Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T21:55:42.304Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

S. J. Kleinberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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. As society grew more ethnically and economically complex, social reformers lobbied for greater regulation of children's behavior, thereby altering the family economy and women's and children's roles within it. The middle classes could afford nonproductive women and children, but many working-class, immigrant, and one-parent families could not. Yet, even within the less affluent strata of society, children in certain settings, ethnic and racial groups, and family structures were much more likely to be employed than in others. 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.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , spring 2005 , pp. 45 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2005 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Grace, ed. (1938) The Child and the State. Vol. 1, Legal Status in the Family; Apprenticeship and Child Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane (1903) “Child labor and pauperism,” in National Conference of Charities and Correction,Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting (Atlanta, GA):114–20.Google Scholar
Anderson, James D. (1988) The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Aronovici, Carol (1912) Housing Conditions in Fall River. Fall River, MA: Associated Charities Housing Committee.Google Scholar
Ashby, LeRoy (1984) Saving the Waifs: Reformers and Dependent Children, 1890-1917. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Associated Charities of Fall River (1888)Minute Book. Fall River, MA: The Charities.Google Scholar
Associated Charities of Fall River (1900) Annual Report of the Associated Charities of Fall River. Fall River, MA: The Charities.Google Scholar
Baltimore Charity Organization Society (1897)Southwestern District Board Minute Book. Ms. in possession of Family Welfare Association of Baltimore.Google Scholar
Baltimore Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1894) Annual Report. Baltimore, MD: John W. Kennedy and Co.Google Scholar
Baltimore Supervisors of City Charities (1929)Annual Report of the Supervisors of City Charities. Baltimore, MD: Department of Charities and Corrections.Google Scholar
Billingsley, Andrew, and Giovannoni, Jeanne M. (1972)Children of the Storm: Black Children and American Child Welfare. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Bodnar, John E., Simon, Roger D., and Webber, Michael P. (1982) Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Bogue, Mary Florensia (1928) Administration of Mothers' Aid in Ten Localities, with Special Reference to Health, Housing, Education, and Recreation. U.S. Children's Bureau Publication No. 184. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Breckinridge, Sophonisba P., ed. (1912) The Child in the City: A Series of Papers Presented at the Conferences Held during the Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit. London: King P. S. and Sons.Google Scholar
Bremner, Robert H., ed. (1970) Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History. Vol.I, 1600–1865. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Mary Willcox (1898) “Compulsory education laws.” Charities Record 3:75–76.Google Scholar
Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley (1914) “Sharpsburg: A typical waste of childhood,” in Kellogg, Paul U. (ed.)Wage-Earning Pittsburgh. New York: Survey Associates:279–306.Google Scholar
Byington, Margaret (1975 [1910]) Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town. With a new introduction by Samuel P. Hays. Pittsburgh, PA: University Center for International Studies.Google Scholar
Champlin, Ken (1984) “‘Up the Flint’: Neighborhood and community in Fall River.” Spinner: People and Culture in Southeastern Massachusetts 3:150–59.Google Scholar
Channing, Alice (1923) Child Labor on Maryland Truck Farms. U.S. Children's Bureau Publication No. 123. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Clement, Priscilla F. (1997) Growing Pains: Children in the Industrial Age, 1850-1890. New York: Twayne.Google Scholar
Cumbler, John (1979) Working-Class Community in Industrial America: Work, Leisure, and Struggle in Two Industrial Cities, 1880-1930. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Cumbler, John (1980) “The politics of charity: Gender and class in late nineteenth century charity policy.” Journal of Social History 14:99–112.Google Scholar
Early, Frances H. (1982) “The French-Canadian family economy and standard of living in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1870.”Journal of Family History 7:180–99.Google Scholar
Fuller, Bruce (1983) “Youth job structure and school enrollment, 1890-1920.” Sociology of Education 56: 145–56.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1979) “Household and market production of families in a late nineteenth century American city.”Explorations in Economic History 16:111–31.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1981) “Family strategies and the family economy in the late nineteenth century: The role of secondary workers,” in Theodore, Hershberg (ed.) Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century; Essays toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City. New York: Oxford University Press:277–310.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Joanne (1997) Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers’ Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Linda, and Sarah, McLanahan (1991)“Single parenthood in 1900.” Journal of Family History 16:97–116.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael (1981) “Poverty, economic stress and the family in the late nineteenth century: Whites in Philadelphia, 1880,” in Theodore, Hershberg (ed.) Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century; Essays toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City. New York: Oxford University Press: 240–76.Google Scholar
