The Work of Children
The Geneseo Migrant Center began in 1966 as an educational initiative under the leadership of Prof. Gloria Mattera. The challenge, she recalled, was that “workers leave their homebases in early spring and return in late fall, thus creating serious problems of attendance and continuity of education for their children who have to attend a variety of schools” (8). Students would fall behind in their academics and drop out long before graduation. The photograph here probably was taken at a day care center started by SUNY Geneseo, and may be showing early childhood education games similar to then-experimental Head Start curricula. But the challenges of children and agricultural labor went much deeper than the classroom.
Agricultural economist William Metzler surveyed migrant farmworkers during the early 1950s and learned that their median education was 4.8 years, with only 20% completing grade school (8). Schoolchildren under the age of sixteen year already were working more than 80 days per year, mostly in the North as migrant farmworkers, and any child aged sixteen was considered an adult worker (31). Today that age remains the standard for any person doing all types of farm work—even the most hazardous kinds—and there are numerous exceptions allowing for the employment of 14-year-old in non-hazardous work, or even under 12 years of age on smaller farms (US Dept of Labor, “Child”). An investigation in 2022 revealed that more than 100 children, ranging in age from 13-17 years old, were employed in a slaughterhouse cleaning equipment in violation of these laws. Some of the children worked overnight shifts. (US Dept of Labor, “News Release).
Practices of child labor that had been outlawed in factory settings always were treated differently in American agriculture, even as those operations began to resemble factories. During the 19th century, employing very young farm workers was considered normal and even important for their development across a wide range of tasks. To become a good mower, “let the boy of fourteen mow one or two hours in each day, during the haying season for two or three years.” Young children were expected to raise egg-laying hens and beehives, and to milk cows (J.W.W.; “Dorking”; “Profit”; “Principles” 361). Writers for The Genesee Farmer also saw opportunities for “a child or superannuated person” to raise silk worms because a “mere child, whose services may be had for six cents per day, can easily turn” the hand-operated machine (“Silk”; “Award” 171). These were just a few of the jobs that a farmer’s child or neighbor might perform, and the right to employ young farm workers not only has persisted but (re-)expanded into new types of work during the last two years by state legislatures (Cohen). The right to protected school-time has been going in the wrong direction since this young girl was playing a shape game.
Works Consulted
-- “The Award of Premiums by the New-York State Agricultural Society.” The Genesee Farmer 3.11 (Nov. 1842): 170-171.
-- Cohen, Rachel M. “The Republican Push to Weaken Child Labor Laws, Explained.” Vox 5 May 2023. Link to article.
-- “The Dorking Fowl.” The Genesee Farmer 12.4 (April 1851): 93.
-- J.W.W. “Instructions to Young Mowers.” The Genesee Farmer 1.7 (July 1840): 99.
-- Mattera, Gloria. “The BOCES-Geneseo Migrant Center: History and Development.” New York Folklore 13.1-2 (Winter-Spring 1987): 7-27.
-- Metzler, William H. Migratory Farm Workers in the Atlantic Coast Stream : A Study in the Belle Glade Aarea of Florida. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Circular No. 966. Jan. 1955. Courtesy of Internet Archive.
-- “Principles of Improving Domestic Animals” The Genesee Farmer 16.12 (Dec. 1855): 361-364.
-- “Profit of Bee Keeping.” The Genesee Farmer 1.10 (Oct. 1840): 155.
-- United States. Department of Labor. “Child Labor Requirements In Agricultural Occupations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (Child Labor Bulletin 102).” June 2007. Link to Document.
-- United States. Department of Labor. “More Than 100 Children Illegally Employed, Federal Investigation Finds.” 17 Feb. 2023. Link to press release.