Child Labor

The photo that I have chosen has to do with the child labor during the industrial revolution. During this time period, countries were industrializing themselves and this brought many changes to everyone living in those countries. People moved from living on farms to living in large cities where numerous factory jobs were available. Space was tight for these families and soon money was tight too. Since a factory job was paid very little, large families with lots of children had to resort to having their children work for extra money. The factories liked having children working in them for many reasons. First off, children didn’t need to be paid as much as an adult worker. That saved the factory money by paying them less. Also, children were usually quite small. This allowed them to get into tight spaces to fix a machine, or pack many children together on an assembly line. With all the children beginning to work, guards had to watch the children to make sure they were doing there work at a steady pace. What they did was whip the children to keep them awake and working. The tall man with the hat may have been a child guard seeing he is with the children in this factory watching them. There were seldom laws and regulations that helped the children out in the early revolution. As time went on of course things have changed. The artist I believe took this photo because they were trying to protect these children. They were trying to expose the harsh conditions these children were going through. By exposing the truth people can see how bad things really are with photographic proof. People feel sad looking at something like this, and someone might actually want to do something to stop it. The audience in this time period is mostly the upper to middle class people that are factory owners. They were too busy playing games and getting rich while more than half of the population that were the lower class were working in unsafe factories in order to receive little pay they fed there family with.

My photo:
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-kits/picturing-the-century-photos/sweeper-and-doffer-in-cotton-mill.jpg