children".17 Nardinelli's argument is forceful but is seriously
weakened by some unsupported generalizations about wages, and by the fact that it was in
the British textile industry, on which his case study is based, that there was the most
15
Lazonick
16
Bolin-Hort, pp. 108-147
17
Nardinelli, passim, quoting p. 149
6
persistent continuation of child labour, resistant to any rise in wages, in the form of the halftime system.18
This suggests that if the family strategy approach is to continue to have validity as an
explanation for the decline in child labour, it must incorporate a cultural dimension. A
strictly neo-classical approach fails to account for actual changes in child labour force
participation. A cultural dimension can be incorporated if a distinction is made between the
family economy, the family wage economy and the family consumer economy. In the second
of these, which is seen to coincide with the period of industrialization, families have to make
decisions about entry into the labour market, and generally "children were preferred to their
mothers as family wage earners".19 Thus in Belgium, despite the fact that real wages more
than doubled between 1853 and 1891, "children continued to work roughly according to the
same pattern as in 1853", and were contributing a higher percentage of the family income
at the latter date (roughly 31 per cent as against 22 per cent). It was their mothers who had
withdrawn from the labour market, suggesting a higher value placed on women's work in
the home than on children's education, and this despite the fact that it would have made most
economic sense for married women to work.20 Similarly in the United States cultural
factors must play a large part in explaining the fact that in 1900 foreign-born children were
much more likely to be in the labour force that any other type of children; they came from
the cultures where the contribution of children to the family economy was expected.21 This
approach has yielded insights into the kinds of strategies which families have adopted, but
it has been more successful at explaining the continuation of children in the labour market
than their exit from it. The notion of the family consumer economy is posited of a situation
where children are no longer in the labour market, and are an expense to a family; but Tilly
and Scott do not explain very clearly either the timing or the mode of transition from the
family wage economy to the family consumer economy.
There is another way in which family strategy could affect child labour. A reduction
in the birth rate would both reduce the supply of children, and perhaps indicate that parents
no longer, if ever they had, viewed their children as an economic asset. The relationship
between the birth rate and child labour has been considered in much greater depth by
development economists than by historians.22 It is not a simple or direct relationship: that
is, an increase or decrease in the birth rate could have many causes besides a calculation of
the benefits or otherwise of the child labour market. Moreover, in reading the work of
development economists, it is vital to keep a clear distinction between economists' attempts
to measure the actual value of children to a family or society, and what individuals within
that society may have perceived to have been the value; Peter Lindert rather implausibly
hopes that couples would reach the same conclusions as he does after the application of a
18
See further, Cunningham, 1991b
19
Tilly and Scott, quoting p. 134; Hareven, 1982, pp. 208-209
20
Alter
21
Hareven and Modell, pp. 350-351
22
For a discussion, see Nardinelli, pp. 46-51; see also Levine, pp. 160-214
7
formula which it takes him seven pages to explain.23 Three conclusions are perhaps
permissible from this literature as applied to the context of an industrializing West:
i.
The increase in the birth rate in conditions of proto-industrialization was due to
the removal of restraints on early marriage rather than any desire to produce
children because of their economic value. It is important to distinguish between
the rational decision making involved in restricting the number of births and the
lack of it that may be there when the birth rate is high. That is, there is no
convincing evidence that people conceived children for the sake of their
children's earnings, or that there was what R.M. Hartwell called "breeding of
children as investment goods".24
ii.
The decline in the birth rate had little to do with a desire to restrict the supply
of labour, or even of a perception of the declining market value of children.25
iii.
But when there were legal restrictions on children's labour, parents became much
more conscious of the costs of children. As Wally Seccombe has noted, in the
early twentieth century at the time when a couple might be deciding whether to
have more children, the eldest child would still be in school when earlier it
would have been earning. That might be decisive in tilting the decision against
more children.26
c.
