(This article totals 2800 words, it takes 7 minutes to read)
preface
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, created by the Brothers Grimm, has become one of the most famous fairy tales on earth after being adapted by Disney.
But what is less well known is that the story was not invented by the Brothers Grimm, and most of the characters in the story: Snow White, the vicious harem, and the dwarfs, all have their own historical archetypes.
Behind the real fairy tale
Historically, Snow White did have a person, her name was Maria Sophia, the daughter of a landlord in the 18th century, and although she was not a real princess, her family did have a castle.
The real Snow White Maria Sofia
The stepmother also exists, but not as vicious as in fairy tales, so the passage of feeding her poisonous apples is fictional.
Sophia's family's castle
The so-called Seven Dwarfs actually refers to the child laborers who spread all over Europe in those years. Most of them have spent their lives working underground mines, which are so small that adults can't drill into them, so the children of that year play the role of miners.
Child miners during the Industrial Revolution
In order to prevent being hit by falling dirt and stones, they generally wear cloaks and hoods, and the hoods are colorful in color, just in case of a mining disaster, and the bright colors help them to be discovered.
Since they had been working under the mines since they were very young, chronic malnutrition and poor working conditions had made them never tall, they looked like dwarfs in fairy tales from a distance.
Child miners with hoods
And these dwarfs are the epitome of the countless child laborers in European history.
The Origins of Child Labour in Europe
Strictly speaking, in European history, the term "child labor" only appeared during the Industrial Revolution.
Prior to this, there was little concept of childhood in the modern sense in European society, and European children at that time often participated in family parenting, hunting, farming and other activities from the beginning of their own ability.
At this stage, due to the low productivity of society as a whole and the short life expectancy, children participated in various production activities as apprentices as early as possible, which could effectively transfer agricultural skills and knowledge, so the benefits of "child labor" at that time to social groups were greater than harmful.
But with the advent of the European Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the nature of "child labor" changed dramatically.
The Industrial Revolution changed the structure of European society by creating a new class, the bourgeoisie, and bringing with it a new form of organization, the factory.
Portrait of the industrial revolution factory
The birth of the factory quickly destroyed countless small family workshops in a short period of time; and the development of industry led to a rapid increase in the demand for workers' labor. This caused the peasants, who were already bound by the land enclosure movement, to put down their labor tools and move to the cities to find work with a beautiful yearning for the industrial age.
Sadly, when they entered the factory, they found that the truth was not so beautiful.
In the factory, the machine is the core, and the person is only the tool responsible for the operation of the machine. This unequal situation gives factory owners a huge advantage in dealing with workers: since manpower is inexhaustible, it is natural that they can be squeezed at will.
As a result, the workers not only work long hours, but also have low wages.
In most cases, every able family member needs to work to lift the family out of poverty, and child labor has no choice but to take the stage of history.
Child labour in textile factories
The rise of child labour in Europe
A British government official described the phenomenon of child labor he saw in a report:
They wore ropes, belts, and harnesses, like dogs pulling a light carriage, their black bodies soaked in moisture, most of them bare, crawling on all fours, dragging heavy cargo behind them
Victorian child labour like cattle
As this passage describes, child labor was a common practice on the European continent for most of the time of the Industrial Revolution.
According to statistics, in the early 18th century, more than 50% of the workers in British factories were under the age of 14, and the youngest workers were even only 4 years old.
In the United States, more than 750,000 children under the age of 15 were working in 1870, and even though it was 1900, 18 percent of American workers were still under the age of 16.
Child labour in Europe at the age of 5
What kind of work can such a young child do?
In addition to the mining we mentioned earlier, the children at that time mainly operated machines in factories, sold newspapers on street corners, and swept chimneys.
Many times, children are more popular with capitalists than adults because they are short in stature and are easy to move back and forth between various high crisis devices and small spaces. And because it is a high-risk environment, all kinds of dangerous accidents around child labor are also emerging.
Take the most common chimney sweep, when children clean the chimney, they are stuck in the chimney in a dilemma, and finally choked to death is not uncommon.
Child labor sweeping chimneys
For example, in the early years, factory machines usually ran very fast and lacked corresponding protective measures, so that children's fingers, arms, and legs were often crushed by the machine.
Child labor with hand injuries
Mining disasters are commonplace, the largest of which is the June 1835 Walsend Mine Disaster in England, which killed 102 miners, 75 of whom were children under the age of 15.
Walson mine disaster
It is reasonable to say that the working environment is so harsh and dangerous, they can make a lot of money, right?
Not really.
While the immediate reason for the emergence of child labour is the desire to boost household incomes, the real popularity of child labour is due to their low pay.
The children in the mine often had to get up at 4 a.m. to dig coal and work until 5 p.m. The children in the factory work 12 to 16 hours a day and have little time to rest. By contrast, they earn only 10 to 20 percent of adults in the same jobs.
Even in many cases, factory owners do not pay children at all, but lock them up, force them to work long hours, and provide them with only food and lodging. Outrageously, factory owners also believe that they are doing charity, and providing free food to their children is fulfilling their social responsibilities.
And the social concept at that time also generally believed that children who voluntarily entered the factory to work should be responsible for the risks they encountered, and even if there were various accidents, the compensation they could get was very small.
In the absence of the protection of the corresponding laws, for a long time, child labourers lived like individuals, but only like individuals.
That is why Marx, when referring to the Industrial Revolution on the European continent, pointedly pointed out that these factories survived by sucking the blood of workers and children.
The abolition of child labour and the status quo
In the late industrial revolution of the 19th century, with the improvement of technology and the acceleration of industrialization, the demand of capitalists for educated workers was increasing, and the existence of child labor hindered children's education, so countries began to put child labor laws on the agenda.
As early as 1802 and 1819, the British government twice issued factory laws to regulate the working hours of child labor, stipulating that the minimum working age for children is 9 years old and the maximum working time is 12 hours.
British Factory Act of the 19th Century
But because the bill itself does not impose a minimum wage or restrictions on the professions in which child labourers can work, the two bills do not work, and children still do the heaviest work with meagre wages.
Eventually, the British government re-regulated the Child Labour Act in 1833, requiring a minimum wage, and in 1847 introduced the Ten Hours Act, which limited the working hours of children and women to 10 hours, and the phenomenon of child labor in The United Kingdom was alleviated.
Proportion of child labourers in England 1851-1881
Following in britain's footsteps, other industrialized countries have accordingly legislated to protect child labour. The United States, on the other hand, was the slower to respond, and it was not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that it was the first time that the national minimum wage and maximum number of working hours were restricted, as well as restrictions on child labor. It was 100 years later than britain.
Today, with the improvement of child protection laws and the introduction of compulsory education in countries around the world, child labor no longer exists in most places where the sun can shine. But in the corners of our sights, child labor is still growing savagely.
According to UNICEF's 2020 Global Child Labour Estimate released in January, there are still 160 million child labourers worldwide, or 9.6% of the world's children.
They are mainly distributed in economically underdeveloped countries and regions such as Asia, Africa and Latin America, and their situation has not changed in the slightest compared with child labor 200 years ago.
Number of child labourers worldwide in 2020
End
Finally, let's return to the opening episode of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Unlike in fairy tales, the real-life Snow White Sophia has never been able to wait for a prince on a white horse.
Instead, she went blind from illness at a young age, and then her father died, leaving her alone in the monastery.
Sophia's tombstone
And the dwarves in cloaks closed the mine they worked in after sophia's father died because no one was in charge.
Of course, what awaits them is nothing more than the mine of another capitalist.