Children on Elfreth’s Alley circa 1910, image from the Free Library of Philadelphia.
This week on The Alley Cast we turn our attention to the topic of child labor and look at the lives of some children on Elfreth’s Alley as well as the story of how understandings of childhood were changed by the national movement to reform child labor.
Thanks to Dr. Rosemary Feurer who generously chatted with Margaret Sanford and Jeanette Bendolph for this story.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Our lead sponsor is Linode. Linode is the largest independent open cloud provider in the world, and its Headquarters is located just around the corner from Elfreth’s Alley on the Northeast corner of 3rd and Arch Streets, right next to the Betsy Ross House Museum. The tech company moved into the former Corn Exchange Building in 2018 and employees have relished the juxtaposition of old and new: Outside, concealed LEDs light up the historic facade, inside are flexible server rooms but also a library with a sliding ladder, and a former bank vault is now a conference room. Linode is committed to a culture that creates a sense of inclusion and belonging and is always looking for new team members. Learn more about job opportunities at linode.com/careers.
This season is also sponsored by the History Department and the Center for Public History at Temple University. Many of the people who have worked on this podcast over the past two years have been alumni or graduate students at Temple University. A special thanks to Dr. Hilary Iris Lowe and the students in her “Managing History” course during the Fall of 2020 who did preliminary research and scriptwork for several episodes this season. Learn more about the department at www.cla.temple.edu/history/ and the Center at sites.temple.edu/centerforpublichistory/
Support also comes from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and the Museum Council of Greater Philadelphia.
SOURCES
Abbot, Edith, “A Study of the Early History of Child Labor in America”, American Journal of Sociology 14 No. 1. (July 1908) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2762758: 15.
Douglas, Paul H., “American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education” in Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, (New York: Columbia University Press,1921): 49.
Fliter, John A., Child Labor in America: The Epic Legal Struggle to Protect Children, (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2018), 89. Accessed November 23, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctv7h0t22.
Hogan, Edmund, The Prospect of Philadelphia and Check on the Next Directory, Pt. 1. City Directory. Philadelphia: Francis and Robert Bailey, 1785, Philadelphia Museum of Art Libraries, Americana. https://archive.org/details/philadelphiadire1795phil/page/4/mode/2up?q=hatter (September 25, 2020).
Holleran, Philip M., “Explaining the Decline of Child Labor in Pennsylvania Silk Mills, 1899-1919,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 63, no. 1 (1996): 78-95, 82. Accessed November 17, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27773869.
Lovejoy, Owen R., “Child Labor in the Coal Mines,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 27 (1906): 35-41, 37. Accessed November 17, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1010788.
Mason, Mary Ann, “Masters and Servants: the American Colonial Model of Child Custody and Control”, The International Journal of Children’s Rights (1994) DOI:10.1163/157181894X00204 : 331.
Mother Jones, The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1925) Online Resource. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html
Moulds, Josephine. “Child Labor in the Fashion Supply Chain: Where, Why, and What Can Be Done”, The Guardian and UNICEF, (Onine: November 15, 2020). https://labs.theguardian.com/unicef-child-labour/
O’Neal, Michael J. Keating-Owen Act, In St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, edited by Neil Schlager, 509-513. Vol. 1. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 2004. Gale In Context: Global Issues (accessed November 18, 2020). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3408900153/GIC?u=temple_main&sid=GIC&xid=b39f62e4.
Pennsylvania Department of State, “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” by John Bayard and Thomas Paine, Philadelphia: 1780. http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/abolition slavery.html (October 3, 2020).
The Pennsylvania Gazette, “An Act for the Regulation of Apprentices within this Province”, Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1763. Accessible Archives. PDF. (September 23, 2020).
The Pennsylvania Gazette, “The Following Particular and Affecting Account of the Late Hurricane is Copied from the St. Christopher’s Gazette”, Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Gazette, August 29, 1792, Accessible Archives. PDF. (September 23, 2020).
Rittenhouse, David, Meteorological Observations, Volume 2, 1792 - 1805, Journal, American Philosophical Society Library, electronic resource, https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/david-rittenhouse-meteorological observations-volume-2-1792-1805#page/69/mode/1up, (October 22, 2020).
