II Child Labor

Industrial child labor began in America at the end of the eighteenth century. The novelty of this development should not obscure the fact that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries most children continued to work in their homes, on the farm, and in their parents' workshops. la

With the increase of patriotic enthusiasm for national industries in the last third of the eighteenth century, there was an increasing premium on the work of women and children in the household, especially in the production of wool and cotton. In 1767, Sir Henry Moore, governor of New York reported with great satisfaction that "every house swarms with children, who are set to work as soon as they are able to spin and card." 1b Alexander Hamilton declared in 1790: "It is computed in a number of districts that two thirds, three fourths, and even four fifths, of all the clothing of the inhabitants, are made by themselves. The importance of so great a progress as appears to have been made in family manufactures, within a few years, in both a moral and political view, renders the fact highly interesting." 1c

In the 1760's small shops took over several stages in the production of wool and cotton. Although housewives continued to spin at home, they found it more efficient to have the wool and cotton carded and fulled in the workshop. Sometimes, too, they brought the spun wool to be dyed. Thus, these shops became the nuclei of later factories, serving as a transitional stage between household industry and the large factory. Since carding, fulling, and spinning had been children's occupations in the home, it was only natural to transfer children to such workshops. This form of employment, however, could not yet be considered industrial child labor; it was merely a variation on traditional household work. The labor force in such shops consisted of the master's household--his children, his servants, and his apprentices.

The cotton industry in New England brought the industrial revolution to America, and with it the introduction of children as an industrial labor force. In 1789 William Almy and Moses Brown invited Samuel Slater, "the father of American manufactures," to join them as a partner in their Providence, Rhode Island, factory. An apprentice and later employee of Iedidiah Strutt, the leading English manufacturer of cotton and a partner of Richard Arkwright, Slater had smuggled himself and the plans for Arkwright's machinery to New York. He joined Almy and Brown and produced satisfactory yarn in 1791. For the first time in America all stages of manufacture from raw cotton to yarn were worked in the factory by machinery (except the cleaning, which children too young to work in the factory still performed at home).1d

In the twenty years after its establishment the Slater system spread rapidly through New England. In 1810 Albert Gallatin reported twenty-seven mills in operation in Rhode Island, southern Massachusetts, and eastern Connecticut.1g All these mills were fashioned after the Slater model. For 1809 Gallatin estimated the number of employees in the cotton mills as 4,000. Those consisted of 500 men and 3,500 women and children.1h The later growth of the industry was so rapid that the Committee on Manufactures reported in 1816 that the mills then employed 100,000 hands, of whom 24,000 were "boys under seventeen" and 66,000 "women and girls." Thus, children and women comprised 90 per cent of the labor force.1i The computation in the Digest of Manufactures separates women from children. Children formed 47 per cent of the labor force in Massachusetts cotton mills, 55 per cent in Rhode Island, and 55 per cent in Connecticut. In the wool industry, which used traditional methods of production, children comprised only 22 to 27 per cent.

Under the family system, rural families moved to the mill and lived in a compact community built and owned by the company. They payed an average rent of 25 cents per week for the tenement and obtained provisions through a company store, often as a partial or whole substitute for money wages. Every member of the family above age seven worked in the factory from sunrise to sunset, six days a week. Their only holidays were Christmas, Easter, and half a day on the Fourth of July. The father was often a mechanic or skilled spinner; his wife and children provided the unskilled labor force. In other instances, however, the father continued to farm.

Children's wages were calculated and graded according to age. A child under ten normally received 50 cents a week: Some companies paid as little as 37 cents. While 50 cents a week was the standard pay in the Slater factory, children of the Rier family in Lancaster received higher weekly wages (the youngest eight years old, 75 cents, and the oldest, sixteen years old, $2.00). In contrast, the Troy mill at Fall River paid the youngest children only 25 or 10 cents a week. Henry Bradshaw Fearon, a British traveler, must have exaggerated when he reported that at the Slater mill in Pawtucket children from 6 to 10 years were earning $1.12 1/2 a week, children from 11 to 16 years $1.67 a week, women $2 a week, and men from $4.50 to $5.25 a week.1j

The significance of these wages is clearer in view of the fact that in 1814 the company store of the Slater mill charged $1.34 for a bushel of corn, 9 cents for a pound of flour, 16 cents for a bushel of potatoes, 23 cents for a pound of sugar, 20 cents for a pound of candles, and 16 cents for a pound of soap. A pair of shoes cost $2. Families rarely purchased other items, except occasionally beef, coffee, and tobacco.1k The account books of the Slater and Tiffany cotton mill suggest that families, even with the continued earnings of all children, carried a debt from one period to the next and rarely broke even. Accounts went unsettled for long periods, usually a full year. William Howland, for example, ordinarily discovered at Christmas time that his labor and the work of his seven children had failed to cancel his debt to the company. Howland earned $6 a week, and his children earned respectively $4, $2.50, 85 cents, 66 cents, and 50 cents a week each. For the period from May 27, 1814, to December 20, 1814, he owed the company $587.98 for "sundries" and rent. The family's combined earnings came to $582.46. He was still $2.08 short, after the company credited him with $3.44. From the next settlement period, in December 1815, he carried a debt of $37.07. April 3,1816, marked the beginning of a period of solvency, since he was credited with $10.49. On December 20, 1816, he was credited again with $50.51. But, by January 20, 1818, he found himself short again, this time by the amount of $45.86. On May 2, 1818, Mr. Howland finally managed to settle the account with $4.22 to his credit. 1l

Sally Maine, on the other hand, who had three children working in the factory fared worse. On November 9, 1815, she discovered that she was $98.24 short. (She had spent $445.50 and earned only $347.26.) To cope with the emergency Mrs. Maine took in four woman boarders and sent her two boys to work full time. But by November 4, 1817, she owed again $70.92. The purchase record of Mrs. Maine suggests that she rarely bought anything in the store but essential staples, although she did have a high sugar and coffee consumption. During the entire period she purchased two pairs of shoes and six yards of gingham. All eighteen families listed in the mill's account books from 1817 to 1819 continuously struggled with debt. The record books do not show even one case of savings.

In principle, the employment of children in factories was not drastically different from the colonial precedent of child labor. Moreover, Virginia had established the pattern for commercial employment of children early in the colonial period. Advocates of infant industries used the existing views of the sanctity of work and fear of idleness as persuasive arguments in favor of the new manufactures. They declared that new industries would not displace farmers from their labor and would not strain the labor market, since they would draw on women and children. By harnessing children to machinery, factories would not only increase industrial production at minimum expense but would also put the poor, idle, and potentially vicious elements of society to useful employment.

The disruption of the family as an independent economic unit in this period was evident not only in the factory system. Even in household industry the master-apprentice relationship lost its paternal-filial character as the personal, non-vocational obligations binding master and servant declined. In the eighteenth century many apprentices were acquiring not only their general education, but also their trade education in schools.1m

The factory system redefined child labor. It classified children as a distinct labor force. Advertisers of new machinery estimated and measured the efficiency of their product in terms of the necessary boy or girl power to produce a certain amount of yarn. John Baxter assured prospective customers that his new machines with six and twelve spindles respectively could be easily turned by "children of from five to ten years of age," while the twelve-spindle machine would reguire "girls from ten to twenty." 1n Not unlike slave families, the number of employable children determined the economic assets and desirability of raising a family. Children received payment as laborers, rather than maintenance and instruction as apprentices.1o

1c. "Manufactures December 5, 1791," American State Papers, Finance, I (Washington, 1832), 132.