Abstract
The study reviews the issue of child labor in Hungary with a historical, ethnographic approach, from the perspective of the division of labor within the family, the economic and social situation of the family. For several millenia, children have been involved in some activity within their family and kinship system, according to their age, gender, physical and mental maturity, and have been assigned increasingly complex tasks as part of the process of preparing for adult life and adulthood. When the economic and social unity of families was damaged for whatever reason, crises, poverty, and misery disrupted the natural family division of labor, and children had to seek and work for wages, food, or other benefits, with the approval or even encouragement of their parents. This means that they also played a significant role in families' struggles to survive and overcome poverty, while their exposure and vulnerability increased outside the family framework. The paper will explore the latter form of child labor outside the family.
Introduction
The concept of child labor1 has taken many different forms and connotations over the centuries, but regardless of how we approach the subject, the starting point is the family, the basic interpretative framework, which of course can only be seen in its historical, social, economic, cultural and political context. Be it the division of labor in the family, the strategies of family and educational institutions to educate children for work, child labor in mines and capitalist factories, underage work in agriculture, domestic work, services, or the division of special tasks for children in villages and cities. For thousands of years, all children have been involved in some activity within the family and kinship system, according to their age, physical and mental maturity, and have been entrusted with increasingly complex tasks. Playing, imitating adults, learning, and all of these together and simultaneously are part of preparing for adult life, depending on social status and economic situation, gender, age group and the order of siblings. The daily journey of learning, mastering and practicing traditions, values and norms is shaped through tasks, duties and ultimately through working. It was the interest and moral duty of the family, the kinship, the local and denominational group to raise the child to be a useful, active, reliable and independent adult for his or her immediate and wider community. On the whole, the children's performance of tasks or work, was – gradually and in part, according to age and gender – a natural and unquestionable part of the upbringing strategy, the family division of labor of the peasant, the artisan, the miner, the merchant and other working classes. All this was regulated and controlled within the framework of tradition. There were tasks and competences that were assigned to age and gender roles, and thus evolved as the individual's age and social role changed, and together (often by necessity, of course) formed the division of labor within the family and community. Raising children to do the tasks assigned was part of a socialization strategy for the future (see for instance: Sas 1972; Pukánszky 2015).
When we think of child labor, we can mainly think of the social strata living off work, because it is in their context a family division of labor is relevant, where the children's work contributed to the family income, had economic benefits, and was therefore a natural and undeniable part of the system, as well as an expression of belonging to the family. As, with few exceptions, people in the period under study lived in families, their economic situation can also be interpreted within the family bond. The family household was the smallest closed, autonomous social unit, the maintenance and preservation of which was the elementary duty of the household, of all members of the family, including children.
When the economic and social unity of these families was damaged for whatever reason, poverty and destitution disrupted the natural family division of labor, and survival techniques overrode the traditional internal order. The vulnerability of children was also amplified, and they were not spared from everyday deprivation, and even played a significant role in the family's struggle to survive.
Classification of child labor in Hungary
In my research on the subject, I have divided child labor in Hungary from the end of the 19th century to World War II into three major groups, based on the literature and analyzes in the following fields: social history, ethnography, contemporary law, politics, social policy, labor safety and child protection, and criminology. The list is only a summary, an indication, not an exhaustive repertoire, as families with varying degrees of deprivation and poverty have used different coping strategies to improve their economic situation and have also chosen individual solutions in situations of constraint, which also applied to children's work. The (non-exhaustive) list also shows that children's work, whether done inside or outside the family, covered a very wide range of areas and contributed significantly to the family economy. This is true even if we know that many working conditions have seriously harmed their bodies and souls.
