Immigrant Children during Industrial Revolution
A small boy barely over seven works in a dank breaker alongside other children of varying ages. Black clouds of coal dust, steam and smoke settle over their tiny faces, turning them coal black. He drops his handkerchief and lets out a gruff cough as breaker dust gets trapped in his throat. Extending his swelled and cracked open fingers, he swoops up the dirty handkerchief, and wipes away a small stream of blood that fell over his reopened finger wound. After almost 11 hours of working the deafening breaker, his back aches from its hunched-over position and he soon walks unsteadily home.
It was not unusual for children as young as seven to be working in such wretched and unsafe …show more content…
There are many gory and almost unbelievable accounts of such mishaps. Mary Richards, a girl of nearly or quite ten years of age, was attending a drawing frame. Her apron was caught in the shaft and she fell to the floor. “Blincoe ran towards her, an agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror… he saw her whirled around and round with the shaft- he heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs successively snap asunder, crushed, seemingly, to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew her tighter and tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the frame and streamed across the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces...when she was extricated, every bone was found broken!- her head dreadfully crushed!- her clothes and mangled flesh, were inextricably mixed together…” (Simmons 123) This catastrophe, left Mary barely alive and with many disabilities. “Many breaker boys’ high spirits and natural curiosity sometimes led to disaster. Fingers were caught in converters and cut off. Small boys fell down the long coal chutes and became buried and smothered in coal” (Bartoletti 21). These children were exposed to an unsafe environment that had its fair share of casualties. Heat and moisture helped keep the cotton threads from breaking so the mill windows were always kept closed. “The hot, steamy air was filled with dust and lint that covered the workers’ clothes and made it hard to breathe. Mill workers frequently developed tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases” (Freedman 35). The conditions were hindering the health of the workers and setting aside their wellbeing. Yet at the time of similar incidents or conditions, employers were not concerned with the welfare of these small
A small boy barely over seven works in a dank breaker alongside other children of varying ages. Black clouds of coal dust, steam and smoke settle over their tiny faces, turning them coal black. He drops his handkerchief and lets out a gruff cough as breaker dust gets trapped in his throat. Extending his swelled and cracked open fingers, he swoops up the dirty handkerchief, and wipes away a small stream of blood that fell over his reopened finger wound. After almost 11 hours of working the deafening breaker, his back aches from its hunched-over position and he soon walks unsteadily home.
It was not unusual for children as young as seven to be working in such wretched and unsafe …show more content…
There are many gory and almost unbelievable accounts of such mishaps. Mary Richards, a girl of nearly or quite ten years of age, was attending a drawing frame. Her apron was caught in the shaft and she fell to the floor. “Blincoe ran towards her, an agonized and helpless beholder of a scene of horror… he saw her whirled around and round with the shaft- he heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs successively snap asunder, crushed, seemingly, to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew her tighter and tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the frame and streamed across the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces...when she was extricated, every bone was found broken!- her head dreadfully crushed!- her clothes and mangled flesh, were inextricably mixed together…” (Simmons 123) This catastrophe, left Mary barely alive and with many disabilities. “Many breaker boys’ high spirits and natural curiosity sometimes led to disaster. Fingers were caught in converters and cut off. Small boys fell down the long coal chutes and became buried and smothered in coal” (Bartoletti 21). These children were exposed to an unsafe environment that had its fair share of casualties. Heat and moisture helped keep the cotton threads from breaking so the mill windows were always kept closed. “The hot, steamy air was filled with dust and lint that covered the workers’ clothes and made it hard to breathe. Mill workers frequently developed tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases” (Freedman 35). The conditions were hindering the health of the workers and setting aside their wellbeing. Yet at the time of similar incidents or conditions, employers were not concerned with the welfare of these small