horrific child labor--8/14/24

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Today's selection -- from Power and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. British children working in coal mines in the 1840s:

“The 1842 Report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children's Employment was a shocker. For decades there had been growing disquiet about what was referred to as ‘the condition of England,’ including how children lived and worked. But with little systematic information available, there was a great deal of disagreement about exactly what young people did in coal mines and factories and whether this constituted an issue that needed to be addressed through legislation.

“The royal commission conducted a careful, three-year investigation, including interviews with children, their family members, and employers in all parts of the country. The first report focused on mines, and lengthy appendices provided verbatim quotations.

“Young children were doing hard work for long hours, deep underground. The testimony of David Pyrah, from Flockton in West Yorkshire, was typical:

“'I am going on II, I worked at one of Mr. Stansfield's pits. I was lamed at Christmas by a sleeper falling on me, and have been off work since. I went to work usually at 6, but at 4 on odd days. We came out at 6 or 7, sometimes at 3—whenever our work was done. We found it very hard work. The roads [height of the tunnel] were nearly a yard but at the face it was half a yard. I did not like it because it was very low and I had to work till night.'

“The smallest children would operate trapdoors (‘trappers’). Once they were bigger, they could pull loads of coal along rails, bent over or even on their hands and knees (‘hurriers’). William Pickard, general steward at the Denby mine, explained that children were valuable underground because they could fit into smaller spaces:

“We used trappers till lately and they used to go and begin as early as 6 years old .... They come at 8 or 9 years old to hurry. The thinnest [coal] bed we are working is only 10 inches. We cut the gates 26 inches high. The youngest children go there.

“Girls were employed alongside boys. Sarah Gooder, eight years old, reported that she operated a trapdoor that was used to prevent the spread of dangerous gases:

“I'm a trapper in the Gawber pit. It does not tire me but I have to trap without a light and I'm scared. I go at 4 and sometimes at half past 3 in the morning, and come out at 5 and half past. I never go to sleep. Sometimes I sing when I've light, but not in the dark; I dare not sing then, I don't like being in the pit.

Children hauling coal up the slope of an English mine; from an engraving of the 1840s.

“The interview with Fanny Drake, age fifteen, from Overton, also in West Yorkshire, made the health implications of moving a coal cart underground abundantly clear:

“I push with my head sometimes and it makes my head so sore that I cannot bear it touched; it is soft too. I often have headaches and colds and coughs and sore throats. I cannot read, I can say my letters.

“Parents understood full well what their children were doing and admitted that this was because the families needed the money and other potential sources of employment were less attractive. As a Mrs. Day explained,

“I have two girls in the pit: the youngest is 8 and the oldest will be 19 in May. If the girls don't go into the pits they will have to take a bowl and go begging.

“Employers were candid, too. Employing children in this fashion was all about maintaining the profitability of mining operations. As Henry Briggs, co-owner of a mine in Flockron, put it,

“We could not have horse roads or even higher roads when the coal seams are so thin, because it would be so expensive. If children were to be stopped from working in pits the best Flockton seams must cease to be mined because it would cost too much to increase the height of the gates. …

“By the 1840s, coal mining was one of the best-established modern sectors in the country, using state-of-the-art mechanical equipment. More than two hundred thousand people worked in coal mining, with 20-40 percent of those employed in each mine being children.

“Careful observers of working conditions at that time were under no illusions about the lives of children. In agriculture, for example, family members as young as six years old had always looked after animals and helped with other tasks, especially at harvest time. Children had also long assisted their parents with artisanal work, including spinning yarn.

“However, children working long hours, semi-naked under incredibly unsanitary and dangerous conditions, had no historical parallel at this scale. By the mid-1850s, the conditions of working children showed no signs of improvement. If anything, they worsened as mines were dug deeper.

“Coal mines were vividly horrific, but they were not so unusual. Working conditions in cotton and other factories, documented in the second report of the Royal Commission, were similarly draconian. And it was not just children who suffered. Workers did not see much, or any, improvement in their real incomes but ended up toiling longer hours and under harsher conditions than they used to before the age of the factories. Pollution and infectious diseases in dense cities with deficient infrastructure shortened lives and increased morbidity.

“It became increasingly evident to the Victorians that although industrialization had made some people very rich, most workers lived shorter, less healthy, and more brutal lives than had been the case before industry began to develop. By the mid-1840s, authors and politicians on all sides of the political spectrum were asking: Why had industrialization worsened so many lives, and what could be done about it? Was there a way to encourage the growth of industry while also sharing the benefits more broadly?"

author:	Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
title:	Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
publisher:	PublicAffairs
pages:	175-179