Shapiro, Ari. “Amish Seek Exemption from Child Labor Laws”, NPR, November 13, 2003. (Online: November 15, 2020). https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1504767
Stepenoff, Bonnie. “Child Labor in Pennsylvania's Silk Mills: Protest and Change, 1900-1910,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 59, no. 2 (1992): 101-121, 108. Accessed November 17, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27773524.
U.S. Census Bureau; Census 1880; transcribed by EAA staff; accessed https://airtable.com/tblRFJtjWHJisyIvB/viw23NZqy6X2kQlIT?blocks=hide (September 23, 2020).
U.S. Congress, House, A Bill To Prevent Interstate Commerce in the Products of Child Labor (Keating-Owen Act of 1916. HR 8234. Introduced in House 1916, Printed 1916. https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/hr-8234-bill prevent-interstate-commerce-products-child-labor-keating-owen-act
U.S. Congress, Senate, Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938.http://recordsofrights.org/records/110/fair-labor-standards act
TRANSCRIPT
August 25, 1792. A bundle of vibrant, red cloth perched innocuously on a stone ledge stirs against the early light. The rain of the previous day has cut the oppressive humidity typical of Philadelphia summers, painting the early Saturday morning in mist and welcome relief. For five in the morning, the streets are already awake: the sounds of carts heading to the weekly market, the chatter of homes shaking off the sleep from the previous night - opening windows and preparing breakfasts. With so many passing through the streets of Philadelphia that morning, that flash of red flannel on a familiar window could not have gone unnoticed. Inside: a baby girl.
The window in question: the Sparhawks’ residence on Elfreth’s Alley. The child: unknown. Local newspapers and records show she was a healthy and “handsome” baby girl - “exceed[ing] most new born children in beauty”- and was quickly taken in by the residents of the alley, going to live with a hatter named Isaac Donaldson and his family whose residence now lies under Interstate-95, the busy freeway directly east of Elfreth’s Alley.
What became of this little girl? What did the Donaldsons name her? How long did she live? While the details of the baby’s life fade from our view, we know one thing - at least- about her childhood: she worked.
Welcome to the Alley Cast, a podcast from the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia, PA. We trace the stories of people who worked, lived, and encountered this special street for over 300 years. While this story starts in Philadelphia, on a misty Saturday morning in the eighteenth century, we explore global connections that have meaning to us near and far.
Today we are exploring the shortest characters of the alley: the children! We will explore the circumstances behind child labor from the mystery baby’s discovery, imagining what her life might have looked like, up through child labor activism at the height of the Industrial Era, when a famous reformer, Mother Jones, led an dramatic march out of Philadelphia - mere minutes away from Elfreth’s Alley. This is child labor, in and around Elfreth’s Alley. What they lacked in stature, they make up in economic participation and might. They helped build the world we know today.
If you go looking for evidence of children in historical archives, you’ll have to look long and hard! You will have to read in between the lines and hope you get lucky with a few old newspaper passages, or references in letters. Unfortunately, a lot of what we want to know is lost to history. How did children feel going into the dark mines of Pennsylvania? How did children socialize between their jobs and household tasks? Our own expectations of childhood was an obstacle at times - where we associate childhood with play and school - a rite of passage as we grow. This modern idea of childhood is sometimes at odds with child labor we encounter in Elfreth’s Alley’s history but it was ultimately children who shaped the childhood we benefited from. We hope to represent their lives in their work and activism with grace and dignity.
In many ways, as we trace the story of children in and around Elfreth’s Alley - from the broom factories to the mill house - we are tracing the dynamic changes in American childhood, from passive participants to active leaders in labor reform, all of them protagonists in the story of this evolution. This is the life of the baby left on a windowsill, the work of William Wright on #122 Elfreth’s Alley, the stockings purchased by alley residents - made by child labor in Philadelphia mills, and the brave children who marched from Philadelphia to New York to advocate for their safety and rights, changing the face of child labor as we now know it.
