“Better to starve fighting than to starve working.”, these were the words of the children and the families of the children who worked during the 1870’s through  1938. When the children’s civil rights movement began and ended. The children worked vigorously everyday, they worked long hours for low wages and under hazardous working conditions for an average of about 60 hours a week. I couldn’t imagine doing that, could you? Today because of these children, their families, and the people that fought and devoted their efforts into giving children rights, respect, and education they deserve, we no longer have to work endless hours and put tremendous effort into supporting our families. Also because of the many strikes and protest efforts made by these children and the people that supported the cause, children can now go to school and are required to go to school until a certain age, there are also laws to protect children against child labor, and to work at dangerous jobs you have to be at a certain age.

            The owners of mills and other dangerous working environments like factories made kids work for long hours with little pay, keeping most profit for themselves and making children suffer horrible injuries for their companies. Children as young as eight years old had injuries as serious as losing fingers and other limbs and body parts. An example of this was Camella Teoli which was injured in a machine that pulled her hair and scalp when she was just fourteen years old working in the woolen mill for the American Woolen Co. after this incident the work week shortened, but they sped up the machines. Camella Teoli spoke to congress about this tragic event in March 1912 where she explained what happened and what the company she worked for did to assist her. She told Congress that the only thing that the company she worked for did to assist her. She told Congress that the only thing that the company did was pay for her medical bills but still left her without payment. Her testimony in March 1912 showed how careless and incompetent the owners and bosses of the factories were about their machines and workers.

            To accomplish their goal of having their voices heard and their demands met children went on strikes and protested whenever they felt that the companies that they needed to help support their families were being unfair. For instance, newsies paid 50 cents for 100 papers and sold each, the newspaper company raised the price of papers from 50 cents for 100 papers and sold each paper for 1 cent each, the newspaper company raised the price of papers from 50 cents to 60 cents making it harder for children to profit while selling these newspapers. Newsies went on strike, they refused to sell and buy newspapers until the companies lowered their prices. When companies tried to hire new newsies to sell papers the other children would burn, destroy, and sabotage the newspapers. With the newspapers not being bought or sold about 2,000 newsies were not working. Kid Blink encouraged the newsies to be persistent and stay strong he advised them not to give up or throw in the towel. He had confidence that this would make the companies lower their prices. This eventually worked, the newspaper companies agreed to lower the prices of newspapers and the newsies were able to make a profit and continue their work. The companies soon realized that there was power in numbers.

            The achievements and outcome of these kids work and continuous dedication was that the Supreme Court finally agreed with Congress and the public’s opinion and ended child labor; they prohibited and put limits on jobs based on age. The Supreme Court enforced a law saying that no child can work at any full time job, except on a farm, if he or she is under fourteen years old. Adolescents must go to school until they turning 16 and to work at dangerous jobs, such as mining, adolescents must be eighteen. This was a relief for children, they didn’t have to work 60 hours a week and they had the opportunity to go to school and get an education. To these children they were free and they had the opportunity to lead a much better life. They accomplished that because they refused to wave the white flag they never surrendered or gave up the fight for their cause. These children were happy for what we take for granted today and they rejoiced when they were able to get an education instead of slaving over a machine.

            This movement was important to study because without these children fighting for their rights, we would not be able to have the kinds of opportunities that we do today and we would probably be forced into working as hard and vigorously as they did everyday. Without these children being strong enough to fight these companies and have courage to strike and protest against the companies and have courage to strike and protest against the companies and voice their opinion to the Supreme Court, America would not be as educated as it is today. Most of the children would have been working instead of learning. Today, kids and adults, both take these rights for granted. Children aren’t happy to go to school 5 day a week for 6 hours a day while just a few years ago children the same age weren’t going to school, they were going to work and it wasn’t for just 6 hours its was for 60 hours and 7 days a week. Adults today may find that sometimes their job is to difficult or it takes to much time but years ago children less than half their age had to work more hours than them and had harsher safety conditions to work under. Adults today rarely get serious injuries such as your scalp being pulled off but yet they complain about their workweek. Today everyone in society gets breaks, next time you take a break think of the children who never got any breaks, who had to work without stopping and had to help support their families instead of actually being what we call today a “normal, happy child”.