Child Labor in the 1900's

During the early 1900's many Americans were struggling to get by on the little amount of money that they earned through labor in the brutal factories, coal mines, brothels, and other demeaning workplaces. These jobs were mainly performed by adults, but also included children as young as 10 years old. The salary, however, was usually not high enough which forced the youngest children in the families to work as well, often by selling newspapers. Selling newspapers seems like a simple enough job, even for children, but considering the conditions in which they were under, all types of accidents were likely. In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, a few of the scenes revealed the responsibilities of the young children, and the situations they experienced including the cold winters, various rivals, and a run in with the law. In Chapter 21, it was stated that Vilimas looked too young to work, therefore was told to stop selling newspapers or else an officer would be called. It was also mentioned that Kotrina was almost kidnapped by a stranger while she was on the streets at night. The descriptions of the children appeared most notably when the family was in their greatest desperation. In this chapter, the family only had the children's wages to live off of. Sinclair uses the children in The Jungle to represent the desperation of families in America in the early 1900's. 

            In the picture taken by Lewis Hine, an eight year old boy in America had gotten pneumonia twice and was put back to work quickly after his second recovery. Underlying this picture is the fact that the boy's family had most likely been desperate for money if they had pushed him back into work after getting pneumonia twice. This picture serves as evidence to Sinclair's idea that children were put to work in the  most desperate times.