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Essay on Ethical Analysis of Child Labor
Few problems emerging from capitalistic conditions of production have been given greater attention by socially minded citizens than has that of child labor, and about few has there been such unanimity of opinion. From the enactment of the English Health and Morals of Apprentices Act in 1802 to the American anti- child labor clauses in the industrial codes of the 1930's, public opinion, with certain ever-present exceptions, has taken cognizance of the social and economic costs of the employment of young persons and has demanded an increasing amount of prohibition and regulation. But child labor has persisted.
The introduction of easily operated machinery, technical improvements making possible a utilization of the limited strength and energy of children in the operation of machines, the economic pressure of inadequate family incomes, the desire of employers for cheap labor, the presence of a redundant supply of youthful labor in seasonal industries and in those industries where homework predominates, the ignorance and avarice of some parents, the weaknesses of an educational system that has not adjusted the curricula to the needs of children and has therefore caused many of them to leave school before they should, and the inadequacy of legal restrictions and the very imperfect administration and enforcement of them have all been factors perpetuating child labor.
The problem is not, of course, entirely a consequence of the present mode of producing and distributing goods and services. Children have always played an important part of the economic life of the people. Under the household and domestic systems, the labor of children was extensively utilized, and the apprenticeship system of the gilds of the Middle Ages constituted a form of child labor. But conditions of work under these earlier child-labor systems were vastly different from those obtaining......