In the first group, children work as part of the internal division of labor in peasant, artisan and domestic work families, according to age, gender, order of siblings, family livelihood. These were usually menial jobs and exempted the older members of the family from doing them. It had little monetary value but considerable indirect value. Such tasks were: looking after a younger sibling, even 4–5 year olds were entrusted with baby-sitting; household and domestic chores, with different tasks for boys and girls; guarding geese, pigs and cows, grazing around the house; participating in gardening and agricultural work; in the case of the artisans, in domestic work, preparing work processes, carrying out simple tasks, delivering goods, which was also part of their vocational education.
The second group includes work for wages, outside the home or family. In all economic sectors – agriculture, light and heavy industry, mining, small industries, commerce, services – children were present from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. When little girls and boys aged 4–5–6 were sent out by their parents to distant farms to look after geese, turkeys, pigs and cows, or to herd horses and cows from spring to autumn and sleep outside somewhere with the livestock, they could expect a minimal income, but mostly the ‘one less mouth to feed’ principle applied. Their contribution to the family income was somewhat more significant if they were considered as ‘part-time’ workers in threshing, beet picking, weeding, major agricultural work; or if they worked in factories such as sugar and soda plants, glass, paper and match factories, in the mining industry, girls aged 12–14 in the textile industry: all of which paid a fixed wage. They have also been of economic use in domestic craft industries, such as cane and basket weaving, wood carving, textile weaving, embroidery, toy making, artificial flower making, carpet weaving and lace making. The girls who had to work as maids, nannies, did not ‘devour’ at home, but were even fed and clothed. From the age of 12–13, the life and fate of urban maids is well known to social history (Gyáni 1983) and fiction, as well as the hard, often humiliating life of the apprentices and servants2 working alongside the craftsmen. A vulnerable, subjugated situation, scarce food, a world confined to a bed or a mattress or a blanket under a table or workbench. Many escaped, committed suicide, others carried the scars on their bodies and souls for the rest of their lives.
The third group is made up mainly of the capital's destitute, the occasional child laborers of poor working families, who also had to contribute to the family's livelihood. They mostly grew up on the streets and adapted to the opportunities and occasions of the big city. They included sellers of matches, flowers, postcards, water, colored spinners, and shoelaces, shoe shiners, parcel carriers, those who set up bowling pins in pub yards, who collected coal from the wagons at the railway station, the scavengers at the dumps and newsboys; but also the prostituted children and minors, the beggars, the pickpockets, who were picked up by the police and released, who could no longer or hardly be rescued because they had economically, socially, morally weakened, broken families, or no family at all.
In the remaining part of the paper, we will discuss child labor, classified in groups 2 and 3, which is performed outside the family, mostly in a forced situation, as part of a survival technique. Employers took little account of the child's gender, age, mental and physical abilities, and the work was not part of a socialization strategy but had an economic benefit.
The issue of child labor with the rise of manufacturing – an outlook
Child labor as an independent, well-defined concept is not found before the 17th century. From the second half of the 20th century, Philippe Ariès brought new perspectives to the social history literature, arguing that, until the 18th century, no distinction was made between adult and child, especially in the peasant economy, but neither was student status or the role of a military serviceman rigidly linked to age (Ariès [1960] 1987). It was after the publication of his book that the historical research of childhood in Hungary gained momentum and the focus also turned to the issue of child labor before the 19th century. Other disciplines, such as pedagogy and education science, studied work from the end of the 17th century until the 19th century as a natural part of education, or as a phenomenon related to ‘socialization’, and then introduced work education into their teaching and education systems (Vajda 2000; Szabolcs 2000; Pukánszky 2001, 2015).
The question of children and work took on a completely new perspective from the second half of the 19th century, when a social sensitivity began to be applied to examining the child as a means of industrial production (Seebauer 2010:15; Key 1976). Industrial child labor emerged as a new concept, which in its purpose, approach and practice was completely different from the obligatory tasks carried out by children as part of the family, community, educational process, a gradually learned activity, providing pride, joy and identity. For the capitalist industry using child labor targeted the most vulnerable and poorest sections of society, mainly orphanage children and destitute families, and took no account of the child's sex, age, mental and physical development, but rather exploited it as long as it could; if they died or were crippled, they were replaced. They had plenty of workers to fill the jobs, because the more children worked in destitute families, the more chance they and other family members had of easing the poverty; thus, during the 18th and 19th centuries, drudgery and the necessity of work pulled poor, vulnerable families deeper and deeper into the trap (Castel 1998).
