Child Labor. Reading Questions

1. What was the impetus for the industrial revolution?
2. How did the industrial revolution contribute toward the need for child labor?
3. What are "Parish apprentice children"? How did the system work?
4. What were the conditions like in the factories where children worked. Provide examples.
5. What was the Victorian view of children?
6. Where did most children work?
7. What was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's inspiration for her famous protest poem "The Cry of the Children"
8. How did Charles Dickens contribute to exposing the horrors of child labor?
9. What explains the sluggish pace of reform? Why do you think it was difficult to outlaw child labor completely?
10. In what ways did the Victorians seem very inconsistent in terms of their attitudes toward children?
11. What factors came into play to bring about a change in the use of child labor?