Children's and Mothers' Wage Labor in Three Eastern U.S. Cities, 1880-1920

Kleinberg, S. J.

Article on the dynamics of class and ethnicity as related to the labor of women and children in the northeastern United States around the turn of the century. Statistical relationship between family and economy in urban, industrialized America during a period of heavy immigration. Emphasis on child labor as varying by type of family, ethnicity, and the relevant legal structures of different locales. A gradual replacement of children's wage labor by the employment of women. Statistics based on U.S. census data from 1880, 1900, and 1920. From the author: "The battle over child labor fought in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries pitted emerging understandings about children's well-being against those of the rest of the family....This article explores the variations in children's and mothers' labor in three very different settings: Pittsburgh, Fall River, and Baltimore between 1880 and 1920. It finds that child labor and education legislation resulted in a decrease in children's employment and increased the likelihood that mothers would take paid jobs."

2005 spring

en

Journal Article

42413348;2761258

1880-1920, Baltimore, Maryland; Fall River, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1

Social Science History

;

0145-5532

29