At the end of the 18ths hundred most children from the
poorest families already worked 7-8 years of age.
In most cases this was a necessity to help for providing support
for the family.
In addition to schooling , most children worked part-time - or
by today's standards, a full-time job , because working was
often up to eight hours.
At the same time it was also a common view that it was healthy
for children to get out and learn how to work properly.
After their confirmation they got out of school and got an
apprenticeship or a job.
An academic education was only for the most affluent children to
receive .
While the children in the country site were often assisting on
the farm , children in the cities worked typically in the house
of strangers, as grocery boys or factory workers .
Factory work was hard , dirty and often dangerous.
Conditions were far from safe for the little workers.
Tobacco , textile and match industries are the industries that
employed the most children .
Often it was very young children who were employed and wages
were very small.
The worst thing was that the kids had to work with dangerous
machinery and hand tools and with highly toxic substances. It
caused damages and in some cases caused the death,
because of the white and yellow phosphorus at sulfur sticking
factories.
Descriptions from the past and others talk
about how children's breath and clothing directly shined when
they went home from the match factories late at night.
One of the pioneers of child labor was the doctor Emil Horneman
.At
the first Nordic industry meeting in Copenhagen in July 1872, he
held a very moving lecture on children's use in factories
and succeeded his lecture with an article in the paper "Hygiene
messages" .
Basically he found child labor as healthy and instructive, but
he also had a number of strong objections.
He concluded in his speech that factory work could affect
children's growth and development and that there may get
diseases due to work.
One of the things that make the biggest impression on him was to
see children who worked on the sulfur sticking factories and had
got phosphornecrosis.
Emil Horneman , who is deeply respected for his work on health
and hygiene, got with his posts politicians to respond
rather quickly, and as a direct result of his work , the Law on
Child Labor adopted 23rd of may
1873.
The law was further tightened in 1889 and then repeatedly
adjusted to improve conditions for children while they go to
school .
Law
about child labor in 1873
The doctor Emil Horneman´s
article in "Hygiene messages" from 1872 about childrens use in
factories.
