Editing Children's rights movement (section)

== Social reform ==
{{Further|Child labour}}
With the onset of the [[Industrial Revolution]], children as young as six began to be employed in the [[factory|factories]] and [[coal mine]]s in often inhumane conditions with long hours and little pay. During the early 19th century this exploitation began to attract growing opposition. The terrible conditions of the poor urban children was exposed to liberal middle-class opinion, notably by the author [[Charles Dickens]] in his novel ''[[Oliver Twist]]''. [[Social reform]]ers, such as the [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury|Lord Shaftesbury]],  began to mount a vigorous campaign against this practice.

[[Image:coaltub.png|left|frame|The use of [[child labour]] increased during the [[Industrial Revolution]], and became a rallying cry for social reformers.]]
Ameliorating [[legislation]] was achieved with a series of [[Factory Acts]] passed during the 19th century, where working hours for children were limited and they were no longer permitted to work during the night.<ref>{{cite book|title=Statutes at Large: Statutes of the United Kingdom, 1801–1806|year=1822|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VkmpYG4zItsC|last1=Britain|first1=Great}}</ref> Children younger than nine were not allowed to work and those between 9 and 16 were limited to 16 hours per day.<ref>"[http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers1.html The Life of the Industrial Worker in Nineteenth-Century England]". Laura Del Col, West Virginia University.</ref><ref>{{cite journal | pmc = 2507680 | pmid=20759953 | volume=2 | title=The Factory and Workshop Act, 1901 | journal=Br Med J | issue=2139 | pages=1871–2 | doi=10.1136/bmj.2.2139.1871 | year=1901}}</ref> Factories were also required to provide education to the apprentices in reading, writing and arithmetic for the first four years.

An influential social reformer was [[Mary Carpenter]], who campaigned on behalf of neglected children who had turned to [[juvenile delinquency]]. In 1851 she proposed the establishment of three types of schools; free day schools for the general population, industrial schools for those in need and reformatory schools for young offenders.<ref>{{cite book|last=Carpenter|first=Mary|title=Reformatory Schools: For the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders|publisher=C. Gilpin|location=London|year=1851|pages=[https://archive.org/details/reformatoryscho00carpgoog/page/n54 38]–39|url=https://archive.org/details/reformatoryscho00carpgoog|quote=Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile Offenders.|access-date=5 April 2009}}</ref> She was consulted by the drafters of educational bills, and she was invited to give evidence before [[British House of Commons|House of Commons]] committees.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=106-907&cid=0#0|title=Autograph Letter Collection: Literary Ladies|work=nationalarchives.gov.uk |access-date=5 April 2009}}</ref> In 1852 she established a reformatory school at Bristol.<ref>{{cite book|title=The "Canynge" concise guide to Bristol and Suburbs|publisher=Jeffries & Sons|location=Bristol|year=1878|url=https://archive.org/stream/canyngeconcisegu00brisiala}}</ref>

In the United States, the Children's Rights Movement began with the [[orphan train]]. In the big cities, when a child's parents died or were extremely poor, the child frequently had to go to work to support himself and/or his family. Boys generally became [[factory]] or [[coal]] workers, and girls became [[prostitution|prostitutes]] or saloon girls, or else went to work in a [[sweat shop]]. All of these jobs paid only starvation wages.

In 1852, [[Massachusetts]] required children to attend school. In 1853, [[Charles Brace]] founded the ''[[Children's Aid Society]]'', which worked hard to take street children in. The following year, the children were placed on a train headed for the West, where they were adopted, and often given work. By 1929, the orphan train stopped running altogether, but its principles lived on.

[[Image:Abolish child slavery.jpg|thumb|[[Youth activism|Youth activists]] in the United States in the early 1900s.]]
The ''[[National Child Labor Committee]]'', an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in the 1890s. It managed to pass one law, which was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later for violating a child's right to contract his work. In 1924, [[United States Congress|Congress]] attempted to pass a [[constitutional amendment]] that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped. It took the [[Great Depression]] to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children. In 1938, President [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Franklin D. Roosevelt]] signed the [[Fair Labor Standards Act]] which, amongst other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hakim|first=Joy|title=A History of Us: War, Peace and all that Jazz|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1995|location=New York|isbn=0-19-509514-6}}</ref>

The Polish educationalist [[Janusz Korczak]] wrote of the rights of children in his book ''How to Love a Child'' (Warsaw, 1919); a later book was entitled ''The Child's Right to Respect'' (Warsaw, 1929). In 1917, following the Russian Revolution, the Moscow branch of the organization [[Proletkult]] produced a Declaration of Children's Rights.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft6m3nb4b2&brand=ucpress|title=Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia|last=Mally|first=Lynn|publisher=University of California Press|year=1990|location=Berkeley|pages=180|chapter=The Proletarian Family|quote=The Moscow Proletkult even passed a "Declaration of Children's Rights," which guaranteed that children could pick their own form of education, their own religion, and could even leave their parents if they chose|access-date=2007-09-21|chapter-url=http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft6m3nb4b2&chunk.id=d0e8846&toc.id=d0e8241&toc.depth=1&brand=ucpress&anchor.id=JD_Page_180#X}}</ref>