In all countries, especially in Europe, sooner or later this form has appeared, where factory industry has been consolidated and the pursuit of capital and profit has eclipsed all other values and interests. Exploitation of poor children and women was a common social practice in modern-age industrializing states, and the use of the cheapest possible labor was a feature of the strengthening capitalist manufacturing industry. This not only perpetuated the oppression of the workers with all its consequences, but also played a part in weakening the internal cohesion of families, creating situations of constraint in which even young children had to work 12–14 hours a day to support themselves and their families; for it encouraged the breadwinners who were left without work to turn their children into hired laborers or any kind of wage-earners as soon as possible. England was at the forefront of the mass exploitation of women and child labor in industry and was a model for other heavily industrializing countries in terms of economic, social and moral standards. In 1845, Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England, in which he also wrote a summary of child labor in England (Engels [1845] 1958:347–435), and which became the basis for the later study of industrial child labor (Thompson 2007:278; in general: Goose – Honeyman 2013; Kirbly 2013; Kelemen 2019; Szabó 2018:80–98).
The expansion of Hungarian industry in the 19th century and child labor regulations
This was also the case in Hungary, although to a lesser extent and with a certain delay, the situation of industrial child labor in Hungary was influenced mainly by German (Haar 2010) and of course most of all by Austrian (Seebauer 2010) processes.
In our country, the first industrial law was Act XVII of the Diet of 1840, which applied to existing factories, mines and plants, and also regulated the status of children working in these industries. It stipulated that children under the age of 12 can only be employed if they are medically fit to work, and that children aged 12–16 can only work nine hours. The law was also significant in that it already used the age of 12 as a benchmark, which was in line with international jurisprudence, or even surpassed it for some countries. In Austria, for example, in 1849 the working time for workers aged 12 to 16 was set at twelve hours (Heller 1923:2).
Of equal importance was the ministerial decree of Gábor Klauzál of June 11, 1848, which limited the working hours of children under the age of 14 to nine hours (Bikkal 1943:4).
In the period after the defeat of the War of Independence of 1848, the Austrian industrial order was introduced in Hungary under the harsh Austrian supervision, known as the Bach era, according to which children under the age of 10 could not be employed in large industrial enterprises, and children aged 10–12 could only be employed with the permission of the father or guardian and the local magistrate, and only for work that was not harmful to their health. An important condition was that the permission was granted in connection with the school attendance, i.e. the child's employment had to be agreed with the school and the manufacturer had to ensure that the child could fulfil his/her school attendance obligations. In terms of working hours, however, it was a step backwards from 1840, as the law allowed ten hours of work for under-14-year-olds and twelve hours for 14–16-year-olds. Moreover, it allowed employers to extend the working time of 16-year-olds by two hours for four weeks in exceptional cases. Night shift was forbidden up to the age of 16, but in exceptional cases it was allowed to send children over the age of 14 to night work with special permission from the authorities (Heller 1913a:865–877, 1923:3–4).
