Children’s Rights Movement
During the late 19th century one of the greatest movements occurred, the children’s rights movements. This movement brought to light all the injustices that children had to face children during these times. They had to work in harsh factories for extremely low pay. Children as low as 8 had to work with dangerous machinery in dirty and poor conditioned factories just to make ends meet for themselves and their family. People like Mother Jones, Jacob Riis and President Taft worked to make sure that children get their rights and sure enough after protests and marches children finally got justice.
Being a child during these times was not easy. They had to face all kids of injustices such as social and economic. They were pretty much forced to work in factories and sweat shops with very dangerous machinery. While working in these factories many children faced injuries such as loss of fingers and burned scalps. Some examples of how children were denied social rights are that they were discriminated against. Only mainly the richer kids got the right to an education. Children were also denied their economic rights by having to work extremely long hours for very low wages.
These kids did not go away without a fight but since they are just kids they had help from people like Mother Jones and Jacob Riis. Now with adults helping them they began to fight back. They organized protests, marches and strikes such as the
Massachusetts mill strike to make people realize the injustices they had to face. Mother Jones was one of the main children’s rights leaders. She was the bran behind this whole movement; she organized many marches such as the
Washington March where thousands of kids marched in front of the white house to try and make the president give children the rights they deserved. But sadly the president wouldn’t even see them. However even though they failed with the president they were successful in getting the word out that kids were being treated terrible.
Finally after long and hard suffering kids in the late 1800’s finally received justice. After many marches and protests people in congress realized that they meant business and in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed along with many other child labor laws. These laws stopped factories and mills from making children work long hours for little pay. It also prohibited the employment of minors in poor working conditions such as a sweat shop.
This movement has made me very grateful for the rights I have today. After doing this project I realized that children in the late 19th century had it really bad. I never really knew how important it is to have these children’s rights that I take for granted today and I don’t know what I would do without them because I probably wouldn’t like working in the same conditions that these kids had to. I also realized that this movement was pretty important in American history.
school