Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism

Abstract

Betsy Wood (History, Hudson County Community College) contributes to the historiography of child labor reform in America, showing the ways reformers responded to shifts in North–South sectional ideological, political, social, and moral disputes of free labor versus unfree labor in an expanding, maturing industrial capitalist society from the 1850s to the 1930s. Stating interest “in what debates about child labor over time would reveal about the legacy of sectionalist conflict within an emerging capitalist society,” Wood adds an understanding of the hostile battles over child labor (2). She argues “that debates about children and their labor brought to the fore opposing visions of labor, freedom, morality, and the market in the modern industrial age. . . . [when] both sides were attempting to negotiate, materially and spiritually, the changes wrought by capitalism” (6). Wood penned five chapters on the history of the child labor reform movement that illustrates Americans struggling over child labor in relation to notions of freedom and unfreedom and the role of the state and capitalism.Chapter 1 features the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) as a major force for child labor reform in the 1850s. CAS praised the superiority of Northern values of free labor republicanism as key to individuals lifting themselves out of poverty and exercising personal independence while vilifying Southern defense of slavery for perpetuating moral depravity, dependency, and lack of individual initiative and responsibility. The CAS fostered free labor republicanism by placing vagrant urban children—boys from petty crime and girls from prostitution—with Midwestern (Michigan, Illinois, etc.) farming families where boys learned the value and dignity of work as future independent skilled tradesmen and girls acquired “domestic skills and thereby become ‘useful members of society’ as future wives and mothers” (18).Highlighted in chapter 2, in the several decades after the Civil War, CAS and other child labor reform advocates adjusted their notions of free labor republicanism in response to substantive challenges and transformations caused by industrialization, urbanization, and mass immigration. Some reformers worried about ex-slaveholders coercing ex-slave children into apprenticeship programs that black Southerners vehemently denounced as slavery by another name. Others shuddered at the expanding numbers of white native-born and European immigrant children toiling in factories and other worksites, and at seeing the Italian immigrants’ padrone children system as a “new form of child slavery” (33). Reformers generally agreed the pivotal problem was who had authority over child labor, not the organization and conditions of work because they believed free labor benefited children.North-South sectionalism that divided child labor reformers is the topic of chapter 3. Sectionalism disrupted child labor reform as industrialization and the factory system absorbed increasing numbers of white Southerners and their children into wage work. Alabaman Episcopal priest, Progressive Era reformer, and white supremacist Edgar Gardner Murphy injected the sectionalist argument into the national debates on child labor reform. Focusing on the physical and mental debilitating effects of labor on white children, Murphy worked to keep state and regional control of child labor, which appealed to Southerners, while Northerners sought federal control. In addition, he introduced race in national discussion when “white racial unity” held much sway (52–53). As one of the three founders of the National Child Labor Committee, Murphy proved instrumental in “[n]ationalizing . . . the child labor problem. . . . [forging] a racial compact between white Northern and Southern reformers. . . . [leading to the] symbolic reunification of Northern and Southern moral sentiment” (69). Murphy and the NCLC led successful fights to prevent enactment of federal child labor laws, most notably against US Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, “an imperialist and supporter of several popular progressive reforms [including] child labor reform. . . . [who] wanted federal involvement” (78–79).Chapter 4 highlights the moral arguments raised by child labor reformers associated with the Social Gospel movement as they allied with national efforts to involve the federal government in legislating child labor. They and their allies especially leveled much criticism of child labor in southern textile mills, incurring intensified opposition of Southern politicians and industrialists. Reformers’ efforts to ameliorate or abolish child labor were suspended during World War I. The advocates of federal involvement developed timely, modern viewpoints as national discussion shifted from moral principles to consumerism, the latter exemplified by toy manufacturers whose self-interests relied on children at play or school, not at work.Chapter 5 dramatically presents various proponents and opponents of federal child labor legislation reshaping the sectional divide by recasting their moral arguments to support either a modern secular national government advanced by Northerners or a free labor system in deregulated business and labor markets as voiced by Southerners. Elite and grassroots proponents and opponents clashed over the role of state power in the proposed constitutional amendment on child labor. Though the nation failed to ratify the Child Labor Amendment, advocates for federal child labor legislation rejoiced when much of the anti–child labor Keating-Owen Act of 1916 became part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.Wood opens new views and makes exciting comparisons and contrasts of the ways sectional disputes informed child labor disputes that emerged from or were influenced by discussions of free labor and slave labor. Since capitalism and slavery have opposing fundamentals, perhaps in a sequel Wood will look at, for example, forms of dependency, indebtedness, debt slavery, the company store, and the company town, which arose within free labor industrial capitalism and threatened free labor ideology.The book is valuable to those interested in child labor in America and must reading for advanced students to learn about Wood’s contribution to the historiography of child labor reform. The bibliography, a treasure trove of primary sources and secondary literature, and the endnotes comprise nearly one-third of the book and provide useful references for scholars. Readers are left knowing that reformers placed children on an altar as either a sacrifice or a sacred ideal to work.