Technology
It is often assumed that technological advance was a factor which worked against the
employment of children. The assumption seems to be that technological advance meant more
complex machinery which it was beyond the capability of children to operate.27 On the face
of it this assumption hardly seems justified. After all it was a technological advance which
initially allowed for the employment of children in spinning; the jenny was so constructed
as to be most suitable for children aged nine to twelve, and in the early phase of
mechanization "it was generally believed that child labour was integral to textile machine
design".28 Similarly at a later stage of capitalist development much technological innovation
was based on greater refinements in the division of labour which actually enhanced the
opportunities for child labour. As a Lancashire observer, C.E.B. Russell, noted in 1913 "the
evergrowing use of labour-saving appliances has led to a marked increase in the demands of
23
Linden, pp. 18-25
24
Hartwell, p. 405
25
Repetto
26
Seccombe, p. 185
27
See, e.g., Tilly and Scott, p. 178; Trattner, p. 159; Levine, p. 192; and the summary of work done in
Germany and Sweden in Bolin-Holt, pp. 11-14
28
Berg and Hudson, p. 36
8
employers for mere boys".29 There are, it is true, clear cases of technological advance
leading to the removal of children from the labour market; for example the introduction of
the pneumatic tube and the cash register enabled department stores in the United States to
dispense with "cash" boys and girls.30 At a general level, it is possible that a shortage of
labour supply might encourage employers to invest in labour-saving machinery; but equally
where labour supply was plentiful and cheap, employers had every motive to balance the
introduction of new technology against the supply of labour, or rather to bring the one into
harmony with the other. They had to do so, moreover, in a context of industrial relations
which might differ markedly from one country to another. A recent study concludes that
"there was no major connection between technological change and child labour levels in the
Lancashire cotton industry after 1830".31 In large part this was because of the
subcontracting of young workers in both spinning and weaving which was a feature of
Lancashire. By contrast, both in Scotland and in Massachusetts, child labour levels were
lower because employers had eliminated subcontracting; in Scotland they did this as a
response to the 1833 Factory Act, in Massachusetts as a deliberate strategy to change the
process of production.32 Only in Lancashire was it common to employ children on the new
power looms, and there the practice became deeply embedded in production processes in the
form of the half-time system, and was not ended until there was legislation against it in 1917.
Similarly, in contrast to Massachusetts, there was a widespread use of child labour in the
American South into the twentieth century. It is clear that it was not technology itself which
affected the level of child labour (for the technology was the same), but the decisions of
employers with regard to the organization of their workforces.
d.
Legislation
It is normal now to downplay the power of law to change behaviour. It is argued that
when law does appear to be effective it is because it is ratifying existing behaviour.
Otherwise it will be unenforceable. A typical view is that "only when child labour has
become a marginal factor in overall processes of capitalist accumulation will legislation be
effective"; or, from a very different perspective, that "the long-term decline of child labour
... probably contributed more to the enactment of child labour laws than the laws contributed
to the long-term decline of child labour".33 In considering this matter, two questions need
to be asked: first, is it possible to link the decline in child participation in the labour force
to specific legislation? And second, if so, what were the causes of legislation?
Legislation will not always bring about a reduction in child labour, but it can do so.
Thus the 1833 Factory Act in Britain had an immediate and sharp impact.34 State
29
Russell, p. 57
30
Troen, pp. 241-242
31
Bolin-Hort, p. 122
32
Bolin-Hort, p. 309
33
Goddard and White, p. 471; Nardinelli, p. 149
34
As even Nardinelli acknowledges, p. 143; for the enforcement of the 1833 Act, see the important new
interpretation by Bolin-Hort, pp. 59-100
9
legislation in the United States in the late nineteenth century "contributed significantly to the
decline in the market participation of children under the legal age".35 In the United States
at a federal level, the National Recovery Administration passed emergency measures in 1933
which removed 100,000 children from industry in the space of six months. When in 1935,
the Supreme Court held that the National Recovery Administration was unconstitutional, the
number of children in employment increased again.36 In France neither the law of 1841,
nor that of 1874 were well enforced, but even those sceptical about their impact acknowledge
that they had some effect. The 1874 law, for example, was followed by a virtual elimination
of children under 12 from the labour force.37 These factory laws were important, but there
was always the possibility that a law applying to one industry might be successful for that
industry but that the children would simply move into another unregulated one. Moreover
factory legislation was not designed to ban child labour, except for the very young, at first
those under nine. It offered a half-time system, wherein children worked for half the day
and were at school for the other half. Finally, there were always forms of child labour
which it was almost impossible to eliminate by factory laws, because a system of inspection
could not be put into operation; this was particularly true of sweated labour carried out in
the home. Much more important in removing children from the labour market were
compulsory education acts. The irony of this is that compulsory schooling was introduced
not so much to rescue children from work, but rather to stop the scandal of idle and
unemployed children. In many countries it appears to have been in the 1880s that effective
compulsory schooling was introduced. In France it is acknowledged that the consolidation
of the primary school system in the Third Republic was a major force undermining the
employment of children after 1870.38 In England compulsory schooling became accepted
within 20 or 30 years of its introduction, and the belief that the labour of schoolchildren was
wrong became internalized.
