Thursday, December 3, 2009

Child Labor - Then and Now

Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.

The magazine I blog for, Mother Jones, is named after Mary Harris Jones who spent her life working to gain basic labor rights for everyone, including children.

Sociological Images featured some really haunting images of child laborers in the United States during early industrialization. They feature the factory labor we are familiar with:


They also show other forms of work outside of the home, like the romanticized "newsie" and field laborers. One image in particular resonated with me:


The child is working with what look like clams, but it reminded me of images like this:


From the site, "A child collects recyclable materials from garbage in order to earn his living on 14-11-08 here in Guwahati."

1 comment:

  1. Children were first protected by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was easier to protect animals than children. In some ways not so very different than today.

    ReplyDelete

be nice.

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