Twenty Years at Hull House

At Hull-House’s first Christmas celebration, when the little girls in the neighborhood refused to accept gifts of candy, the Hull-House residents learned about child labor. The little girls had worked in a candy factory for 14 hours a day for six weeks and they could no longer bear the sight of candy. During that same period, three boy members of a Hull-House club had gotten injured (one later died of his injuries) working at a factory machine that lacked an inexpensive guard device. Addams expected that the factory owners would do everything possible to prevent the recurrence of such accidents; instead, they did nothing. Addams then found out about documents that parents of working children were forced to sign, promising to make no claim for damages from such “carelessness.” On neighborhood visits, Hull-House residents discovered very young children assisting their mothers sewing in sweatshop work. There was no legal redress because the existing Illinois child-labor law covered only children employed in coal mines. A number of parents found it easier to hire out their children since the children spoke better English and accepted lower wages than the adults. Some of the parents did not recognize the difference between the long hours of their child’s factory work and their own childhood experience, which included seasonal outdoor harvesting of produce.