Child Labor: An American History (Issues in Work and Human Resources (Paperback)) - Softcover

Hindman, Hugh D

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765609363 ISBN 13: 9780765609366

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

Despite its decline throughout the advanced industrial nations, child labor remains one of the major social, political, and economic concerns of modern history, as witnessed by the many high-profile stories on child labor and sweatshops in the media today. This work considers the issue in three parts. The first section discusses child labor as a social and economic problem in America from an historical and theoretical perspective. The second part presents child labor as National Child Labor Committee investigators found it in major American industries and occupations, including coal mines, cotton textile mills, and sweatshops in the early 1900s. Finally, the concluding section integrates these findings and attempts to apply them to child labor problems in America and the rest of the world today.

About this title

From Library Journal:

Hindman (labor, Appalachian State Univ.) introduces his topic with historical background, followed by substantive descriptions of child labor in the budding industries of early 20th-century America (coal mines, glass factories, textile mills, tenement sweat shops, street trades, and agriculture), using information largely culled from the National Child Labor Committee's (NCLC) 19-volume investigative reports. He traces the initial growth and eventual demise of most exploitative child labor (agriculture being a lingering exception) as influenced by industrial growth, along with the concomitant state/federal/union battles for control of the movements toward compulsory education, labor reform, human rights, and minimum wage standards. Hindman completes his well-structured and ably presented study with the argument that the American experience with child labor and industrial development can be usefully studied as a pattern for understanding the global child labor picture today in the world's less technically advanced countries. The book's content is enriched with captioned photographs by Lewis Wicks Hines, who was an active investigator with the influential NCLC in the early 1900s. Highly recommended for academic and general public libraries.
Suzanne W. Wood, formerly with SUNY Coll. of Technology at Alfred Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

"This book examines U.S. child labor history with the intention of identifying lessons learned that might be applicable to persistent problems of global child labor," states the author, a labor and human resources academic. The U.S. had the typical experience of early industrializing nations. When poor children with their families left the family farm where they had worked alongside their parents in all chores contributing to the family's survival, these children followed their parents into urban employment in mines, mills, and factories. Over time, it became apparent that there was something wrong with this new reality of industrialized child labor, and reform movements began. In part one, Hindman describes child labor problems; in part two, he provides the history of child labor in the U.S.; in part three, he offers an overview of the material presented and his conclusions. This scholarly work will have reference use in libraries and will attract a special readership among regular library patrons. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0765609363
• ISBN 13: 9780765609366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 446