The Normality of Young Working Children

In a photograph found at the Library of Congress, a small boy walks along the streets of St. Louis Missouri in 1910. Tall men dressed in suits are dashing by him unaware of his presence as he stands underfoot trying to sell a newspaper for a small price. The buildings, advertisements and adults surrounding him tower over his small body, demonstrating how small he is compared to the rest of the world. This is the scene clearly represented in a photograph from the Library of Congress and is a representation of a life regretfully typical for a young child during the early 1900s. Child Labor labors were extremely common during the early 1900's and put children in the horrific position of having to put their joyful and fun childhood aside and forces them to assume adult like roles. As represented in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, children of any age or gender were required to obtain a job in order to financially support and contribute to their families in any way possible. Sinclair demonstrates the types of jobs children may have had such as children working in factories and children selling newspapers. In the novel Kotrina, Stanislovas and some of the other children earn money for the familiy by seeling newspapers. Because the family does not have a sufficient income, children in that time were required to play a part in earning money and essentially beg on the streets. The children would go out daily, not knowing how much or littler they would make.The depiction of child labor in the Jungle demonstrates how children were forced into a short and miserable life without choice. Similar to adults, children were required to work in hard and repetitive jobs to help suport their family. These jobs are robbing children of their childhood and leaving them with a poor quality of life and therefore forces them into the same miserable continuous cycle of work.