Child labor was not ended by legislative fiat. Child labor ended when it became economically unnecessary for children to earn wages in order to survive, when the income of their parents became sufficient to support them. The emancipators and benefactors of those children were not legislators or factory inspectors, but manufacturers and financiers. Their efforts and investments in machinery led to a rise in real wages, to a growing abundance of goods at lower prices and to an incomparable improvement in the general standard of living.
The proper answer to the critics of the Industrial Revolution is given by Professor T.S. Ashton*:
“There are today on the plains of India and China men and women, plague-ridden and hungry, living lives little better, to outward appearance, than those of the cattle that toil with them by day and share their places of sleep by night. Such Asiatic standards, and such unmechanized horrors, are the lot of those who increase their numbers without passing through an industrial revolution”
Let me add that the Industrial Revolution and its consequent prosperity were the achievement of capitalism and cannot be achieved under any other politico-economic system. As proof, I offer you the spectacle of Soviet Russia which combines industrialization – and famine.
* T.S. Ashton ‘The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830’ Pg 161
The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children – Robert Hessen (1962)