Now that we do have our wonderful machines, what happens when something breaks down, what are we going to rely on? Some people don't know how to fix the complex machines of the 21st century, so we are up a creek without a paddle on doing our everyday activity. With every new machine that is either updated or invented, people need to also learn how to work each new machine. Just like in the 19th century when the factories needed to become bigger because the machines were getting bigger and more complex, the owners did not need children as much because now they needed someone who knew what they were doing, instead of just putting a child in front of one and telling them what to do. .
The nineteenth century was the time of the Industrial Revolution. Life was tough and money was scares, unless you were one of the "privileged" white men who owned a factory. The Industrial Revolution brings an onset of new inventions and machines, and basically a new way of life. For example: workers no longer had to pick the seeds out of the cotton, because now there was the Cotton Gin, which did most (not all), of the work required for picking cotton. With all of these great inventions that were coming to the surface, why was it so many people were still having to put so much effort and hard work into what they were doing? Of course the factory owners thought everything was wonderful, they were getting more work done, which produced more products, and more products meant more profit coming into the factory. These owners were rolling in the money that was coming in. Yet something is still missing from this equation, cheap labor was needed to be hired in order to run the machines, and who else better for a very small price, but children.
Child labor in the nineteenth century was a shameful practice that many of us never look back on. A family took it for granted, that if the children didn't work then the family would not be able to survive.
