Child Labor During The Industrial Revolution

Nowadays, child labor, indeed, has long been an international concern and poses a myriad of hindrances not only on economic growth, but also many fields in the near future. The industrial revolution was an era that an issue of child labor just started appearing on the surface. The workforce, in the course of Industrial Revolution, was in a soaring demand, as the number of factories proliferated day by day, and as urban areas got industrialized, families promptly migrated from the rural farm areas to the newly industrialized urban areas for the sake of jobs. Because surviving in a city required a great deal of money, the households were forced to send their children to work, which led to a surging increment on the rate of child labor in factories.

The workers under 14 in England was accounted for 14% out of 100%. It, moreover, was a special case for children to work 12-14 hours with an hour total break. Not only these things above, but also those children needed to deal with some machines that actually could kill them. An array of casualties, sure enough, actually did happen during this time, even some of them got an instantaneous death, since the children’s safety was often neglected. Despite the fact that the children got injured during working, they could not receive any compensation for the injury they got, and even further, the business owner fired them. Also, the treatment of children in factories was often cruel and unusual. The children working with adult workers were subject to verbal abuse and dangerous affairs. The children were often imposed harsh forms of pain infliction just for being late. One of harsh forms would be “weighing”. During “weighing” process, a supervisor would tie their neck and let them walk up and down the factory aisles so the other children could see

As Tenzin Gyatso once stated that “all the problems of the world- child labor, corruption- are symptoms of a spiritual disease: lack of compassion”, it is an impeccable fact that child labor, indeed, is caused by adults’ lack of compassion. Child labor not only bombards the children’s body, but also deteriorates the future of the world, since it hampers the access to an education. An example of a modern form of child labor can be easily found in developing countries. According to ILO’s statistical information, it is estimated that 211 million children are haunted by child labor. 60% of children out of 211 million live in Asia, and 23% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of them are active and employed in agriculture. Nepal, for instance, 85% of economically active children are being used in agriculture. As long as child labor is concerned, in Afghanistan, Bacha Bazi, an ancient practice, has been practiced in which girls at young age are learned how to dance and sold to a wealthy men. Even worse, they become exploited and have transition to sexually abused slaves. It, therefore, is explicit that it is an issue that we need to attempt to combat against it and the world should take this with a serious implication. Compared to the Industrial Revolution, the thing we are facing now and the thing happened