Why, then, were laws of this kind passed? There is no single answer. The 1833
Factory Act in Britain may be seen as an attempt to kill off the Ten Hours movement by
outflanking it. In France, by contrast, the initiative for legislation came from notables
concerned about the future of the nation if nothing was done for the children of the poor.
In the United States, the National Child Labour Committee was a product of the
Progressives' concern about the future of the nation, combined with a strong ideology about
childhood. Sometimes capitalists supported legislation, as in France in 1841, perhaps seeing
in it a means of eliminating unfair competition, of providing, in the modern phase, a level
playing field.
e.
Ideology
There is a final factor, which takes us full circle back to the traditional view of the
ending of child labour. Embedded in that view was a sense of outrage that children should
have been treated in this way, and a belief that it was wrong that children should work.
35
Sanderson, p. 298
36
Trattner, pp. 190-200
37
Weissbach, p. 221; see also Heywood, pp. 217-319
38
Heywood, p. 287
10
When was such a belief first articulated and what impact may it be said to have had? It
stems from the idealization of childhood by romanticism. The Romantic poets themselves,
Blake, Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge, all wrote directly about children at work, and
Coleridge actively lobbied and campaigned for a Factory Act after the Napoleonic Wars.
The belief that childhood should be "the wary life's long happy holyday" was at odds with
the reality of child labour. It is impossible to measure with any accuracy the extent and
influence of this new ideology of childhood, but it keeps cropping up in unexpected places.
In Philip Gaskell's Artisans and Machinery (1836), for example, there is a lengthy and
approving elaboration on Wordsworth's belief that "heaven is about us in our infancy". And
it is that new concept of childhood which led a Sheffield poet in the 1830s to write that "Ever
a toiling Child doth make us sad", a view unimaginable a century before. "Childhood"
became reconstructed as a state of protection and dependence.39 And this was true not only
in Britain where it fifst took root. In France "the new understanding of childhood as a
period to be prolonged and devoted to nurturing and education was a normative feature of
the comfortable classes ... by the late 1860s".40 So deep-rooted had the ideology become
that Rabbi Stephen Wise in the United States could say in 1910 that "the term child labour
is a paradox for when labour begins ... the child ceases to be".41 If, as seems probable,
this ideology of childhood had the power to motivate and activate a sufficient number of
people to campaign for an end to child labour, then its influence may have been considerable.
It needs to be seen as one part of a process which was redefining the family, putting an
emphasis on the desirability of the male head of household earning enough to provide for the
whole family, and stressing the maternal role of women.
A key question is whether this ideology reached into the working class. It is not easy
to assess working-class attitudes toward child labour. They were of course bound up with
overall family strategies in which there was a tendency to expect "children to begin working
just as soon as they were able or permitted to enter the labour force" — or, by various means
of deception before that.42 Evidence from the industrial areas of England in the midnineteenth century is of a similar kind, with indications of hostility to schooling even in
prosperous times43. A common attitude may have been regret that work for children began
at such a young age, combined with an acceptance that their contribution was crucial to the
family economy.44 Investment in education, beyond a widespread wish that children should
be literate, seems far removed from working-class reality. In the circumstances in which
they lived, any restrictions on child labour imposed by the state were likely to be received
with mixed feelings: good in so far as they prevented the grosser forms of exploitation of
child labour, but worrying if they were likely to reduce the family's earning power. Levine,
on the basis of British evidence, and Zelizer, from a United States perspective, argue that
39
Cunningham, 1991a, pp. 50-96
40
Weissbach, p. xiii
41
Zelizer, p. 55
42
Hareven, 1982, pp. 214-215, 226-227
43
Stephens, pp. 91-92, 126-128
44
e.g. Mayhew, p. 477
11
the sentimentalization of childhood within the working class was not firmly rooted until the
second quarter of the twentieth century.45 That perhaps puts it too late, but even so , given
the persistence of child labour in the United States way into the twentieth century, Zelizer
is confident that "the sentimental value of children acted as a bulwark against the market".46
Probably the safest conclusion is that within the working class an ideology of childhood may
be discounted as a major factor leading to the elimination of child labour, or to the voluntary
withdrawal of their children from it; on the other hand, an associated belief that it was not
respectable for a family to rely for its income on the work of women and children may have
been spreading in the second half of the nineteenth century.47 By contrast, within the
middle class, and amongst campaigners, the romantic ideology of the child must be counted
a major motivating factor. Furthermore it became the dominant ethos of those who were
campaigning for international agreements on restricting child labour in the twentieth century.
