How getting richer made teenagers less free

Summary

Horrific child abuse. (Archive Photos / Stringer)In 1913, journalist Helen Todd talked to hundreds of 14- to 16-year-olds working in American factories. Most of their fathers were dead or had crippling health issues thanks to decades of work in unsafe factories, and their mothers were supporting an average of five children on low wages. By doing piecemeal work for excruciatingly low pay in dangerous factories, the teenagers were keeping their families afloat.Todd asked these teenage laborers whether they would choose work in the factory or school if their families were rich enough that they didn’t need to work.Overwhelmingly, they chose the factory:“The children don’t holler at ye and call ye a Christ-killer in a factory.”“They don’t call ye a Dago.”“They’re good to you at home when you earn money.”“Youse can eat sittin’ down, when youse work.”“You can go to the nickel show.”“You don’t have to work so hard at night when you get home.”“Yer folks don’t hit ye so much.”“You can buy shoes for the baby.”“You can give your mother yer pay envelop.”“What ye learn in school ain’t no’ good. Ye git paid just as much in the factory if ye never was there. Our boss he never went to school.”“That boy can’t speak English, and he gets six dollars. I only get four dollars, and I’ve been through the sixth grade.”“When my brother is fourteen, I’m going to get him a job here. Then, my mother says, we’ll take the baby out of the ‘Sylum for the Half Orphans.”December 1910: Young boys at work at the troughs used for cleaning coal at a pit in Bargoed, South Wales. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)No one in America today lives under the cloud of desperation that these children did. In the last century, economic growth has transformed our society from every conceivable angle. But one we don’t dwell on much is how it has transformed childhood.In 1910, shortly before these children were interviewed, 16% of American children died before age 5 and 19% before age 18. Just...