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(when) Father died,
chocked in his own blood.
None spoke. I held his hand.
Boss came, barely looked:
"Now shut up'n'stand!"
"Back to work", he said,
"Engines never stop!"
I was seven,
I was ready for
worker's heaven!
Mother doesn't speak,
just rises empty eyes,
Keeps counting stars
across the night,
since the day someone told her
they belong to the children
she's left behind.
I wonder if they cough
above the sky.
If this cloud of coal
can fly so high.
Don't ask me about politics,
I find hard to be critic.
No it's not some kind of wisdom,
I just picked the way of freedom.
Rods, shafts and wheels,
whistling white steam.
Burns down the throats,
breathless runs across the roads.
If you call this evolution,
still it misses a conclusion!
But time will pass and I will grow,
sure I'm not meant to forget, oh no!
You made me pitiless,
you thought me hate,
I raise my fist, red in the night.
Scythe and hammer,
more than you can chew,
Open the doors,
let us pass through.
Come to me, come alone,
come and we will see
who'll stand and who'll be prone,
who can grip the whip.
I'm a drunk musician,
playing on the road,
just the last minstrel of despair,
sailing along the river of farewell.
Black water that leads but to hell...
(Menarini - Capelli 2014)
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Employers could pay a child less than an adult
even though their productivity was comparable, (...) this
made child
labour the labour of choice for manufacturing.
The Industrial
Revolution led to a population increase, but the chances
of surviving childhood did not improve throughout the Industrial
Revolution (although infant mortality rates were reduced
markedly). There was still limited opportunity for education,
and children were expected to work. Employers could pay
a child less than an adult even though their productivity
was comparable; there was no need for strength to operate
an industrial machine, and since the industrial system was
completely new there were no experienced adult labourers.
This made child
labour the labour of choice for manufacturing in
the early phases of the Industrial Revolution between the
18th and 19th centuries. In England and Scotland in 1788,
two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills
were described as children. (…)
Beatings and long hours were common, with some child coal
miners and hurriers working from 4 am until 5 pm. Conditions
were dangerous, with some children killed when they dozed
off and fell into the path of the carts, while others died
from gas explosions. Many children developed lung cancer
and other diseases and died before the age of 25. Workhouses
would sell orphans and abandoned children as "pauper
apprentices", working without wages for board and
lodging. Those who ran away would be whipped and returned
to their masters, with some masters shackling them to prevent
escape. Children employed as mule scavenger by cotton mills
would crawl under machinery to pick up cotton, working 14
hours a day, six days a week. Some lost hands or limbs,
others were crushed under the machines, and some were decapitated.
Young girls worked at match factories, where phosphorus
fumes would cause many to develop phossy jaw. Children employed
at glassworks were regularly burned and blinded, and those
working at potteries were vulnerable to poisonous clay dust.
(…) (Source Wikipedia)
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