Children of the Industrial Age: Children, Work, and Welfare in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario

...This study describes and analyzes the extent to which work, as a philosophical concept and as an economic reality, influenced the lives of working-class children in late nineteenth-century urban Ontario. Chapter I examines the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the working-class family and describes how the concepts of work and social control intersected to feed the development of welfare programmes based on middle-class objectives. Chapter II examines the conditions and experiences of children in the paid labour force, focussing particularly on the family economy, labour legislation, and the response of reformers and trade unionists. In addition, chapter II discusses the link between a child's economic responsibilities and his or her opportunities for personal development and social mobility. Chapter III applies the themes of chapter II to youngsters who worked in the home and on the street. Chapter IV describes the work experiences of children who spent part of their early lives in orphanages or foster homes and analyzes the reform impulse behind this style of welfare. Chapter V applies the themes of chapter IV to youngsters committed to reformatories, refuges, and industrial schools. Chapter VI examines the treatment, work experiences, and social development of needy British children who filled the roles of agricultural labourers and domestic servants in Canadian homes and discusses the motivations behind this programme. Chapter VII examines the connection between youngsters' work responsibilities and school attendance and analyzes the education system's approach to the issue of children and work. Throughout the text, the thesis argues that child labour composed a critical element of a complex social culture, deeply rooted in a capitalist economy, that defined work in both a material and philosophical sense. At the material level, working children made essential contributions to families that could not survive in the city on parental wages alone. Simultaneously children provided cheap labour for self-serving employers in industrial, commercial, and domestic settings. At the philosophical level, most members of nineteenth-century society believed that hard, honest work held the key to life-long success and happiness. This view prevailed among middle-class reformers who additionally believed that child labour under proper supervision would preserve social order and avoid future welfare costs by creating a class of efficient and compliant workers. The failure of this culture of work to balance its social and economic motivations, however, led to suffering and exploitation for youngsters more often than it created personal opportunity and social harmony. As the poorest, most powerless, and least secure members of industrial society, children of the working class most visibly bore the scars inflicted by a social system designed to serve middle- and upper-class interests.

ISBN: 9780315532212 OCLC: 23836592