In Hungary, it was only after 1867, after the Compromise, that the domestic manufacturing industry became significantly stronger, and from that time onwards children started to appear in greater numbers in factories. As in the past, in Western European factories, women and children were hired instead of men to make more profit, working for less pay. Their numbers grew in the industrial factories, and doctors were the first to speak out on behalf of children who had become sick and crippled at work. Stressing the responsibility of the state, they called for the regulation and control of industrial child labor. Particular attention has been paid to the health conditions in factories and plants, workplace accidents and life-long health hazards, such as phosphorus poisoning in match factories. All of this has led to attempts to protect the interests of children working in industry by incorporating them into industry legislation. Act VIII of 1872, the Industrial Act, was based entirely on the principle of freedom of industry, yet it sought to limit and control child labor. According to § 70, children under 10 years of age could not be employed for factory work, but children between 10 and 12 years of age could only be employed with the permission of the industrial authority.3 The permit could only be issued if the work was combined with school attendance, if the manufacturer set up a separate school and provided education. Those aged 12–14 could only work eight hours a day, and those aged 14–16, ten hours a day. Youth under 16 were only allowed to do jobs that were not harmful to their health. Employers who did not comply, could be fined, and in the case of repeated violations, the factories could be deprived of apprenticeships or the employment of young workers.4
The beginnings of the fight against industrial child labor in Hungary
Healthy workplaces and improved health conditions for workers were also prominent among the demands of the labor movement, which gained momentum in the 1870s. Thus, on August 21–22, 1881, they held a national workers' meeting in Budapest, and among their demands was the question of child and women labor (n. n. 1881:70). Before the second industrial law was passed, workers' meetings, political debates and parliamentary debates brought the case for stricter regulation back to the fore.
Finally, after much debate, the Hungarian Act XVII of 1884, the Second Industrial Act, was drafted on the model of the Austrian Industrial Inspectorate Act, which was in fact an amendment of the Act of 1872, and its explicit aim was to protect craftsmen and their assistants. The establishment and operation of the Second Industrial Act and the Hungarian Industrial Inspectorate was of fundamental importance for child labor in the manufacturing industry. This led to the first factory inspections in 1887–1888. Every factory in the country with 20 or more workers was inspected, 938 in total. At the time, 89,958 workers were registered, of whom 171 were under 12, 2069 were aged 12–14, and 6530 were aged 14–16. Which means that, according to the reports of the Industrial Inspectorate, 8,770 people were under 16 years of age, and in addition, those under 12 worked twelve hours or more a day, the others more than thirteen hours (Rézler 1945:162; see Bayer 1944).
The way the study was set up and carried out may be considered of great importance, but it did not, could not, give a realistic picture; for as soon as the industrial inspectors arrived at the factory or plant, the adults, often the parents themselves, immediately hid the working children in the attic or elsewhere, denying them access. Especially in rural factories such as match factories, paper mills or glass factories. The case of the 200 craftsmen in Győr, who were fined by the industrial authorities for not allowing their apprentices to attend school regularly, and for employing children under the age of 10, is an exception. Moreover, the parents who also worked for the craftsmen claimed that they were with their children because they could not supervise them otherwise (Kelemen 2019:23). Children being in factories and plants because of parental supervision – an explanation that has been given for years in the reports of the industrial inspectors.
Industrial inspectors had only a reporting duty, no authority to take action,5 but their reports, year after year, drew attention to anomalies and abuses and urged solutions. They also had the task of investigating child labor cases, but they could not do this fully; especially considering that in 1927 there were only 35 industrial inspectors in Hungary. For comparison, they used the example of England, which by 1906 employed 194 inspectors to inspect textiles, electrical and hazardous industries alone. By contrast, in 1920 we had 22,615 industrial plants with more than three assistants and a significant number of children working in them (Karsai ed. 1947:30; Madzsar ed. 1928:311).
I will address mining and metallurgy separately, and only by way of mention. This perspective is also important because mining companies were subject to slightly different laws than other industries, and for centuries there were many children working in the industry. From the Middle Ages onwards, those who made a living from mining and mine-related work formed a special community; they can be considered the first group of industrial workers, and thus, mining dynasties were formed, passed from father to son (Paládi-Kovács 2007; Deáky ed. 2008; Deáky 2015). The first mining regulations in Hungary were known as the Miksa Mining Regulations, which were issued in 1,573. It regulated mining in detail, set working hours at eight hours a day, and prohibited the employment of children and women in underground work (Tárkány et al. 1970:30–33).
