"Leo, 48 inches high, 8 years old. Picks up bobbins at 15 cents a day in Elk Cotton Mills. He said, "'No, I don't help me sister or mother, just myself.'" Fayetteville, Tennessee.
LC-DIG-nclc-01892 [1910] Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Overview
This section not only focuses on child labor but also includes problems that affected women and men.
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Describes American sweatshops during the Industrial Revolution, including their workers, their dangers, life in and out of them, and the role of organized labor and reformers in putting an end to them. Includes an annotated further-reading list.
Describes the conditions and treatment that drove working American children to strike in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, discussing such events as the mill workers' strike in 1834; the coal strikes in 1897, 1900, and 1902; and Mother Jones's 125-mile "Children's Crusade" march in 1903.
Discusses various issues associated with immigration to the United States during the early part of the twentieth century including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Ellis Island, tenements and sweatshops, and the rise of anti-Semitism.
Describes the conditions that gave rise to efforts to secure better working conditions for the women working in the garment industry in early twentieth-century New York and led to the formation of the Women's Trade Union League and the first women's strike in 1909.
Photographs and text chronicle the experiences of women who entered the workforce after their husbands were sent to the trenches in Europe during the First World War.
Tells the story of America's first real industry, the textile industry, beginning with Samuel Slater and Slater's Mill in Pawtucket, R.I., then the Boston Associates' development of America's first industrial city, Lowell, Mass., and up to the present. Discusses child labor and labor conflicts and the changes brought by new technologies all along the way.
Musical recounting the 1899 New York newsboys' strike against publishing moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and their eventual triumph.
"Clothing, traditionally made at home or by custom tailors, began to be commercially produced in the early nineteenth century. In Chicago this industry developed rapidly after the Great Fire of 1871 and remained one of the most dynamic sectors until the Great Depression."
The ILR School Kheel Center is honoring the 100 year anniversary of the fire with a redesign of this well-known resource, including many new and updated materials.