Hall, Jacqueline Dowd, James, Leloudis, Robert, Korstad, Mary, Murphy, LuAnn, Jones, and Daly, Christopher B. (1987) Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. New York: Norton W. W. and Co.Google Scholar
Hareven, Tamara (1982) Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschfeld, Charles (1941) Baltimore, 1870-1900: Studies in Social History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hogan, David John (1985) Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880-1930. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Horan, Patrick M., and Hargis, Peggy G. (1991)“Children's work and schooling in the late nineteenth-century family economy.” American Sociological Review 56: 583–96.Google Scholar
Hunter, Andrea G. (2001) “The other breadwinners: The mobilization of secondary wage earners in early twentieth-century black families.” History of the Family 6: 69–94.Google Scholar
Illick, Joseph E. (2002) American Childhoods. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Janiewski, Dolores E. (1985) Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in a New South Community. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Jacqueline (1985) Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kaestle, Carl F., and Vinovski, Maris A. (1978)“From fireside to factory: School entry and school leaving in nineteenth-century Massachusetts,” in Hareven, Tamara K. (ed.)Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective. New York: Academic:135–86.Google Scholar
Katz, Michael B. (1995) Improving Poor People: The Welfare State, the “Underclass,” and Urban Schools as History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, Florence (1914) “Factory inspection in Pittsburgh with special reference to working conditions of women and children,” in Kellogg, Paul U. (ed.) Wage-Earning Pittsburgh. New York: Survey Associates, Inc.:189–216.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice (2001) In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Klaus, Alisa (1993) Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kleinberg, S. J. (1976) “Technology and women's work: The lives of working class women, Pittsburgh, 1870-1900.”Labor History 17:58–72.Google Scholar
Kleinberg, S. J. (1989) The Shadow of the Mills: Working-Class Families in Pittsburgh, 1870-1907. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Kohn, August (2000 [1907]) “Children in the mills,” in Fass, Paula S. and Mason, Mary Ann (eds.) Childhood in America. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd-Taylor, Mollie (1994) Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Landes, William, and Lewis, Solmon (1972)“Compulsory schooling legislation: An economic analysis of law and social change in the nineteenth century.” Journal of Economic History 32:54–91.Google Scholar
Lindenmeyer, Kriste (1997) “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-1946. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Macleod, David I. (1998) The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890-1920. New York: Twayne.Google Scholar
Maryland, (1874) Laws of the State Made and Passed at a Session of the General Assembly. Baltimore: King Brothers.Google Scholar
Maryland, (1894) Laws of the State Made and Passed at a Session of the General Assembly. Baltimore: King Brothers.Google Scholar
Maryland, (1902) Laws of the State Made and Passed at a Session of the General Assembly. Baltimore: King Brothers.Google Scholar
Maryland, (1912) Laws of the State Made and Passed at a Session of the General Assembly. Baltimore: King Brothers.Google Scholar
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1875)Sixth Annual Report. Boston: Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor.Google Scholar
Massachusetts Child Labor Committee (1913)Annual Report on Child Labor in Massachusetts. Boston: Massachusetts Child Labor Committee.Google Scholar
McClymer, John (2000) “Carroll D. Wright, L'Abbe Jean-Baptiste Primeau, and French-Canadian families,” in Campbell, Ballard C. (ed.) The Human Tradition in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Wilmington, DE: SR Books:1–18.Google Scholar
Michel, Sonya (1999) Children's Interests/Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mintz, Steven, and Susan, Kellogg (1989)Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Modell, John, and Hareven, Tamara K. (1978)“Transitions: Patterns of timing,” in Hareven, Tamara K. (ed.)Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective. New York: Academic:245–70.Google Scholar
Moehling, Caroline M. (1999) “State child labor laws and the decline of child labor.” Explorations in Economic History 36:72–106.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David (1987) The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nasaw, David (1985) Children of the City: At Work and at Play. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Nichols, F. H. (1903) “Children of the coal shadow.” McClure's, February.Google Scholar
