Child Labour Then (1700’s) and Now (2017)

Child Labour:Dominican Republic
Then and Now
Jane Mackinnon-Socials 9 industrial revolution


Child labour is something that has been around for a long time. There hasn’t really been a big difference in the way children work, how they work, and how long they work. Children are being forced to work in jobs that they shouldn’t be exposed to. Jobs such as child soldiers, slaves, human trafficking, drugs, agricultural work. Children all around the world are without an education and don’t have a choice in what they do. They are beaten and abused each and everyday to make very little or no money.

Dominican Republic

The Dominican is part of an island shared with Haiti just south of Florida, east of Mexico, and north of South America. With a population of 10,606,865. More than 20% of those people live in extreme poverty. People living in the Dominic republic can live one of two extremes. They can either be very rich or very poor. The Dominican Republic is considered a third world country but it is continuing to develop. This country makes its money through exports of gold, silver, medical instruments, rolled tobacco, low-voltage protection equipment, bananas, leather, knit t-shirts, cocoa beans, and more… This country has many struggles such as poverty and drug trafficking but this country is also known for its child labour and abuse.

Child labour during the industrial revolution.
Child labour was common during the industrial revolution. Often families couldn’t support themselves or their children so the children would either be abandoned or forced to work. During the industrial revolution many people were poor and living in very un-safe and un-sanitary conditions. Children worked to support their families, support themselves, or they wouldn’t have a choice. Some jobs the children were told to work in included the mineshafts, chimney sweeping, textiles, and also being servants.
Children would work in the mineshafts because they were small enough to fit in the tunnels so that they could push and pull the heavy carts. The hours were insane and the children weren’t paid very much because back then they weren’t considered to have any value. The children suffered from working in this job because a lot of them would have deformities such as a stunted growth or a hunched over back. A lot of the kids would also get a disease called black lung, which was caused by the air in the tunnels as well as the smoke the burning coals would give.
Another industry that the children would work in was the textile industry. This was the making of clothes, carpets, blankets, sheets, etc. In the textile industry most kids worked as scavengers or piecers. Scavengers would pick loose cotton or other textiles from under the machines. A piecer would have to stick their small fingers into machines to fix broken threads. Their hands would also be used to un-jam a machine which most of the time caused them to lose a finger or for kids with long hair to lose their hair or part of their scalp.
As you could tell from the examples of work I provided above you can see that children and people were working in very un-safe conditions. This was something people had to do each and everyday to provide for themselves or their families. A lot of workers were also forced to work overtime with no pay and no supervision. Most of the people running the factories didn’t care about their workers. They only cared about the money the company was making. Laws were passed in Britain that children couldn’t work over 12 hours a day and children under the age of nine weren’t aloud to work. Obviously this law was not closely supervised and a lot of owners got away with breaking the rules.
On the other hand if they banned child labour during the industrial revolution it could be great but also bad for many reasons. Some disadvantages include things such as not being able to afford food for their families, which would lead to starvation. Families would end up having to abandon their kids and they would most likely starve or catch a disease. It would be very difficult for them to survive on the un-sanitary streets alone. This could cause a dramatic drop in population and the amount of workers would decrease. If there were no workers companies wouldn’t make much product there for they would lose lots of money.

Child labour in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is known for its child labour with an estimated amount of 436,000 kids working. 64% of them are under the age of 14 and 60% of them are working in farming. Many families live off of making as little as 2 dollars a day. Children work in agriculture, industries, services, shining shoes, washing cars, and child trafficking. As I mentioned above most children work in agriculture which means harvesting sugarcane, planting sugarcane, collecting cut sugarcane, clearing land for sugarcane, producing coffee, rice, tomatoes, beans, corn, onions and potatoes. Some other forms are working in restaurants, selling alcohol, working in repair shops, scavenging landfills, and domestic house work. Children work to support themselves, their families, or most commonly forced work. School is something the kids work for to be able to go. It is more popular in the Dominican Republic and is available for those who want to go. Many kids get taken out of school and placed into work because their families need the money. The children who do get the chance to go to school have to make in work within their work schedules.
Agriculture is the most popular form of child labour in the Dominican Republic. Kids are forced to work in tough conditions. They have to work long hours gathering food, planting food, preparing fields. This is hard for the young bodies as they are hunched over all day pulling roots and planting seeds for long periods of time. The children would also be beaten by their bosses if they didn’t get their work done fast enough or if it wasn’t done properly. In this business the kids would also have to transport the food to stores so that they could be sold. Children work till their job is done. They barely get any food or water given to them throughout the day so the go through the work day being very hungry and dehydrated. This causes problems for the kids because then they can’t get their job don’t to its fullest potential.


Comparison
Child labour back then compared to now is unfortunately very similar. The reason why children worked then and why they work now are the same. They are trying to support their families, themselves, or they are forced into work. The places these kids were working in were unsafe, unsanitary, and not properly supervised. They worked long hours exposing them to disease, harm and death. The agricultural work is a very important business in any time because it’s basically part of the food system. In the industrial revolution there was no protection for kids and no one was trying to make a difference. In the Dominican Republic child labour is the number one concern and they are attempting to make a change. The children working in the Dominican Republic are working and the lowest known age of 12 but in the industrial revolution kids were working at the age of 9 and sometimes younger. The Dominican Republic doesn’t support child labour and it trying to change but it is a slowly growing process.

Our attempts to reform child labour
Many people are trying to make a difference with child labour around the world. In the industrial revolution they did make an attempt the change the terrible they passed a law claiming that children weren’t aloud to work more than 12 hours a day and also that children under the age of nine weren’t aloud to work. But there was a flaw no one supervised the law and owners were able to get away with over working the children as well as taking younger kids to work. Now we have foundations such as unicef and free the children who are raising money and physically flying to third world countries to attempt to help the kids. Free the children put on many campaigns to raise money for children who are working. Schools here in the first world countries like Canada participate in helping free the children raise money. I have participated in some campaigns such as selling bracelets for certain causes. We also went door to door, put on bake sales, assemblies and much more. Ending child labour is more than a one step job and takes many people and lots of steps and efforts to change.
F. (2017). Child Labor. Retrieved from https://www.we.org/we-schools/program/issues-backgrounders/global-child-labour/

W. (2016, June). Youth in the Dominican Republic. Retrieved from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_the_Dominican_Republic

U. (2009, August). Child Labor Exploitation . Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/republicadominicana/english/protection_15759.htm

Worst forms of Child Labour Data. (n.d.). Retrieved from U. (2009, August). Child Labor Exploitation . Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/republicadominicana/english/protection_15759.htm

Poverty in the Domincan Republic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://borgenproject.org/poverty-Dominican-republic/
(n.d.). Retrieved from atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/Dom
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(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/agencies/talk/resources/reports/child-labour/Dominican-republic

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