Often times those who are critical of industry and proponents of government intervention point to child labor as the sort of ill brought about by greedy capitalists and cured by government intervention. However, this overlooks two very important points, points I covered previously in "Greed Versus Evil", but which I shall address again in greater detail.

First, child labor is hardly a creation of the industrial revolution. From the dawn of time to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, child labor was a fact of life. From hunter gatherers through herdsmen all the way to the agricultural societies immediately preceding the birth of industry, children labored for much of their childhood. No, it was not tough factory work, but it was equally back breaking work hunting, collecting and farming. The concept of an idle childhood may have existed among the elites of society, but among the rank and file, work was a fact of childhood. Industry did not bring labor to childhood, it simply increased the variety of jobs and provided better pay.

Second, as I argued before, child labor is not cured by government intervention, but by wealth. For the most part child labor was already vanishing in the richer nations when they passed laws to end it. Yes, there were still hold outs, but it was already vanishing when the government stepped in to ban it.

Why is that?

The answer is obvious if one looks at it. Child labor is of very low productivity, and as a result the pay is quite poor. Once one institutes any degree of automation, even the most primitive, the level of skill required exceeds the skill level of most children. Which leaves children in those jobs requiring almost no skill and providing almost no pay.

Once a society has any degree of wealth, there simply are no jobs suitable for children, and, more significantly, the amount of pay a child can earn is too low to be consequential. And that is why we see child labor only lingering in those societies where there is little or no capital investment along with very low incomes and low costs of living. Anywhere else, even in relatively poor industrialized nations, child labor does not make sense.

The other thing one often forgets when hearing denunciations of child labor is the alternative. As I described in "Exploited Labor", sometimes those denouncing "exploitation" forget why the "exploiters" could hire the cheap labor. Child labor existed for one reason, crushing poverty. That poverty was not the result of industrialization, these same people were even poorer int he preceding era. What child labor allowed was for families to escape the crushing poverty that had been their lot throughout history. There is a reason serfs fled to cities in the late middle ages, even if they were poor in the cities, they were even more poor in the country. And the same is true of child labor in the early industrial revolution. Yes, child labor was dirty and dangerous, but less dangerous than the very real threat of starvation if those children did not work.

Increasing wealth and modernization made such concerns less pressing and gradually reduced the forces which pressed children into industrial labor. (Ironically, farm labor for children far outlasted industrial labor, yet no one blames farming for creating child labor.) Wealth and capital investment gradually removed the need or desire for child labor. Yet, like the shortened work week and improving conditions, the government stepped in late in the process and passed laws enforcing conditions that were already evolving and took credit for "saving" us from exploitative bosses.  But the fact remains that without the government, increasing affluence and greater capital investment was much more responsible for improved conditions than any government edict.

POSTSCRIPT

I would recommend the following related essays: "Exploiting Workers?", "Fairness and the Free Market", "Capital Investment", "Exploited Labor" and "Greed Versus Evil".

POSTSCRIPT II

There are those who will doubt that child labor, or long hours, or any other ill was vanishing before the government intervened, but the facts support me. For example, the fact that even before the government intervened the demands of unions continually increased. As the bosses rarely caved in to unions, why would they have gone from demanding 80 hour weeks to 60 hour weeks to 40 hours weeks? Because the market itself was catching up with their demands. Similarly, when the early government attempts at intervention were struck down by courts, notice the next round of laws imposed greater restricitons. Why? Because the government wanted an even worse defeat in court? No, because conditions had improved while the government did nothing, so the state needed to impose more stringent requirements.

Look at the market today, at least during good times. Do employer refuse to give anything to workers and make conditions as miserable as possible? No, when labor is in demand, they improve conditions to appeal to workers. And during the boom times of the industrial revolution labor was in short supply as well, so bosses had to give in somewhat to get the labor they needed. Yes, during slack times they can give less and ask more, but that is the same as whether it is a buyer's or seller's market in houses, labor has buyer's and seller's markets as well. Still, once some baseline is established it becomes very hard for bosses to go back to the old conditions. And thus strong need for workers and growing wealth had a lot more to do with shorter working hours than the government.