Children and “the right to factory work”:

Abstract

The early nineteenth-century factory laws are usually seen as the first steps towards the abolition of industrial child labour. It is here asked whether such appears to be the case only with hindsight, given that we know that industrial child labour eventually disappeared in the West. In all of nineteenth-century Finland no legislator spoke up for the abolition of industrial child labour, despite the fact that they were well informed about the relevant laws in the leading European countries and even used them as a model when passing in 1889 the first Labour Protection Act. It is argued below that part of the explanation lies in the fact that in a poor agricultural country, such as Finland then was, industrial child labour appeared as a remedy to pauperism and the “idleness” of urban boys. At a more general level it is also suggested that the increasing productivity-consciousness of employers may have been a principal reason for their declining interest in employing children.