Can you image waking up before the sun rose to go to work in order to support your family? This is what children had to do.  The child labor movement lasted from the 1870’s to 1938.  The cause for this movement was to fight against child labor, unhealthy and dangerous working conditions, and for long work hours and low wages.  Children worked 60 hours a week and received little pay.  Most Americans wanted their children in school but instead they were working to make ends meet for their family.  This movement became successful because of activists such as Jacob Riis, Mother Jones, President Roosevelt, President Hoover, and Lewis Hines. Thanks to them, children no longer have to work and instead go to school.

            In 1912, 12-year-old Camella Teoli was injured at the Lawrence Mill factory.  The machine pulled her hair and scalp. She was hospitalized for seven months.  Factory owners sped up the machines and lowered the salaries.  Twenty three thousand workers striked and President Taft asked strikers to speak on their working conditions, as well as Camella Teoli on her accident.  As a result, the Lawrence Mill offered wages better wages and a shorter work week.  During this movement, the children face many economic and political injustices.  In 1924 two million children ages 10-16 are working.  The Congress creates the Keating-Owens Act, which made it illegal for children to work under the age of 14 in a factory or shop.  The Supreme Court said that only states can make child labor laws.

            “Better to starve fighting than to starve working”.  This was a quote that children followed as they fought for their rights.  The methods used for resistance were striking, marching, and using newspapers.  Jacob Riis exposed the horrors of child labor through writings and pictures.  In 1903 Mother Jones and 16,000 children marched from Philadelphia to Washington in 22 days called “The Children’s Crusade”.  When Mother Jones and the children reached the white house, President Roosevelt turned them away and the children were forced to go back to long work weeks and low wages.  Eventually all these methods of resistance turned out to be successful.  Wages were changed and work hours were shortened. 

            Children faced many injustices during the child labor movement.  In 1933, President Hoover held a conference on child health and protection.  The conference also wanted to discuss how child labor would end.  The National Recovery Administration was created to outlaw child labor.  Children under 16 could not work and instead go to school.  The Supreme Court disagreed with this law and over ruled it.  The President did not have the ability to stop child labor.  In 1938, factory owners fought labor laws.  The Supreme Court still believed that it’s the state decision for child labor.  Later, The Fair Labor Standards was created.  It said that no child under 16 should work and instead be in school.  It was passed by Congress that child labor is banned.  It also sets a minimum age of 18.  In order for children to work on farms, they had to be 14 and to work on mines and coals, you must be 18.  Finally, the Supreme Court agrees to band child labor.

            The children’s rights movement was important to study because without the leaders and children that fought, children would probably still be working long hours and still being paid low wages.  If it weren’t for the laws passed to ban child labor, children and social activists would still be fighting.  Because of laws like The Fair labor Standards children working in factories and shops had to have a certain age limit.  I am very grateful that children fought for their rights because children now do not have to get up and go to work everyday.  Instead, we are in school earning a better education and not having to worry about how we are going to support our family.  Thanks to Jacob Riis, Mother Jones, and many others, children now have equality in America.