This regulation was in force until 1854, when the Austrian Mining Act was passed, and remained in force in its main elements until the first half of the 20th century. The Austrian General Mining Act of 1854 was a step backwards regarding child labor, as it did not regulate it, but left the determination of working hours to the companies. This usually meant twelve-hour shifts, and the minimum age was supposed to be 12. Almost nowhere was this age limit respected, and children were hired based on self-declared age. According to the sources, in Transylvania, the mining captaincies of Nagybánya [Baia Mare] and Oravica were the most willing to employ children. There were two ways of doing this: either by working alongside their father to increase his output, and then starting work at a much younger age, or by being employed independently, but more for surface work. They sorted, graded the ores, washed them. In Transylvania at that time, the mining industry was leading in the use of child labor (Vajda 1981:178–179).
According to data from the end of the 19th century, the number of child workers in the mining industry was very high, but it is likely that after the 1884 Industrial Act, the number of children under the age of 12 decreased. This is confirmed by Gyula Rézler's analyzis based on the 1888 factory inspections, according to which, of the 38,572 mine workers, 4,698 were aged 14–16, 783 were aged 12–14, and nine were under 12; i.e. 5,490 children (under 16) worked 8–10 h a day in the mining industry (Rézler 1945:163).
Their situation was somewhat different from that of children working in big industry, because since the Middle Ages they had mostly come from mining families, with boys gradually growing into mining alongside their fathers, and girls often working on the surface alongside their mothers – but their work could still be considered child labor.
Children in agriculture
In Europe, including Hungary, until the beginning of the 20th century, child labor was only mentioned in relation to industry although many children worked in various sectors; most of them in agriculture, that is, in the dominant groups of society. Here applies the German term “Schwabenkinder”, which refers to the annual migration of children from the 17th century to the 1920s. This is due to the harsh natural conditions in the high mountain settlements, limited and scarce income farming, overpopulation, poverty and frequent destitution. For families, the ‘one less mouth to feed’ (Damit zu Hause ein Esser weniger ist) aspect was a help, and was reason enough to send the child away, but if it also helped the family with some money, it was considered a gain (Zimmermann – Brugger 2012:48; Seebauer 2010:95). From the ages of 6–14, the Schwabenkinder traveled to Upper Swabia, the Lake Constance area and the Bavarian Allgäu to work from February to November and later from April to October. Until the end of the 19th century, they mostly arrived on foot after 4–5 days of walking to the children's market of the towns, where they were sorted out and most of them were employed as shepherds, farmers, maids, servants, and some of them as artisans (Zimmermann – Brugger 2012).
In Hungary, even if this was not standard, but rather similarly – in situations of necessity – rural children were sent to the countryside to work for provisions, or perhaps for some money, far away from home. The reason why the situation of children working in agriculture was not noticed until later, was that even at the beginning of the 20th century, the general opinion among urbanites and intellectuals was that although the children of peasants worked a lot, they did so in the open air, in healthy conditions, in a family environment, which did not burden them physically or morally. That is why even children working in agriculture outside the family for pay were not examined from a child protection perspective, nor were they included in the provisions regulating child labor.
First national survey and scholarly analyzis of child labor in Hungary
In Hungary and Austria, as in other heavily industrializing European countries, child labor was motivated by strong social and economic interests and was the subject of intense political debate. It was precisely on this Austrian model that the Royal Hungarian Ministry of the Interior ordered an inspection in 1908. They wanted to get a picture of the laws and regulations governing child labor in the country and the reality of the situation. In the same year, the Austrian Minister of Trade ordered a similar survey in Austria (Kraus 1904; see also Seebauer 2010; Sieder 1995; Deáky 2012, 2015).
