Child labor has existed since the beginning of humanity. Poor girls, both slave and free, worked as cleaned, carried water, cared for other children, and worked in the fields, often with long hours under harsh treatment. Most of their stories went undocumented but this episode does have anecdotes from Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Jemison, and others about what it was like to be a working girl.
The Industrial Revolution was initially hailed as a great and wonderful thing because it made children "more useful." Girls signed up in droves to work in factories and canneries, and only afterwards did anyone wonder whether this was really what we want for our girls.
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