Beginning the DBQ: Part 1: AGAINST: Child Labor (A)

Your Task: You have been assigned a position below. This means that no matter your personal opinion, you must argue

in favor of the position you have been assigned.

Your Assigned Position: The Industrial Revolution shows the destructive power of the American system.

Industrialization is a bad thing.

Introduction: The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s transformed the way that people live. In the process it forced

people into crowded and dirty cities, terrible working environments, and broke so many people (physically, mentally,

emotionally, spiritually, and financially). Those who owned the means of production (where stuff is made) treated

workers as if they were "interchangeable parts" replacing those who were broken putting profits over people.

Primary Source #'s 1 and 2:

To help you analyze the data below: Rural--living in the country. Urban--living in the city.

1 2 3 & 4

Year

Employed children

under 15 years of

age

(in millions)

% of US Population

Rural

Urban

1870 0.7 74% 26%

1880 1.1 72% 28%

1890 1.5 65% 35%

1900 1.75 60% 40%

1910 1.63 54% 46%

Examine the Graph:

1. Examine each column in the chart above.

2. What do you notice about column 3 and 4? (I notice...)

3. What about column 2? (I notice...)

4. Why do you think more children are working outside the household between 1870 and 1910? (I speculate...)

5. What happens to the number of children working in 1910? What are some possible reasons for this? (I

speculate...)

Look at the picture of the boy:

6. . I notice... (What people or objects are shown? How are they arranged? What is the physical setting? What other

details do you see?)

7. I wonder...(What are at least three questions that this picture may bring up in your mind.)

8. I speculate (inference and interpretation) that...(Summarize what you already know about the situation and time

period shown and the people and objects that appear. What do you conclude from what you see? What is going on in

the picture? Who are the people and what are they doing? What might be the function of the objects? What can we

conclude about the time period?)

“Manuel the young shrimp picker, age 5,

and a mountain of child labor oyster shells

behind him. He worked last year.

Understands not a word of English. Biloxi,

Mississippi.” (Lewis Hine, 1911)

Primary Source #3:

In this poem, written by a social worker in 1911 in New York City, a privileged child talks with her doll—a doll

that was made in sweatshop conditions in a tenement where the family who made the doll lived. Lewis Hine,

the American photographer who took thousands of pictures of children at work, printed this poem along

with a photo of the Cattena family of 71 Sullivan Street in New York City. The family was making

dolls’ legs. One of the children, Rosalie, is disabled; one is named Nettie. They all work after school and

often until 10 p.m.—and not only during the Christmas rush.

This is an example of a dialogue poem--two characters talk to each other or about the same events or issues from

different perspectives.

Look at the poem and the picture

9. Look at the picture and the introductory description. How are the lives of the girls in that picture different from the

life of a wealthy child? What does this mean for those children.

10. Who is this dialogue poem a discussion between?

11. What are the people in the poem talking about? (be specific)

12. A social worker wrote this poem. What is a social worker? What do they do? How might this influence the writing

of this poem and what bias might this carry with it?

13. Lewis Hine took both of the pictures above. Who was Lewis Hine (race, background, goals, etc.) and how might this

bias him?

Dolly dear, dolly dear, where have you

been? “I’ve been in a world you have

never seen.” Dolly dear, dolly dear, how

came you there? “I was born in a

tenement, up a back stair.” Dolly, my dolly

dear, what did you see?

“I saw little children make dollies like me.”

How old were these children, when did they play?

“They don’t play in that world, they work every

day.” Dolly, but dolly, how long does it take?

“They nodded, we nodded, that night half

awake.” Why didn’t they feed you and take you

to bed? “The children who made me were

often unfed.” Dolly, but dolly, what were they

named?

“There was Nettie with measles, and Rosalie

lamed.” These sick little children, what could

they sew? “They stitched on my dresses, an

arm then a toe.”

Primary Sources #4, #5, #6, & #7:

Look at the excerpt from the testimony of the Joseph Hebergram to the Sadler Committee and the pictures (also from

Lewis Hine):

14. Examine each photograph. They have been labeled with a letter. Tell me what you notice about each picture(at

least two). What you wonder about each picture (at least one). What you speculate for each picture (at least two).

15. What was the Sadler Committee? Why was the Sadler committee meeting? Where and when was this

happening?

16. What is Joseph Hebergram recounting? Be specific.

17. Who was Joseph Hebergam? Tell me a little about who he is (background, race, etc.), what are his view points, and

how those viewpoints and background may bias his account.

(Flip Over)

A B C

Primary Source #8

Excerpt from the book "How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Ris in 1890. In the late 1880s, Jacob Riis, himself a

Danish immigrant, began writing articles for the New York Sun that described the realities of life in New York City's

slums. Riis was one of the first reporters to use flash photography, allowing him to take candid photos of living

conditions among the urban poor. In 1890, he published How the Other Half Lives, illustrated with line drawings based

on his photographs. Riis's work helped spark a new approach to reporting called "muckraking" that eventually led to the

Progressive Era reform movements to improve these conditions. Here is an excerpt from Riis's book.

18. What point do you think Ris was trying to make when he chose the title for his work? Explain by describing

the conditions of the cities.

19. How effective is Ris' message? What makes it powerful or weak (depending on which you choose)?

20. Why did the poor agree to live in such conditions?

21. Why did government officials allow these conditions to continue?

22. Do similar conditions exist in the world today? Why or why not?

Men, women and children work together seven days in the week in these cheerless tenements to make a living for

the family, from the break of day till far into the night.. . . I have in mind an alley— inlet rather to a row of rear

tenements— is either two or four feet wide according as the wall of the crazy old building that gives on it bulges out

or in. I tried to count the children that swarmed there, but could not. Sometimes I have doubted that anybody knows

just how many there are about. Bodies of drowned children turn up in the rivers right along in summer whom no one

seems to know anything about. When last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River

pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his

parents afterward turned up. The truant officer assuredly does not know, though he spends his life trying to find out,

somewhat illogically, perhaps, since the department that employs him admits that thousands of poor children are

crowded out of the schools year by year for want of room. . . .