In Hungary, the Ministry of the Interior asked the National League for the Protection of Children to carry out the investigation, and the League asked Béla Chyzer (1868–1910), a Budapest chief medical officer, to conduct the survey. Chyzer was chosen because, as a physician, he dealt with occupational health, in particular industrial diseases, and had a great deal of experience and knowledge of the subject. He was also familiar with the international context and the studies on child labor in Austria. In Hungary, he was the first academic researcher on the subject, who prepared the first scholarly analyzis of child labor in Hungary based on his nationwide questionnaire surveys (Chyzer 1909).
The survey found that the main cause of extensive child labor is poverty and the constraint of poor families, where the children's work helps their survival, even if minimally, by contributing to the family economy. It was already a help if the children were not taking money from the family budget to be spent on them. This is why Chyzer also came across the practice of sending a child to work ‘just to for provisions’. This meant that the employer fed the child, gave him a set of clothes, but paid not a penny for the work – wrote Chyzer (Chyzer 1909:18).
In several forums, he warned the authorities that the machinery has made women and children compete with skilled workers and men for lower wages in the manufacturing industry in the face of increased production and unlimited competition. Although we have seen this trend to a lesser extent than in Austria, simply because the Hungarian manufacturing industry was not as developed. He also pointed out that the mass emigration to America has created a shortage of workers, which has made the work of children even more valorised. According to the 1900 census, half of the apprentices and workers under the age of 16 employed in factories and small industries were aged between 8 and 13. Chyzer rightly assumed that they would be made to work beyond the time allowed by law (Chyzer 1909:43. For his results, see Hilscher 1928:106–143).
The impact of World War I on child labor
His untimely death prevented a larger survey from being carried out, but his findings have already had an impact on the fight to regulate and even ban child labor in the country; and he has also helped child protection in this matter, stressing that the way to approach the issue is to improve the poor economic situation of families. There was no time for this to unfold, because the drawn-out war deepened the social problems that had existed until then, brought new ones, and raised even more sharply the economic and family-sustaining role of women and child labor. The impact of war casualties or war invalids on Hungarian society has determined the economic and social situation of the country for decades. Among other things, the traditional family and work organization based on female, male and child labor has been restructured, and women and child labor has been valorised; shifting in some social strata towards a situation where child labor has evolved into an important economic factor for families. This process began in the 19th century with industrialization and urbanization but reached its peak during World War I and the Great Depression. One of the reasons for this is that because of the war, the number of orphans and widows, displaced people, refugees, destitute people has increased enormously, and the problems of children and minors, women, war widows, war orphans and invalids, poverty and hardship have reached almost everyone, not only the lower social groups. The fact that from the summer of 1914 it was men aged 18 to 50 who enlisted,6 is in itself an indication of the social problematic of which families were among those who suffered, endured and reacted. The young and active adult men were permanently absent due to prolonged fighting and captivity, and their absence, death, the enormous human sacrifice and the masses of the physically, mentally and spiritually crippled changed the previous economic and social order and structure of society.7 Families were left without fathers, without breadwinners, without vital young men, so women and older children had to take on the role of the head of the family.
The life path of men entailed providing livelihoods and economic stability, ensuring the internal order of the family, enforcing family hierarchy, gender and age differentiated duties and rights, passing on family, community and local traditions, living the role of husband and father, and active participation in the wider, local, denominational community. Now that they were permanently or definitely excluded from this, the management of the family and the farm was in the hands of the wife, who did the work either with the help of the old and sick people left at home or with the help of her children. Women were forced to take over the role of head of the family, and tried, with more or less success, to keep their out-of-balance little community going. This period of crisis was a challenge for everyone, but especially for the children, because it was sudden, there was not enough time to prepare, and family, kinship and local communities were suddenly thrown off balance. In the absence of men, the hierarchical order was unexpectedly weakened, the strictly regulated division of labor between men and women was dissolved, and direct paternal authority and authority for children became indirect, distant or even lost. The absence of men and the economic constraints disrupted the earlier family socialization defined by tradition, the gender and age role modeling and the gradual integration into it. The transgenerational transfer of knowledge and values was halted as well, and the regulating and guiding power of family and community control seemed to be lost (Deáky 2019b).