North Lila, Ver Planck (1914) “Pittsburgh schools,” in Kellogg, Paul U. (ed.) The Pittsburgh District Civic Frontage. New York: Survey Associates, Inc.:217–305.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Edward J. (1937) “Child welfare legislation in Maryland, 1634-1936.” PhD diss., Catholic University of America.Google Scholar
Perlmann, Joel (1988) Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880-1935. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pleck, Elizabeth (1979) “A mother's wages: Income earning among married Italian and black women, 1896-1911,” in Cott, Nancy F. and Pleck, Elizabeth H.(eds.) A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women. New York: Simon and SchusterGoogle Scholar
Porritt, Annie G. (1917) Laws Affecting Women and Children in the Suffrage and Non-Suffrage States. New York: National Woman Suffrage Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Solmon, Lewis C., and Michael, Tierney (1980)“Education,” in Glen, Porter (ed.) Encyclopedia of American Economic History: Studies of the Principle Movements and Ideas. New York: C. Scribners' Sons.Google Scholar
St. Vincent's Orphanage (1886) Boys' Register. Ms. in possession of St. Vincent's Home, Fall River, MA.Google Scholar
Stadum, Beverly (1995) “The dilemma in saving children from child labor: Reform and casework at odds with families’ needs (1900-1938).” Child Welfare 74:33–55.Google Scholar
Stepenoff, Bonnie (1999) Their Fathers' Daughters: Silk Mill Workers in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1880-1960. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press.Google Scholar
Takai, Yukari (2001) “The family networks and geographical mobility of French-Canadian immigrants in early-twentieth-century Lowell, Massachusetts.” Journal of Family History 26: 373–94.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan (1972) Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Tiffin, Susan (1982) In Whose Best Interest? Child Welfare Reform in the Progressive Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Trattner, Walter I. (1970) Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America. Chicago: Quadrangle.Google Scholar
Tyack, David, and Cuban, Larry (1995) Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1880) Manuscript Census Schedules for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Fall River, Massachusetts; and Baltimore, Maryland. Microfilm obtained from Family History Center, Salt Lake City, UT.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1900) Manuscript Census Schedules for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Fall River, Massachusetts; and Baltimore, Maryland. Microfilm obtained from Family History Center, Salt Lake City, UT.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1901) Twelfth Census of the United States (1900). Population, pt. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1902) Twelfth Census of the United States (1900). Population. Vol. 2, pt. 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1904) Twelfth Census of the United States (1900). Special Report on Occupations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1920) Manuscript Census Schedules for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Fall River, Massachusetts; and Baltimore, Maryland. Microfilm obtained from Family History Center, Salt Lake City, UT.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1922) Fourteenth Census (1920). Population: General Report and Analytical Tables. Vol.2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1923) Fourteenth Census (1920). Population: Occupations. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1929) Earnings of Factory Workers, 1899 to 1927: An Analysis of Pay-Roll Statistics, by Paul F. Brissenden. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing OfficeGoogle Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1933) Fifteenth Census (1930). Population: General Report on Occupations. Vol. 5. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1975) Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Part 1. Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Bureau (1911) Report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners. Vol.16, Family Budgets of Typical Cotton Mill Workers. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Vecoli, Rudolph (1991) “Introduction,” in Rudolph, Vecoli and Sinke, Suzanne M. (eds.) A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press:125–42.Google Scholar
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, and James, David R. (1992)“Schooling for some: Child labor and school enrollment of black and white children in the early twentieth-century South.” American Sociological Review 57:635–50.Google Scholar
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, McCammon, Holly J., and James, David R. (1990) “Schooling or working? Public education, racial politics and the organization of production in 1910.” Sociology of Education 63:1–26.Google Scholar
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, and O'Connell, Philip J. (1988) “The family economy, work, and educational participation in the United States, 1890-1940.” American Journal of Sociology 93:1116–52.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana (1985) Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. New York: Basic.Google Scholar