Small Hands at the Machine: Childhood Inside the Industrial Age

Industrial machinery changed more than production. It altered where children spent their days, what families could afford, and how reformers defined protection, education, and work. This history follows child labor through mills, mines, workshops, and streets while placing it in the larger transformation of industrial society. It examines employers, parents, inspectors, campaigners, and young workers themselves, resisting easy assumptions about a single experience. The result is a clear account of how technology and labor reshaped the meaning of childhood.