Here is the horror of horrors: “Child labor, the misery of toddlers exploited by the wealth-producing industry! And this in all countries. This is what the pamphleteer Léon Bloy wrote in 1909, in The blood of the poor. How did society agree, he wonders, to send to the factory, to the workshop, to the markets, “to the darkest and most deadly places of our hells”, children so that “the efforts of their weak arms add to the opulence of some”?
In 1802, in England, Sir Robert Peel employed a thousand children in his factories. From the age of seven, they are at work, without salary, to serve one of the most colossal fortunes of the industrialized world: his own. His son of the same name becomes prime minister. He will introduce a bill to limit the number of hours worked by children, but only for the cotton industry over which his family already reigns supreme.
In Montreal, photos from the interwar period show grimy-faced children hauling aqueduct pipes amid gutted street trenches. The children of the country have, for decades, also worked in the mines, construction sites, factories, sawmills. The little girls, for their part, quickly became servants in conditions that sometimes resembled sequestration. Their babies, abandoned to the nuns, were used to renew a pool of cheap labour.
The American sociologist Lewis Hine will be one of the first, at the beginning of the XXe century, to document the misfortunes that this society makes children pay for. His photographs show fragile beings, their backs bent and their faces ravaged by the weight of their work. Childhood has abandoned even their eyes. Hine’s thousands of photographs are masterpieces. They do not count for nothing among the prints sought by wealthy collectors, such as the singer Elton John. Hine, although very concerned about the aesthetic quality of his work, nevertheless does not consider his images other than as burning proof of the misery inflicted on children. He believes that his prints have the capacity to prohibit, by the effect of their distribution, the reproduction of forms of human degradation. If you scrutinize the names of the children he wrote down, you will notice that several sound French. They are children of French Canadians, who left by the thousands to live and work in the United States.
In 1989, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Is it so hard to imagine a time when children had no rights? They have been, for centuries, the docile slaves of their parents and of industry. In some countries and in some families, they still are, regardless of the existence of the UN Convention. Small hands assemble the parts of clothing sold at low prices in the West and sew the round balloons with which others will play. Little hands see to feeding the electronic circuits with technologies that part of humanity believes they can no longer do without, without worrying about how they are made.
Quebec has lagged behind, both in Canada and internationally, in the fight against child labour. A law on compulsory education was continually delayed until the 1940s, in part so that it could continue to exploit childhood rather than form it. And Quebec remains the only Canadian province where, until now, children can work regardless of their age.
Since the early 1980s, there is no longer even a minimum age to respect for working. For children under 14, only parental permission is sufficient, provided that they are at home at least between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.
From 2012 to 2021, among young people under the age of 14, there was a 392% increase in work accidents. For those aged 15, the increase was 221%. Those aged 16 had 17% more accidents. In 2021 alone, the number of injuries jumped 36% among those under the age of 16. Cripples. Deaths. Which we don’t talk about.
The “labour shortage” justifies everything, as in the 19e century ? Some employers have the indecency to assert that it is better for children to manipulate a fryer or pizza dough than to play video games. As if one social brutalization were enough to legitimize another!
We have drifted away from the time of Germinal. The world of work lives no less, since the nineteenthe century, at a time of increasing acceleration of which child labor is a strong symbol. While society appears to be busy globalizing, tax-exempting and financializing as quickly as possible, is it any wonder that children at the school gates are being mowed down by motorists, like little Maria, 7, a Ukrainian from additionally? Where are we going, so fast, in our crazy world?
A bill on child labor is to be tabled by the government at the start of the year. Finally, it could be prohibited before the age of 14. From 14 to 16 years old, according to what we know, the work would be restrained: no more than 17 hours per week, at least during the school year. And from Monday to Friday, a maximum of 10 hours of work would be granted. Observers believe, however, that 15 hours of work per week would already constitute a limit.
Can all this be enough to counter school dropout while everywhere in our society, it is above all taught that we must work more, produce more, consume more? Does the horizon of common happiness really lie on the side of our ability to ape Ontario or the United States, but in French?