Who could have imagined that capitalists' factories employed child laborers as young as three or four? Not just one or two, but hundreds, even thousands.
These child laborers usually did not live past twenty. Entering factories devoid of sunlight at such an early age subjected their bodies to severe devastation.
The United Kingdom was the most frenzied of all. As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the British Isles had a small population and limited labor force. To cut costs, capitalists turned their eyes toward women and children.
The wage of one adult male worker could hire two female workers or three to seven child laborers. The younger the child, the lower the wages.
Compared with adults, child laborers were clearly easier to manage, and suppressing their strikes was far simpler. Factories where the required labor intensity was not too high were packed with child laborers.
The sources of these child laborers were equally varied. Some came from poor commoners driven by survival to send their children into factories; others were bought from trading markets.
That was right—at this time, child laborers were also commodities. Orphanages, church relief homes, and human traffickers were the biggest sellers, while a very small number had been sold by their parents.
Bloody factories were the truest portrayal of society in this age.
On one side, they squeezed child laborers dry to reap outrageous profits; on the other, they fashioned themselves into gentlemen before the public, donating to churches and investing in education under the lofty name of supporting impoverished students.
Franz could not even be bothered to mock them. In any case, he did not believe capitalists could be so kindhearted. One only had to look at the smuggled goods tucked into those private schools to know.
The progressiveness of capitalist political systems was