The United Nation's describe as part of the Rights of the Child that children should be "protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."# The children that lived during this time of industrial awakening were no longer treated as the future of the world but viewed as cheap labor. Throughout the ages and in all cultures, children joined with their parents to work in the fields, in the marketplace, and around the home as soon as they were old enough to perform simple tasks. The use of child labor, however, was not regarded a social problem until the introduction of the factory system during the industrial revolution.
During the 1700's, England's villages grew into towns and cities. Factory profits had boosted the economy, and more food was available, both of which helped the population with increased health care. The Revolution first took advantage of Britain's largest industry, textiles. In the 1600's, cotton cloth imported from India had become popular and so British merchants organized a cotton industry for themselves. They developed a pulling out system in which raw cotton was brought to peasant families who spun it into cloth, and then skilled artisans finished and dyed the cloth. Under the putting out system, production was very slow and as the demand for cloth grew, inventors came up with ways to make the cotton industry more efficient. In 1764, James Hargreaves invented a spinning jenny that spun many threads at a time. A few years later, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame, which used waterpower than spun cloth even faster; the new machines put an end to the putting out system. They were costly, and too large to fit inside peasants" home. Instead, factures built long sheds near fast moving streams to power the machines.
