The exploitation of children: past and present.

Since the beginning of history, children throughout the world have been exploited by adults. They continue to be brutally exploited in many countries around the world. The exploitation of children was also common practice in the United States. From the late 1600s until the American Civil War, countless African American children worked inhumanely as slaves on Southern plantations. And from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s until the passage of the first national child labor laws in 1916, over two million children at any one time worked from dawn until dusk under appalling conditions in the sweat shops, factories and mines of America. Their ranks included orphaned or abandoned children and the children of poor European, Asian and Hispanic immigrants.

Today, an estimated 250 million children throughout the world are forced to work, many as slaves, prostitutes and menial laborers. And in the U.S., despite stringent child labor laws and compulsory education regulations, the young are still being exploited for their labor by fast-food chains and other industries.

The following literature for young adults offers an up-to-date, in-depth look at the history and present-day status of child labor and exploitation in the U.S. and around the world.

NONFICTION

Cheap Raw Material: How Our Youngest Workers are Exploited and Abused. Milton Meltzer. A survey of the history of child labor from ancient times to the present and the ongoing exploitation of young U.S. workers today. Concludes with a discussion of what government and the educational community can do to re-establish education as a priority and to improve the working conditions and compensation for young workers.

Child Labor and Sweatshops (At Issue series). Mary E. Williams, ed. Seventeen essays by a variety of writers, including human-rights activists, journalists, and teachers, present a variety of viewpoints on child labor around the world. Includes bibliographies and an annotated list of relevant organizations.

Free the Children: A Young Man Fights Against Child Labor and Proves That Children Can Change the World. Craig Kielburger & Kevin Major. In 1995, at the age of 12, Craig Kielburger read about the murder of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy who had been forced into slavery and later spoke out against child bondage. Spurred to action, Craig formed a group called Free the Children in his native Canada to advocate for children's rights, and he toured cities in South Asia along with a human rights worker to see the plight of child workers there. This inspiring book, written when Craig was 15, tells of his activism and what be witnessed on his trip.

Good Girl Work: Factories, Sweatshops, and How Women Changed Their Role in the American Workforce. Catherine Gourley. Using quotes from letters, diaries, memoirs, and newspaper interviews, augmented by b/w photos, Gourley reveals the dreadful working conditions of girls and young women in the early years of American industry and their part in the fierce fight for labor unions.

Kids at Work. Russell Freedman, with photos by Lewis W. Hines. A photographic history of the exploitation of American children during the early 20th century. Includes ground-breaking photographs by investigative photographer and activist Lewis W. Hines that led to the passage of the first U.S. child labor laws.

Kids on Strike! Susan Campbell Bartoletti. The true stories of individual children who, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, organized effective labor movements and strikes against the powerful American industries that were exploiting them.

Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery. Susan Kuklin. The true story of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy sold into bondage to weave rugs at age four. Freed by a human rights organization at age ten, Iqbal became an international symbol and spokesman against the practice of child bondage by various trades and countries around the world. He was murdered upon his return to Pakistan. Basing her book on Iqbal's story, Kuklin examines the issue of child bondage in various countries, the global markets that benefit from the practice, and the efforts of human rights groups and U.S. schools to organize protests and boycotts. Includes numerous shocking photographs of child laborers around the world.

Growing Up in Coal Country. Susan Campbell Bartoletti. A photo essay on the history of the children and their families who worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania from the 1850s through the turn of the century.

Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story. Andrea Warren. Includes the history of the orphan trains, the true story of Lee Nailing who took the orphan train west in 1926, and the experiences of other such children.

The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America. Marilyn Irvin Holt. The history of a system instituted by the Children's Aid Society of New York that placed more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children on farms in America's heartland between 1853 and 1929. Although well-meaning, the practice often resulted in the harsh exploitation of children as laborers on these farms.

Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children. David L. Parker. Includes sobering photographs of child workers throughout the world today, extensive discussion of the types of labor children are forced to perform in various countries, and research on the effects of work on the lives and health of exploited children.

HISTORICAL FICTION

Ajeemah and His Son. James R. Berry. The story of Ajeemah and his son Atu who, in 1807, are snatched by slave traders and transported from Africa to separate plantations in Jamaica. Their African families never know what happened to them, and father and son never see each other again even though they live on neighboring plantations. (Numerous awards, including ALA Notable Children's Book and ALA Best Book for Young Adults.)

Dragon's Gate. Laurence Yep. A fictional story based on the hardships of Chinese immigrant laborers working to build America's transcontinental railroad in the mid-1800s. (A Newbery Honor Book.)

Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. Mary E. Lyons. Recounts the true story of Harriet Jacobs through a series of fictional letters she writes to relatives while hiding in her grandmother's attic. Written in the slave dialect Jacobs would have spoken, the letters bring the details of Jacob's captivity and escape to life. (ALA Notable Children's Book and ALA Best Book for Young Adults.)

Lyddie. Katherine Paterson. A fictional story about the young girls and children who worked in the weaving mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the mid-1800s and their efforts to organize against their harsh and deadly working conditions.

HISTORICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Harriet A. Jacobs. Jean Fagan Yellin, ed. A new edition of the personal narrative of Harriet A. Jacobs, a slave who, in the early 1830s, hid in her grandmother's cramped attic for seven years before escaping to the North, leaving behind her two children. Her detailed narrative recounts the brutality of slavery from a female perspective and her heroic escape. This edition also includes a newly discovered autobiographical sketch entitled "A True Tale of Slavery" by her brother, John S. Jacobs, who also escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Growing Up in Coal Country. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996.

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Kids on Strike! Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999.

Berry, James R. Ajeemah and His Son. New York: Harper Trophy, 1992.

Freedman, Russell. Kids at Work: Lewis Hines and the Crusade Against Child Labor. New York: Clarion Books, 1994.

Gourley, Catherine. Good Girl Work: Factories. Sweat-shops, and How Women Changed Their Role in the American Workforce. Brookfield. CT: Millbrook Press. 1999.

Holt, Marilyn Irvin. The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself/Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Kielburger, Craig & Major, Kevin. Free the Children: A Young Man Fights Against Child Labor and Proves That Children Can Change the World. NY: Harper-Perennial, 1999.

Kuklin, Susan. Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery. New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 1998.

Lyons, Mary E Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1992.

Meltzer, Milton. Cheap Raw Material: How Our Youngest Workers Are Exploited and Abused. New York: Viking Books, 1904.

Parker, David L. Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working Children. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1998.

Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1991.

Warren, Andrea. Orphan Train: One Boy's True Story Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996.

Williams, Mary E., ed. Child Labor and Sweatshops. (At Issue series.) San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999.

Yep, Laurence. Dragon's Gate. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

Judy Ryan teaches English and Humanities, Grades 9 and 10, at Centennial High School in Howard County, Maryland.