Capitalist Secrets: Capitalism Ended Child Labor
Child labor, despite what you might have heard, was not created by capitalism. It’s a practice that stretches back to pre-history, when children would help in hunting and gathering as soon as they were able to walk.
Why were most children made to work before the 20th century? Is it because parents were sadistic and governments cruel? Hardly. It’s because, before capitalism made us rich, children had to work if they were to survive at all. When a family lives on the equivalent of a dollar a day, there is no alternative: if you can work, you work—or you starve.
What eliminates child labor is not government decree but a rising standard of living. That’s what eliminated it in the West during the 19th century and that is what is eliminating it today in places like China. As parents grow richer, one of the first things they do is use their burgeoning incomes to send their children to school.
This is not solely an issue of parental benevolence. The fact is, children are not very productive in a modern society. They lack the skills, knowledge, and attention span needed to perform important tasks. Once industrial capitalism began to advance beyond simple machines, there wasn’t a whole lot children could do.
If capitalism is what caused the West to grow rich, then it was capitalism, not government intervention, that eliminated child labor in the developed world.
This is not to deny that governments have limited or forbidden child labor by law. But child labor was going away on its own, and the laws were far from benign. By pushing children out of the newer, more visible factories where these laws were easier to enforce, hungry children were forced to seek work at smaller, older, more dangerous factories—or, as Ludwig von Mises notes, to “infest the country as vagabonds, beggars, tramps, robbers, and prostitutes.”
Today, child labor laws are harmful for a different reason: they prevent children from doing work they would enjoy and benefit from. While no one wants to see a kid sit in a factory or trudge around a farm for 16 hours (assuming there is any viable alternative), some form of productive work can be a tremendous value to a child. It gives him a chance to earn some money, to learn some valuable skills, to feel grown up, and to build character and self-esteem. In America today, child labor laws don’t keep eleven-year-old Cody out of a hazardous factory—they force him to spend his summer playing Nintendo rather than washing dishes or fixing bicycles. That’s hardly something to celebrate.
For more see:
- “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children,” by Robert Hessen, in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
- Child Labor During the British Industrial Revolution by Carolyn Tuttle.
- Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution by Lawrence W. Reed.
8 Comments to “Capitalist Secrets: Capitalism Ended Child Labor”
Yet tragically, the prevailing vision rejects this. How far gone are we (sic) when this very simple and obvious reflection is criticised? For example, Newt Gingrich proposed simply allowing children to perform such jobs in public schools and was eviscerated for it. How do we penetrate the seemingly endless strata of ignorance?
I would say that most people *don’t* reject it: they have never heard it or heard it explained clearly and convincingly. That’s our job.
Well, in defense of Gingrich, I thought he did present it clearly and convincingly (he also has moments in foreign policy). Of course, that does nothing to eliminate the numerous other problems his particular brand of “Conservatism” presents.
I’m glad Mike Slater brought up this very topic this morning with Dr. Brook on his show. It’s great to know this message is being clearly articulated to large audiances!
The same is also true of what the industrial revolution made possible for the “common man.”
We’ve all seen the pictures and read the stories about the “horrid” working conditions in early factories, but the inescapable fact is that those factory workers had a better lot in life than they did in their former agrarian lives, or than they did back in Italy or Ireland before they immigrated.
I’m not minimizing the conditions of the early factories, but when faced with the choice of 1) factory work, 2) farm work, or 3) starvation, they chose factory work.
In spite of mechanization and automation, farming, even in the United States, still remains one of the most dangerous lines of work as well as one of the most back-breaking lines of work. How much worse was it before the mechanization and automation?
Yes, people don’t understand that it takes considerable wealth to provide 12 years where kids don’t have to work just to survive and, on top of that, spend the time in school. (I did a “child labor” search at amazon and found a considerable number of books. I noted a book about child labor in the U.S. and another with a book description that ended with: “The authors [all professors], while remaining sensitive to the abusive nature of some children’s work, maintain that a ‘workless’ childhood free of all responsibilities is not a good preparation for adult life in any society.”)
There’s an issue, I believe, about the legal ownership of money earned by a child and the extent of a parent’s responsibility for that money. For example, it’s law in California that 100% of the money earned by a child actor belongs to the child and that the parents have responsibilities concerning its management. (According to Wikipedia, unauthorized use is considered, in law, as stealing.) In addition, parents have the same responsibilities for the normal care of the child. Part of this same legal framework is the Coogan account requirement (15% of earnings put into a blocked trust account). While the Coogan account requirement seems doubtful to me, I agree with the 100% provision; however, parents, if really necessary, should be able to use the money for the child’s care. So, to protect a child’s rights, I see validity to at least this type of child labor law.
What about child labor practices of companies in wealthy industrialized nations when outsourcing work where it’s cheap?
When these companies hire in under developed countries, the line to apply stretches around the block. But should they hire Chinese kids to do a job they wouldn’t hire an American kid to do, on an ethical basis?
Or am I looking at this from the wrong perspective?
Hi Miguel. I don’t see what virtue there would be in refusing to hire people who desperately want and need to work, and who can provide the most overall value to the company and its customers.