1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910792403603321

Autore

Schmidt James D.

Titolo

Industrial violence and the legal origins of child labor / / James D. Schmidt [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2010

ISBN

1-107-20550-6

1-282-53908-6

9786612539084

0-511-84496-4

0-511-67905-X

0-511-68228-X

0-511-67780-4

0-511-68426-6

0-511-68030-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xxiii, 279 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge historical studies in American law and society

Disciplina

344.7301/31

Soggetti

Child labor - Law and legislation - United States - History

Workers' compensation - Law and legislation - United States - History

Industrial safety - Law and legislation - United States - History

Child labor - United States - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Big enough to work -- The divine right to do nothing -- Mashed to pieces -- Natural impulses -- An injury to all -- The dawn of child labor.

Sommario/riassunto

Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor challenges existing understandings of child labor by tracing how law altered the meanings of work for young people in the United States between the Revolution and the Great Depression. Rather than locating these shifts in statutory reform or economic development, it finds the origin in litigations that occurred in the wake of industrial accidents incurred by young workers. Drawing on archival case records from the Appalachian South between the 1880s and the 1920s, the book argues that young



workers and their families envisioned an industrial childhood that rested on negotiating safe workplaces, a vision at odds with child labor reform. Local court battles over industrial violence confronted working people with a legal language of childhood incapacity and slowly moved them to accept the lexicon of child labor. In this way, the law fashioned the broad social relations of modern industrial childhood.