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. 2014 Oct;104(10):1862-71.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302030. Epub 2014 Aug 14.

Science as an early driver of policy: child labor reform in the early Progressive Era, 1870-1900

Frederica Perera  1
Affiliations

Science as an early driver of policy: child labor reform in the early Progressive Era, 1870-1900

Frederica Perera. Am J Public Health. 2014 Oct.

Abstract

Scientific evidence is an increasingly important driver of social and environmental policy concerning child health. This trend began earlier than generally recognized. The child labor reform movement of the Gilded Age and early Progressive Era reflected not only moral and economic forces but also the dramatic advances during the later decades of the 19th century in scientific knowledge concerning children's biological and psychological vulnerability to environmental and psychosocial stressors. The growing importance of scientific information in shaping policy concerning children's health between 1870 and 1900 is illustrated by the events leading up to and following the New York State Child Labor Law of 1886. Child labor reform during this period was a critical step in the development of a science-based as well as a value-driven movement to protect children's environmental health and well-being that continues today.

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Figures

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Photo by reporter and reformer Jacob Riis.
None
Photo by reporter and reformer Jacob Riis.
None
Photo by reporter and reformer Jacob Riis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Is science public health's BFF?
    Brown TM. Brown TM. Am J Public Health. 2014 Oct;104(10):1798. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302209. Epub 2014 Aug 14. Am J Public Health. 2014. PMID: 25122012 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

References

    1. J.P. Felt, Hostages of Fortune: Child Labor Reform in New York State (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1965)
    1. A. Derickson, “Making Human Junk: Child Labor as a Health Issue in the Progressive Era,” American Journal of Public Health 82, no. 9 (1992): 1280–1290. Writing about the first 2 decades of the 20th century, Derickson concluded that statistical data on injuries and illnesses resulting from workplace exposures were important in winning the enactment of much protective legislation. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Felt, Hostages of Fortune; V.A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); S. Mintz, Huck’s Raft (Boston, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004)
    1. R.A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850–1929 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998). The crusade against infant mortality ongoing during the same period was to a large extent based on scientific arguments and drew attention to the issue of protecting the young and vulnerable.
    1. J. MacLaury, “Government Regulation of Workers’ Safety and Health, 1877–1917,” http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/mono-regsafeintrotoc.htm (accessed May 20, 2012). State bureaus of labor statistics, established beginning in 1869, gathered data on numbers of workers and factory conditions. The US census first reported child laborers as a separate category in 1870; national statistics on child labor first became available in 1880; and the New York State Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its first report on the extent and conditions of employment of young children in factories of New York State in January 1885.

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