Working Conditions
This was the typical number of hours children worked per day in factories.
What is 10–12 hours?
Most child laborers earned about this much per week.
What is $1–$3 per week?
This job involved selling newspapers on the street.
What is a newsboy?
This job required children to attach small parts of clothing or fabric in loud factories.
What is a textile mill worker?
This invention or system increased factory efficiency by dividing tasks.
What is the assembly line?
This type of factory had loud machines and dust-filled air that damaged workers’ lungs.
What is a textile mill?
This group often depended on children’s wages for survival.
Who are immigrant or poor families?
Taking extra shifts usually increased money but also increased this risk.
What is health problems/exhaustion/injury?
Children in this job sat for long hours picking rocks and slate out of coal.
What is a breaker boy?
T or F
Many factory shifts started at 5:00 a.m. — meaning kids woke up as early as 4:00 a.m.
True
If a child worker was injured in 1895, what would happen?
They would be fired and get no compensation.
If a child earned $2 for 60 hours of work, they made only this many cents per hour
What is about 3 cents per hour?
The decision game showed that children often had choices between money and?
What is safety/health?
In factories, children were often hired for this reason related to their size.
What is being small enough to fit under or inside machines?
T or F
All states had child labor laws?
False
Breaker boys worked in this type of dangerous environment.
What is a coal mine?
Why were children paid less than adults?
There was no law against it.
Joining a union discussion risked losing this.
What is pay or your job?
This street job required children to buy newspapers first and then resell them for profit.
What is a newsboy?
T or F
Newsboys had to buy their newspapers first.
True
If they didn’t sell them, they lost money instead of earning it.
This common belief helped justify child labor in the late 1800s.
What is “work builds character”?
Children sometimes started working as young as this age.
What is 8 or 9 years old?
What was Grace's nickname given to her by the other kids in the child Labor story?
Green Grace
This type of work involved long hours in fields, harvesting crops in hot conditions.
What is farm labor/agricultural work?
An adult factory worker might earn?
$8–$12 per week.