A hundred years ago, before OSHA, MSHA, the UMWA, or child labor laws had any real power, children in the mining areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania were sent to work at an early age. They were supposed to be at least 12 years old, but some were as young as five or six! Their families needed the money, and the operators wanted cheap laborers. The boys in this picture are separating coal from rocks by hand. Note the man with a stick watching over them. Read more about the boy miners and see more of Lewis Hine's photographs at Environmental Graffiti. Link
However, from what I know of child labor during the era, the kids were often treated worse than adult workers. They had even less power and were given some of the most dangerous jobs. The children were exposed to the SAME or WORSE dangers as the adults and were paid LESS for the privilege.
Thanks for sharing! Your comment was really interesting, though it was sad. Crazy to think about how lives improved with time/technology...I wonder if someday our grandchildren will think our ways are primitive/hard work the way we look at this?
You can scare girls by telling them about the mills.
http://www.neatorama.com/2011/10/18/catherine-young-and-her-children/
Also, you could only use this as a precautionary example for the boys in your class. You'd have to come up with something else to scare the girls.
My teevee set just showed a commercial for America's energy resource, "clean coal". I wonder if now-a-days the miners wear tuxedos. How does coal become clean? Almost makes me wish I could live next to a coal fired power plant. Maybe my wish will come true as my upscale island community has been waging war against the installation of wind turbines even going so far as to enlist the aid of school children who draw pictures of the evil ugly things for the local paper. The well to do even write articles for that paper expressing their fear of "shadow strobing" said to cause epileptic seizures as the blades rotate.
Go figure!
In 4th grade, in the middle of winter, he was singled out daily by the teacher to get water from a nearby icy creek. One day, angry that he was the only one chosen for the job, he pitched the bucket into the creek and walked home.
His father gave the nine year old two choices. Go back to school or go to work.
He chose work. He was assigned the task of opening and shutting the doors down in the mines as the mule-powered coal wagons came in and out. Mainly it was a lot of standing around with rats for company. Older boys would steal good food out of his lunch as they came past.
A blow from a mule hoof nearly killed him and left a blue mark on the bridge of his nose for life.
Eventually he worked his way up in the mines and became a train engineer for the coal trains.
I can't imagine a childhood where a young person's long work hours in winter below ground meant they wouldn't see the Sunday except, of course, on Sunday.
Neat-o!