Those outside the family and kinship system, teachers, priests, journalists, witnessed the early and forced coming of age, and even saw how the state tried to shift the burden of war onto children as well. In February 1915, an appeal by the Minister of Agriculture was published in the journal Néptanítók Lapja [People's Teachers' Journal] under the title “Work in the fields and school”. The appeal asked for “the help of the older students, the educated public” to help secure the summer harvest. Clergymen and teachers were expected to organize “boys and girls who are able and eager to work” in all schools where the children of peasants and landowners were studying, “as early as now” (!), in February, so that in the summer they could work in the harvest, replacing the fighting men, alongside the women and elderly who stayed at home.8 This call also went against previous state efforts to regulate child protection and child labor in an attempt to raise the age limit for employment and to regulate the difficulty of work, even in agriculture. World War I made child labor, alongside women's work, part of the war economy, effectively overriding not only regulations but also traditional forms of work organization, including the gradual workload of children and the process of training them for work.
During the years of World War I, this social problem appeared in all the countries involved in the war, affecting an ever-wider range of people, and the lack of men in production and in the various sectors became a growing problem. In Hungary, too, more and more families were forced to turn their children into labor, and the opportunities for urban and rural work opened up for them. Taking on hard labor was a necessity to avoid poverty and to survive, so it increasingly became part of the family's livelihood strategy,9 but it was also in the interest of the state, so child labor was implicitly subsumed under the common burden of war.
The damaging effects of early strenuous work, early self-reliance and early provider roles were already pointed out by Béla Chyzer in his 1908 summary. Besides the health implications, he also wrote about the harmful effects of children's early employment and autonomous earnings on their personal development and family cohesion: “It is my general experience that parents themselves force their children to work, either through parental authority or by tempting them to do what they want with part of the money they earn, i.e. buy brandy, cigarettes and play cards. They have money and 40–60% of them smoke cigarettes.” (Chyzer 1909:19). He found that the breadwinner and provider status changed the children's “attitude and mindset, making them become self-conceited, no longer wanting to fit into the family hierarchy, and wanting to step up and be one of the adults before their time. The boy-child”, writes Chyzer, “often thinks that he is entitled to everything that his father or his grown-up brother is entitled to: cigarettes, cards, drink” (Chyzer 1909:19). His phrases and observations appeared repeatedly and more often in the articles of teachers, priests and journalists from 1915 onwards, but they did not see it as the historical process of child labor or even the basic principles of the functioning and maintaining of peasant economies, but only as one of the harmful consequences of the war. They could not understand that in a time of crisis (which is what the drawn-out war was), the previously socially regulated gender and age boundaries were being stretched and that everyone had to participate in the tasks of ensuring survival and a future. The farm-related parts of the wartime correspondence were also symbolically extended means of paternal influence and control, so children wanted to prove to their absent fathers and brothers their reliability and their commitment to the family and the farm. By participating in the work beyond their means, by ensuring continuity, and replacing absent fathers and adults on the farm, children and youths granted themselves additional rights for themselves, even if implicitly (Deáky 2019b).
