Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Civil War Child Labor


Author’s Note: This story is mostly me trying to use subordinating conjunctions, include a few expressive words and the correct punctuation of fanboys.

We know that at this time kids aren’t allowed to work unless your parents own a business or if it’s just a little job like a paper boy. Well, back during the Civil War the north had lots of factories but not enough workers to keep those factories running. So the owners decided to make kids work in the factories since they have lots of energy and there are plenty of kids to choose from.

In this photo you see that there are young boys working in a factory. It is the last place that you would want your kid to work or even where you would want to work.  I’m not entirely sure what their job is, but  in the website it said that it was a glass factory and you can see some bottles to the left. The working conditions are just horrible. There is metal hanging everywhere; I bet some of those things are moving and the worst part is that there are kids in there when they could easily get hurt by cut by glass or getting a limb ripped off. A good example is the guy who has holes in his shirt probably from glass and probably got a good cut from that. In fact he even looks petrified from working there along with a few of the others and I wouldn’t blame him. The grown-ups in the back don’t even care about the kids and probably aren’t even trying to help, they are telling them where things go and what they have to do and if someone died they would just take the next guy in line instead of stopping production and figuring out what caused the person’s death. This is not a good job or safe environment for these kids and teenagers.

In addition it also looks like they don’t have that much room, so it would be very easy for them to get diseased from germs or maybe even become claustrophobic in those small areas. Almost all of these kids are stuck doing this for a good amount of their life, not going to school, not learning how to write, read, which just makes their lives even worse because they won’t get a good job later in the future and not live a happy life.

Their family must be pretty poor to let their kids work here or they are homeless and have no choice but to work and ended up here, trapped here for the rest of their lives. Anyone can guess what it is they are thinking. “Man I can’t wait to get out of here” or “Oh no, not that machine again”. That’s just their basic thoughts, what they feel is sorrow, depressed, tired, hurt, no hope, and no life. I believe that some of them may have committed or considered suicide. How their parents feel is probably terrified, wondering if their child will make it back each day from work. They feel ashamed for having their children work for them just to get a bite and a drink to stay alive. Therefore this is a life that no one wants and no one deserves.

This reminds me of the story The Circuit where a family is forced to work all year long, picking crops all day every day. The kids were not allowed to go to school unless there was no more crops to pick which is only for a little while. Picking crops was something this family was stuck doing for the rest of their lives. This was many families fate, too many if you ask me.

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