Child Labor
Child Labor is the use of children in fields such as manufacturing, agriculture or domestic work. In most cases the children work because their families need financial aid. Child labor became popular in the household when children were sent away to serve as apprentices and domestic labor for money at ages as young as eight or nine. Complaints and objections of child labor began within a few decades after the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. Some concerns of child labor were the dangerous machines that negatively impacted their health. The source of these hazardous conditions was a sweat shop. This is a factory setting in which workers, mainly children are forced to work hard, long hours with low pay. The main reason child labor became popular was that small children were ideal for factory and farm jobs due to their tiny limbs that could fit into machines. Another reason is children had more energy and could be easily convinced to work longer hours for less pay. Child labor became a huge concern to many people and numerous efforts began to protect the children. In Great Britain, the first law that addressed child labor was the 1842 Mining Act which prohibited children from mining. The next law that addressed this issue was the 1916 Keating-Owen Act which attempted to protect children, but was over turned by the US Supreme Court. In the second half of the twentieth century, child labor in poorly developed countries became a concern. More than 158