We begin in the early decades of Philadelphia. The world baby girl Donaldson entered was a world of labor. At the time of her discovery on that Saturday morning, the nearby piers would be staffed by indentured servants, the stores along Elfreth’s Alley manned by young apprentices, the hearths inside the houses of Elfreth’s Alley tended by girls or domestic servants, and enslaved children would have been awake preparing food, cleaning, or running errands for the men and women who owned them. Children were a visible and active part of the workforce,
From the 1770s to 1850s, child labor was marked by three major routes for Philadelphia children: apprenticeships, domestic labor, and slavery. The path a child found themself on was often determined by class, race, and gender. Life in the early Americas was often precarious and unpredictable, meaning child labor was a constant and accepted aspect of childhood to keep families afloat and the city growing.
The majority of children in the Colonial Era did not spend their whole childhood under their parent’s roof48. Apprentices, children with guardians, and indentured servants, orphans or wards of the state, not only entered a trade master’s tutelage, but entered their home too.
Apprenticeships were marked with a formal contract that was negotiated between children’s guardians and trade masters - the agreements for child rearing and trade training served multiple functions in early-Republican Philadelphia. The apprenticeship was also an early educational system that helped to ease economic strain on individual families and create a caste of trained, adequate laborers. Boys as young as 10 would live in the masters’ home, learn under him, and become a quality member of the community. Boys were protected by law - a 1763 act stipulated that apprentices should receive food and adequate shelter as they learned the master’s trade. From printing to smithing, apprenticeships were dangerous and rigorous, but protected forms of socialization for white boys. As such, apprenticeships and to a lesser extent indentured servitude, were visible and regulated labor practices in the early city.
White girls entered a less professional world of domestic labor - learning under female guardians, a mother, an aunt, the ins and outs of housekeeping and child rearing. With labor so gendered and increasing divides between the public spheres of men and women in Philadelphia, girls’ labor was not necessarily viewed as valuable labor in that it didn’t bring in money for their family. Nonetheless, skilled home crafts like knitting, sewing, and cooking as well as maintaining a home were skilled trades. The baby girl Donaldson would have learned skills under her female guardians that she would be expected to apply to her future home.
Labor for Black Philadelphian children, freed or enslaved, looked rather different. In 1776, one in five American children was enslaved, and the city of Philadelphia was shaped by both strong abolitionist perspectives and activism as well as an economy ultimately dependent on unpaid and exploited labor. By 1780 - abolitionist laws stipulated that children born into enslavement would be free by the age of 28, after serving the owner until that point. While abolition was introduced relatively early in Philadelphia’s history, enslaved Black and mixed-race children remained a source of exploited labor until their adulthood.
Child labor, as seen through the studies of enslaved children, apprenticeships, and domestic labor, was thus a dynamic and shifting negotiation as Philadelphia expanded from colonial hub to urban center. Where today we expect to see children attending school with other children, early Philadelphia would not have been surprised to see children laboring in workhouses or solely in the home. This was seen as a form of education, of instruction, so children could grow into capable adults.
By 1860, the city looked markedly different. Steam from textile factories dotted the horizon. Elfreth’s Alley shrunk amidst a growing city that was heated by coal mined outside of city limits. As the city changed and grew more dependent on mines and mills, childhood proximity to labor changed in Philadelphia. Apprenticeships faded out of necessity as formal education and wage-labor became commonplace. Upper class girls often attended school and were trained in domestic arts at home while lower class girls often had to seek out labor to help their families, in addition to meeting labor at home. Black children contributed to household funds by taking on jobs. Many children experienced formal education outside of the labor sphere at this time, thanks to in part due to city reformers and religious instruction. William Wright, age 11 of #122 Elfreth’s Alley, worked in a broom factory and with many other children found himself tangled in a web of child labor and consumerism that sent them off to work in factories wearing stockings woven by children younger than themselves, sweeping brooms assembled by fellow children, and returning home to hearths warmed by coal wrenched out of the earth by little hands.
