Child Labor is a term used to represent the employment of minors in work that may interfere with their education, or endanger their health. Throughout the ages and in all cultures children joined with their parents to work in the fields, in the marketplace, and around the home as soon as they were old enough to perform simple tasks. The use of child labor was not regarded a social problem until the introduction of the factory system during the industrial revolution.
Villages had grown into towns and cities. Factory profits had boosted the economy, and more food was available. The population was growing as a result of better health care and nutrition. The Revolution first took advantage of Britain's largest industry, textiles. In the 1600's, cotton cloth imported from India became popular. British merchants organized a cotton industry for themselves. They developed a pulling out system in which raw cotton was brought to peasant families who then spun it into cloth. Skilled artisans then finished and dyed the cloth. Under the pulling out system, production was very slow. As the demand for cloth grew, inventors came up with ways to make the cotton industry more efficient.
In 1764, James Hargraves invented a spinning jenny that spun many threads at
a time. A few years later, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame which
used waterpower than spun cloth even faster, the new machines put an end to
the pulling out system. They were costly, and too large to fit inside peasants
home. Instead, factures built long sheds near fast moving streams to power the
machines. Later, machines were powered by steam engines. Spinners and
weavers came to work everyday in the factories. The revolution brought rapid
urbanization. The great demand for factory workers grew as more factories
were built. Small villages turned into cities practically overnight. Some
villages that only had a population of 17,000 people had incre...