History+Detectives+ks

In this day and age many people believe they have it "rough" considering schooling, work, money, etc... But back in the early 1900's what we go through has nothing to compare. Labor laws were loosely grasped by the government then. Labor movements were being strongly suggested to seize the poor conditions workers had to endure. Young children were forced to work to help support their family. Tragedies pertaining to this chaos occurred frequently such as the triangle shirt waist fire. In this essay readers will be able to understand the experiences and hardship these young people went through in 1908-1912.

To start off, working conditions were terrible; children worked nearly half the day every day to earn almost a dollar. They were brutally beaten by their bosses if there was any sign of laziness. When they started to realize that what they were doing was not rational and definitely not safe they started making a movement. The labor movement, helped establish laws pertaining to the maximum time and the minimum age that adolescence were aloud to work. Before this went into action, though, there were children going into work instead of school.

One type of job these kids went into was in the coal mines. Adults liked hiring children to work for them because they didn't complain, they could fit their tiny hands into crevices no adult could reach, and they didn't have to pay them much. In the coal mines the children started at ages eight to ten years old. They were called the "breaker boys." The chutes were about three feet apart, zigzagging across them were planks they sat on to reach the stream of coals running under them. Their job was to bend over the chutes as they worked and pick the slag from the crushed coal as it passed. As a consequence these poor children developed rounded shoulders and narrow chests. In an open space in front of the chutes sat the "breaker boss," who wacked any boy that showed any sign of slacking, with a stick. A great author once wrote "Cramped like Hindu idols. Aged and blackened like the gargoyles of Notre Dame, rows and rows of these humped-up boys and broken-down old men sit beside the cataracts of coal, watching and snatching at the slate sweeping by in the black stream. All day long their little fingers dip into the unending grimy stream that rolls past them." This is what was meant by the name "breaker boys."

During when they were trying to pass labor laws to create better working conditions, there was a factory called The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Most of the workers were young immigrant woman starting at the age of fourteen. In 1911 this building caught fire. Nearly 146 workers were killed. This incident was one of the reasons for an organized labor movement//**. **// The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911 remains one of the greatest tragedies in a workplace, in American history.

To finish off, all these points that were given goes to show that we cannot compare to what went on back then, but it also helps us realize that we learn from history, which is why this will never happen again. Actually, the idea that children should have a childhood is quite recent. I myself am very thankful to live in this day and age rather than being put to work as soon as I was able to walk. All these consistent incidents such as, the triangle shirtwaist fire, child labor, and these labor movements, are what helped build up our nation today. It helped to where work for any American can be relatively safe and fair. What everyone’s mothers say, "kids can be kids." And the fact that what America does best, fighting for what is right, plays a big roll in the labor movements of the early 1900's, and has proceeded to today.