My name is William Crabtree. I was a young boy in England in the year 1800.
In those days some people became very rich by putting machines into factories.
This change was called the Industrial Revolution.
Before machines were invented, all the work had to be done by hand.
But with machines, things could be done much more quickly.
This was wonderful for the factory owners, but it was awful for the workers.
The machines were dangerous and created a lot of dirt.
Even worse, the factory owners treated the workers very badly.
The owners only cared about their money and their machines.
In those days a man was paid about ten shillings a day, which is less than one dollar.
However, children were paid only two shillings a day, so the owners liked to hire poor children to work in their factories.
It was terrible work.
I began working in a textile factory when I was eight years old.
A textile factory is a factory that makes cloth.
My family was so poor that I could not go to school.
I had to earn money so that we could live.
I worked every day from six in the morning to ten at night.
Even on Sundays I had to go to the factory to clean all the machines.
It was very hard labor.
I was so tired at night that I sometimes slept as I walked home.
When people saw me walking home, they would tell me to quit my job.
But I couldn't because my father's wages were not enough to feed our family.
When I got home at night, I was always hungry, but usually I was too tired to eat my dinner.
I would just fall down and sleep.
Sometimes in the morning, I could not wake up.
So my father would carry me to the factory while I was still sleeping.
But I couldn't be late. If I were late for work, I would be in big trouble.
My friend David was often late for work, so the owner often beat him with a strap.
I was a piecer. All day I had to lean over the spinning machine, which was the machine that made the cloth.
Piecers had to tie pieces of thread together when they broke.
If the thread was broken, the machine could not make the cloth.
So it was very important for us to do our job correctly.
We were always running, and we could never sit down.
It was very difficult to keep up with the work.
We also had to work quickly. The owner also beat slow children.
We were all very afraid of him. He was a bad man.
A piecer's work was dangerous. We had to put our hands into the machine.
If a piecer fell or was too slow, very bad things could happen.
Many of my friends got badly hurt, and some even died.
We had to be very careful.
The worst part of working at the factory was the food.
We were given only a little bit of soup and some bad-tasting bread for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And we were not allowed to stop working.
We had to eat our meals standing at the machines.
Since the machines were very dirty, my food was often covered in dirt, so I had to eat dirty food.
This made me very sick. One time a boy complained about the food.
The owner got very angry with him. After that, no one ever complained again.
Around 1833 some good men in the government tried to help the children.
A new law made it illegal in England for a child under ten to work in a textile factory,
and children under twelve could work no more than eight or ten hours a day.
Also, on Sundays, the factory owners had to teach the children to read and write.
As time passed, new laws were passed to improve the lives of children even more.
In 1867 the laws on child labor were extended to many more industries.
It became illegal in England to hire children to work in mines,
at shipyards, and many dangerous factories, such as match factories and nail factories.
Today almost every country in the world has child labor laws to protect children.
In 1990 the United Nations agreed on the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
which protects children not just from unfair work, but from war and disease.
It also protects the right of children to live with their parents and go to school.
Attitudes have changed greatly since the 1880s.
Today childhood is cherished as a time to grow and learn in health and safety.