How effective was child labor legislation in Victorian Europe?

Question

How effective was child labor legislation in Victorian Europe? Effectiveness being counted in 'percent of working environments that actually complied', with 'Effective' being... 50% compliance? Or would the children just have went working somewhere else, if the workplace complied, as they needed the money? Wikipedia for Child Labor Legislation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood#Children.27s_rights_under_the_law

Answer 1

Firstly, Europe was never not particularly "Victorian," although several of the British queen's children were married into the royal houses. The laws were effective over time. We know that because today, child labor laws still prevent children from forced work (instead of school) in England and the United States in greater numbers than ever in the past, as they do in Europe -- especially among the middle classes which would not exist, really but for the opportunity children have to attend schools instead work and often die early deaths without child labor laws. And today, when children do work, the environments and hours for which they can legally work are by far more healthy and safe than ever before. None of that would have happened had Queen Victoria of England. We make laws and enforce them because violence against innocents exists. And there is no culture anywhere where everyone follows the laws willingly, even when the price of not doing so is death -- whether by direct consequence or punishment dictated by the law. Human mind can be an unruly animal with all kinds of reasons why they think the laws shouldn't apply to it. You seem to having a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees issue. Was it "50% compliance"? When and for how long? We certainly have a higher rate of compliance today. By the way, working in and for the household that feeds and clothes you is not included. There other policies that provided for children who had to work to live, and at the start, they were. not all wonderful by any means -- the Workhouses for the poor and orphaned weren't particularly successful, but they were more than had existed in the past. Talking about "compliance" in reference to a population for whom the government is desperately attempting to improve the standard of living is an inappropriate application of privileged hindsight. The Victorian laboring classes were working for many unregulated and unscrupulous industrialists who had no moral qualms about mistreating day laborers who were living on the street, doing filthy and dangerous occupations in mines, gunpowder factories, dyers, distilleries, etc. They hired children for jobs that stunted them, broke their bones, damaged their minds all to save the money they would have had to pay adults who were our of work. Some beat the children, too. They preferred children because they were easier to intimidate. They often didn't pay their laborers, especially the children, to keep them in line in each others' factories. I have read plenty of primary sources rationalizing those behaviors by telling themselves that the poor were immersed in sin and error and their outcomes were the result of their own doing. I like to think those remarks were the result of those privileged peoples' own narrow experience. When you throw out statistics about the historical success of a policy, be sure to present them in a well-defined timeline. Your remark seems to suggest that the laws were solely about forbidding children to work to restrict their freedoms or prevent their livelihoods and to allow that child laborers would be acceptable even in an illegal industry if they "needed" the work. The better world many, many children and adults enjoy today owes a great debt to the national policy attempts to regulate the economic and social behaviors of privileged capital investors and industrialists of the nineteenth and twentieth century. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the facts.