5.
The informal child labour market under mature industrialization
Any tendency to overemphasize the role of the law in ending child labour is quickly
tempered by consideration of the persistence of child labour long after compulsory schooling
has been introduced, and after child labour legislation has been passed. As was discovered
in early twentieth century Britain, children can work before and after school, in holidays, and
at weekends, sometimes clocking up twenty or more hours per week.48 Moreover they can
find work in sectors of the economy, such as child minding, which are very difficult to
control. It is a further feature of such work that, except in the more extreme cases, it seems
to be regarded as permissible; the law has no moral weight against it, and is without the
support of the public. It was estimated in the 1980s that four out of five of the two and a
half million schoolchildren in Britain who had jobs were breaking the labour laws at some
point, but there are no signs of government being alarmed at this.49 The transition from
education to work is always likely to be a staged one, with children taking the opportunities
which are available for informal part-time work.
6.
Conclusion
The dominant approach to the history of child labour in the industrializing West is one
which emphasizes the significance of family strategy. One of its attractions is that it appears
to restore to the key actors in the process some control over their own destiny — they, rather
than philanthropic outsiders or the state, made the decisions. But as Hareven has pointed
out, some family strategy studies have "generated new stereotypes that exaggerate the
family's ability to control its environment".50 There is similarly attraction in the view that
45
Levine, pp. 188, 193 and 203; Zelizer, p. 6
"Zelizer, p. 211
47
Levine, pp. 160-214
48
Cunningham, 1991a, pp. 176-182
49
Low Pay Unit
"Hareven, 1991, p. I l l
12
it was organized labour, both in localized industrial bargaining and in campaigning at national
and international level, which was the most effective force in ending child labour. Certainly
the emphasis on labour draws attention to the specific circumstances of each industry, and
makes it clear that the level of child labour cannot simply be read off from the state of the
economy and of technology. But most recent studies suggest that the power of labour to in
any way dictate the outcome in any situation may have been exaggerated.51 The limitations
in the family strategy and industrial labour approaches require us to bring back onto the
scene three factors which are rarely placed at the centre of interpretations: capital and
employers, the state and the law, and ideology. It would be a mistake to argue that any one
of these holds the key to a successful interpretation; rather they need to be integrated with
other approaches, within an overall acknowledgement that there is unlikely to be a major
reduction in the level of child labour without significant economic development. The most
level-headed and thorough of recent analyses rightly points to the dangers of isolating any
one factor in explaining the level of child labour, and the reasons for its decline. Bolin-Hort
argues that we need to focus attention on the production processes and the balance of forces
within them in different industrial settings, noting that employers responded in different ways
to the law and to technical possibilities, depending on their assessment of their overall
situation in the market and on the state of labour relations.
This move away from any all-embracing interpretation of the decline of child labour
in the process of industrialization will disappoint those who look for simple answers from the
past to current problems. But there is one straightforward inheritance from the experience
of industrialization in the West which it is easy to forget. Before industrialization no one
imagined that the lot of most children would or should be anything other than labour from
an early age. The interplay between romanticism and the conditions of labour in which
children worked under early industrialization led to the emergence of the view, for the first
time in history, that children had a right not to work; as an American reformer, Alexander
McKelway, put it in 1913, "childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable
rights, among which are freedom from toil for daily bread".52 McKelway had in fact many
opponents in the United States who strenuously opposed his views, but on a world stage it
was the McKelway attitude which was to become enshrined in international declarations.
Article 427 of the Peace Treaty of 1919 set before the ILO the task of "the abolition of child
labour". The traditional historiography of child labour in the industrial revolution which I
outlined at the beginning may be dated as history, but its influence has been profound in
setting an agenda for childhood in the twentieth century.
51
Bolin-Hort, pp. 199-205
52
Trattner, frontispiece
13
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