Child Labor and Labor Unions in 19th-Century Europe

Introduction: Industrialization and the Labor Question

As Carolyn Tuttle points out, the first textile mills in England were bad enough to elicit the scathing condemnation of Charles Dickens in the 19th century, who scorned them as "dark satanic mills." By the beginning of the 19th century, the First Factory Act of 1802 had been passed — but it did little to amend the strict, severe, and inhuman conditions in which labor shortage problems were addressed by "employing parish apprentices," that is, through the exploitation of child labor (Tuttle). Dickens would become a proponent of labor and education reform in England, depicting the latter as pernicious as the former in Hard Times — a novel that portrays a headmaster stubbornly insistent on the rote memorization of "facts" and "nothing but facts" (1). This was a subtle Dickensian point indicating that education had become as mechanical and inhuman as the labor force under the weight of industrialization.

It was not only in England that labor and education suffered from the dehumanizing character of the era. In countries such as Spain, France, and Switzerland, the impact of industrialization was keenly felt. However, each country had its own customs when it came to labor and politics, and with the rise of labor unions in the 19th century, both England and the Continent began to address more directly the issues that reformers like Dickens had highlighted in their own homelands. This paper shows how labor unions and various social trends in 19th-century Europe combined to bring an end to the exploitation of children in factories and to secure greater rights for workers in general.

Labor, Unions, Children, and Education

Throughout Europe in the 19th century and prior, communities viewed child labor as an outlet for poor families — a way for every member of the household, including children, to contribute to its survival. However, before the rise of industrialization, labor was less intensive, less modernized, and less factory-based, and therefore less detrimental to the physical well-being of minors (Pleck 178). With the rise of machine-based operations in the 19th century, where working conditions became more dangerous, less sanitary, and more taxing in terms of hours and demands, nations began to take a closer look at the role of children in the workplace. This was as true for England as it was for the Continent. Industrialized urban centers in Spain were no different from those in the UK or other parts of Europe (Cunningham 414–416).

Grievances illustrated artistically in the popular novels of Dickens were matched by writers and activists in other nations. Spain had its Realists, just as France had Émile Zola, who was preceded by Victor Hugo — author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables — and Honoré Daumier (Goldstein 43). Hugo himself predicted the effect that labor unions would have on the fate of children when he wrote that "sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will present itself with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth; and then, those who govern under the superintendence of the French idea will have to make this choice: the children of France or the gamins of Paris" (12).

Indeed, just ten years after Hugo penned those words, a workers' rebellion in France gave birth to the Paris Commune. The Labor Movement in one of the leading intellectual cities of Europe fanned the flames of social justice to such an extent that the Catholic Church, under Pope Leo XIII in Italy, issued its own perspective in the encyclical Rerum Novarum — "Of Revolutionary Change: Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor: On the Condition of the Working Classes." This document called for the standardization of working hours and wages, the abolition of child labor, and the recognition of the rights of labor unions, which had suffered undue repression under various regimes throughout the century.

Writers were as responsible as anyone else in stirring the social consciousness that, when prompted, exerted its influence through the development of labor unions. Writers were in many ways part and parcel with the labor unions, as the relationship between the novelist and the activist was forged in the same salons. Together, their impact on social, political, and economic changes in their homelands was discernible, even as the character of those nations evolved across the decades. The labor unions themselves were not the sole catalyst for change, however: technology became increasingly sophisticated, requiring more skilled adult labor and thus displacing the need for child labor in particular sectors of the labor market (Tuttle).

Society also began to adopt values in which households identified the father as the "breadwinner" and the mother as the "homemaker" — values that supported the rising middle class in its understanding of its own identity and its perspective on the role of children within the family and in society (Tuttle). By the mid-19th century, children were no longer as strongly needed as partial providers of the family's income. By the third quarter of the century, school and education began to be promoted from the top down throughout all of Europe as more appropriate places for children than the factory. From the Pope to progressives in Switzerland to Victorian labor union leaders in England, bolstered by the writings of English Romantic poet William Blake — whose "The Chimney Sweeper" epitomized the exploitation of child labor at the close of the 18th century — attention to the children of the 19th century finally gained the eyes and ears of lawmakers and leaders, who then set about instigating the necessary changes.

The Labor Movement Across European Nations

The labor unions varied from country to country across 19th-century Europe. Spain was wracked by revolution and social unrest throughout the period, with "minor revolutionary uprisings" being suppressed by "harsh repressive measures" (Goldstein 186). Even at the beginning of the century, Spain had been subject to dichotomous extremes: Ferdinand, following his release from Napoleon in 1813, first swore allegiance to the 1812 Constitution, and then, just two years later, declared it "void" (Goldstein 126). France itself was no better, still reeling from the Revolution and its war with Britain, as well as its own internal struggle to come to terms with Napoleon's legacy.

The 19th century was one that began in the Romantic-Enlightenment Era and concluded in the Industrial Era. Every country in Europe experienced a shift in social mood as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the surge of Romanticism, and the advent of technology. In the light of these changes, reform movements throughout Europe — including Spain — succeeded in drawing attention to issues of welfare, education, and child labor. As Goldstein observes, "reforms that slightly shifted the burden off the backs of the poor in Germany, Italy, Austria, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom" had taken hold by the end of the 19th century, helping to transition children from cruel working conditions at the start of the century to better and more appropriate educational conditions by its close (254).

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