The Industrial Revolution for Kids by Cheryl Mullenbach

Author:Cheryl Mullenbach [Mullenbach, Cheryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2014-06-26T04:00:00+00:00

In New York, business owners weren’t supposed to hire children between the ages of 8 and 12 while school was in session—October to June. And they couldn’t hire 12- to 14-year-olds without a certificate saying the child had attended school for the required amount of time.

The schools employed attendance officers to enforce the laws. Parents were fined $5 for the first offense. A second offense resulted in a $50 fine or 30 days in jail. Children who constantly avoided school were put in a special truant school.

Not everyone liked the idea of requiring children to attend school. Some business owners didn’t like the school laws. Kids were a source of cheap labor—at least for a few weeks each year. Some parents wanted the money the working children brought into the household more than they wanted an educated child. Other people were concerned that making all those kids attend schools would put a burden on the teachers and the school budgets. Mandatory education was a controversial topic during the Industrial Revolution.

The Hearn family, owners of James A. Hearn & Co.—one of the largest department stores in New York City in the late 1800s—valued education for their young workers. The company was known as one of the more progressive businesses in the city. In the early 1900s it was one of the first stores to use motorized vehicles to make home deliveries. With its fleet of 40 “machines,” drivers made deliveries throughout the city from 8 AM to 7 PM. The Hearns were very modern and forward thinking in many respects.

The department store was known not only for its delivery service. Like many stores, the company employed children, who worked from morning until closing—as late as 10 PM some days. That left very little time for school.

The Hearn family decided to do something about that. One of the upper floors of the store was converted into a school. There were so many children working at the store that they went to school in shifts. When one group finished their lessons, another made their way to the top floor schoolrooms. They learned reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, history, and deportment (manners).

Some of the children were eager to attend the store school because they liked to learn. But they had another reason for looking forward to the school lessons. They earned job promotions and raises based on their performance in the department store school!

Giving Kids a Break

AS THE years of the Industrial Revolution evolved, some adults realized that kids should spend their days in schools, not in stuffy factories and dangerous mines. They understood that kids should play in grassy parks, not in streets littered with garbage. They explored different ways to help parentless kids. And by the early 1900s they passed laws to protect kids. Not every child could live like the privileged Gladys Vanderbilt, but fewer would live like Barney Dougherty, the boy miner, or Mary Baker, the girl who lost her hair in a corset factory.

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