For little William, the world of Philadelphia labor would have been immediate and visceral. On his walk to the broom factory he would likely have seen the strain of heavy lifting, heard shouted conversations between laborers, and sidestepped carts and workers in the busy docks near Elfreth's Alley. He would have seen a diverse population producing cigars, tools, and household items.
He would have smelled sawdust and tip-toed around puddles of polluted water and tar on his walk to and from work and his home. The intense industrial conditions that characterized the child labor movement and child labor reform were largely isolated to the coal mines and silk mills around Philadelphia. Impressive mills dotted the periphery of urban Philadelphia. But for William, the reality of the coal in his mother’s stove and the stockings she took to mending would have been accepted yet distant realities of industrialization.
The demographic of mills and mines were often highly gendered: young boys usually worked as “breaker boys” in mines and young girls often worked in silk factories. Within both spaces, children worked long hours and endured highly dangerous conditions, some succumbing to the wounds inflicted upon them by industrial machines. Aware of the dangers and hardships of young industrial workers, mill and factory owners did little to establish safe working conditions for the children they employed. Despite the hardships faced within the mines and mills, families often sent their children to work in order to help financially.
Efforts to implement child labor laws which minimized the presence of children throughout the Pennsylvanian industrial landscape proved difficult as many factory and mill owners and in some cases parents of children resisted such legislation. Families were often key contributors to its existence in Pennsylvania. In order to compensate for the low wages of parents or to work in place of an absent parent, children were made integral bread-winners of a family unit. Children like William were often denied the same liberties of childhood that a wealthier child may have had, such as playtime and access to education.
Yet child laborers moved to improve their working conditions throughout Pennsylvania. Children took to Pennsylvania’s streets to protest against the long working hours, filthy work areas, and unsafe spaces found within mills and factories. Fed up with the dangers they faced as child laborers, children as young as Alley resident William chose to illustrate their frustration in more salient, public ways. These strategies involved trade show pamphlets, strikes, and mill marches. Perhaps no protest best encapsulated the radical realities of child labor activism than the March of the Mill Children. Moved by the 10,000 children striking labor conditions in Philadelphia-area mills, Mother Jones (a socialist and labor organizer) decided to make the children mobile to show President Roosevelt the cost of industrial child labor.
Fran Donato, performing Mother Jones’ words: After a long and weary march, with more miles to travel, we are on our way to see President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. We will ask him to recommend the passage of a bill by congress to protect children against the greed of the manufacturer. We want him to hear the wail of the children, who never have a chance to go to school, but work from ten to eleven hours a day in the textile mills of Philadelphia, weaving the carpets that he and you walk on, and the curtains and clothes of the people.
Mother Jones called for a meeting at Philadelphia City Hall - a trolley ride away from the home William Wright grew up in on Elfreth’s Alley. From the slim street in Philadelphia, the noise and controversy Mother Jones stirred up would have reached the residential dining tables and parlors. Jones was struck by the fingerless and handless children gathered on the Philadelphia streets, as she wrote in her autobiography:
Donato as Jones: “I held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia’s mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children.”
As they began to march east, past the Pennsylvania state house, past Elfreth’s Alley, Jones continued to carry the children to peer into the homes heated by their labor, the residents clothed by their sacrifices.
Donato as Jones: “They were light to lift”.
In all, the march took weeks stretching from Philadelphia to Coney Island, NY, marked by minor dramas and national press, but it was Jones’s centering of the children that made lasting impressions. She reminded residents of the alley and of the nation that children had voices and could speak for themselves. Elfreth’s Alley, which for so long had been built on and sustained by child labor, was now on the verge of radical change.
After many trials and legislative change, the Keating-Owen Act of 1916 was passed by Congress. It prohibited interstate sale of goods produced by factories who employed children under the age of 14. Outrage against the Keating-Owen act was also seen amongst Southern mill owners and families. One father of children (ages 13 and 15) allied with mill owners to file suit to overturn the Keating-Owen act under accusations that the act was unconstitutional. Striking a blow to those against child labor reformers, the plaintiffs successfully had the Keating-Owen Act overturned in a Supreme Court case known as Hammer vs. Dagenhart.
Dealing with social and political push-back from several states, it would take years and a patchwork of federal and state laws to improve the working conditions of youth workers. These cases and testimonies shocked policy-makers by the reality of child labor conditions. Due to legal practices, we cannot access these emotional and revealing first-hand accounts, but their impact can be seen in the 1938 Legislation that virtually ended commercial child labor in the United States.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 criminalized child labor outside of the realms of agricultural and domestic labor. It also set the national minimum wage at 25 cents and made the typical work week 44 hours. This act surely gave hope to the many children who prior to its passing endured long work days and dangerous work environments as they toiled away in the mines and mills of America’s industrial landscape; With fewer hours dedicated to work and the mitigation of harsh work environments, children could receive an education. This change was not just a recognition of the dangerous conditions children worked in, but a nod to Mother Jones’s advocacy and the children who fought alongside her.
The legislation that came out of the child labor movement is visible today in the landscape of childhood in America. Out of the Gilded Age, childhood emerged as a protected time where education and play dominated ideals. A mandatory education, public areas for play and discovery seen in playgrounds and even children’s museums. Children have legal rights to safety and security, seen both as protected citizens yet capable of making decisions and speaking for themselves. You might ask yourself, What do I expect childhood to look like? What was my childhood like? Chances are your childhood has been shaped by the child labor movement.
Yet child labor is still an active part of the economy. Today, children in Philadelphia consume produce that is harvested by children working on family farms outside of the city. Children labor as babysitters and perform domestic labor like washing the dishes and cooking with their parents. They wear clothing created by child labor abroad while benefiting from the activist efforts of child laborers past. The historic children of Elfreth’s Alley experienced shifting proximity to labor as the city developed from one of colonial scarcity to industrial might. Today, children living in Elfreth’s Alley benefit from a reliable education, nearby Race Street Pier which has been repurposed from industrial might to an urban park, and a dominant culture informed of child agency and individualism - largely shaped by the work of Mother Jones and the child activists of the 20th century. Little broom maker William Wright would likely not recognize the playscape of American childhood.
We leave you with a reflection. The way we see it, understanding historic labor in all its complexities is really a way to see labor in the present. Our lives are dramatically impacted by child labor past and present. From fast fashion to our own individual labor histories, child labor is in many ways an embedded and accepted tenet of capitalism. The mills, dramatic and historicized as they may seem, are ongoing practices for children worldwide. The cobalt in your smartphone is mined by young children in the Congo. We invite you to reflect on the labor and hands that have made your life and lifestyle possible. How is your life impacted by child labor?
History is a group effort! This episode was written by Margaret Sanford and Jeanette Bendolph and narrated by Margaret Sanford. Creative input came from Enya Xiang, Ted Maust, and the Managing History Class in Fall 2020.
Thanks to Dr. Rosemary Feurer who generously chatted with Margaret Sanford and Jeanette Bendolph for this story. Dr. Feurer is the co-author of the book Against Labor: How U.S. Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism and the project director of the Mother Jones Heritage Project.
Thanks to Fran Donato for performing selected quotations from Mother Jones’ speeches and autobiography.
Thanks again to our sponsors Linode and the History Department of Temple University. Support is also provided by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund and the Museum Council of Greater Philadelphia.
In addition to the sources cited by name, this episode drew heavily on the work of John A. Fitler, Bonnie Stepenoff, Mary Ann Mason, and Phillip P. Holleran, as well as past volunteers and staff of the Elfreth’s Alley Association who have collected various records related to the street’s residents.
A transcript of this episode with sources is available on the episode page at ElfrethsAlley.org/podcast and the link in the show notes.
The songs used in this episode are “Open Flames” and “An Oddly Formal Dance,” both by Blue Dot Sessions, both used under Creative Commons license.
This podcast is recorded on the unceded indigenous territory of the Lenni-Lenape people, who were and continue to be active stewards of the land. We recognize that words are not enough and we aim to actively uphold indigenous visibility and sovereignty for individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgment, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold the Elfreth’s Alley Museum accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples.
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