Because of the war, children had to grow up with almost no transition – certainly in terms of work and responsibility. This also meant that, as the teachers and priests of the time pointed out and warned of their harmfulness, trying to behave like adults (smoking cigarettes, dressing up in flashier clothes, early courtship) or having fun like them (going out to pubs, drinking, bowling) was an expression of self-consciousness, pride, assertion. As the war dragged on, the situation of children, especially those forced to work outside the family home, became not only a health, economic and social issue, but also a crime issue, as criminal justice data have shown. In 1917, a report by Béla Kun (1861–1934), a ministerial adviser and juvenile criminal lawyer, was published, which showed that the number of juvenile offenses in 1916 had increased by 60% compared to 1915. Due to the increase in numbers and the economic situation, they were assigned to various jobs, partly for educational purposes and partly as a daily wage supplement (n. n. 1917:56). He also drew attention to the fact that “the roots of juvenile delinquency must be sought in the family, since this is an old principle in the fight against crime (…) the protection of the juvenile can only be thorough and effective if the protection of the family surrounding him is also thorough, and the fight against juveniles is in fact nothing other than the fight against the deterioration of the family.” (Vásárhelyi 1917)
Clearly, this pressing social problem became and remained a topic of child protection, social policy and political discourse until the Second World War. According to the studies of the Hungarian Society for the Study of Children, in 1914 there were around 1 million working children, but as the war dragged on and parents emigrated to America, their numbers gradually increased (Vásárhelyi 1917).
After World War I and during the great Depression
World War I and its aftermath cemented the situation for many years, and in destitute, poverty-stricken urban and rural families, children's work was a major help, so there was no fundamental change in their lives. This is what Anna Kéthly cautioned in 1923, when she said that it was impossible to know how many children were actually affected by work in Hungary (Kéthly 1923). Because there were the child laborers who were employed during the war, in factories, plants converted to war production and in textile factories, in the ‘interests of warfare’. There were the children whose fathers or brothers had not returned from the battlefield or had been disabled there and needed to contribute even their meagre earnings. Many children went to work in glass and brick factories, box and paper bag factories, walnut mills and timber companies. There were also many children as office clerks, baggage porters at railway stations, messenger boys, newspaper deliverers, candy sellers at cinemas, and flyer distributors. She drew a narrow picture and, like many others, demanded immediate action (Kéthly 1923:488).
The situation was aggravated by the large number of refugees who fled to Hungary from the territories annexed by the successor states with the Trianon peace treaty at the end of World War I, and the mostly young, capable refugees already increased the number of workers. This was further increased by the mass of small-scale industrialists who were driven out of business by mechanized manufacturing, and by the mass of small landowners who could not live off their land, and the mass of farm workers who also became wage laborers, as well as discharged soldiers and, with the end of compulsory military service, young adults also seeking work.
In the few years following World War I, economic progress slowed down, and by 1929 the global economic crisis had reached Hungary, leading to redundancies in all sectors, low wages and an extremely difficult economic and social situation. From 1930, the situation deteriorated rapidly, and by 1932 the serious consequences were already beginning to show.
In 1931, the statistician Dezső Zentay analyzed the household diaries of 50 working-class families in terms of their livelihood strategy. There were children in every family. He looked at how many people per family contributed to the annual income. The study found that 31 out of 50 families had wives who had to work, “and in every second family, the children's earnings helped in the struggle to make ends meet.” (Zentay 1931:72).
Social policy studies and analyzes
In those years, families were increasingly burdened by the struggle for survival, therefore the board of the National Stefania Association decided to try to get an insight into the extent of destitution and its impact on the social and health conditions of families, mothers and infants in its 236 shelters, involving staff and nurses. The Stefania Association commissioned the social politician György Gortvay, director of the Museum of Public Health, to prepare the groundwork for the work and asked him to use the data to prepare an analyzis of unemployment and to look at the problem from the perspective of families (Gortvay 1933). In 1933, a mere 18-page booklet was published, in which he summarized the characteristics of unemployment in Hungary during the Depression in a factual and bullet-pointed manner, and as a social policy expert he also focused on social health problems. He did not settle for the common perception that the standard of living of families had fallen sharply during the recession, but pointed out that the number of illnesses and deviance had increased simultaneously. He confirmed the description of the situation published by the social politician Rezső Hilscher in 1928, in which he warned – referring to his observations and experiences – that there would be serious consequences of what is common in poor families, when the wife, instead of the unemployed husband, “is forced to work for a starvation wage set by the employer”; and while she goes to work, the husband cooks and cares for the children at home (Hilscher 1928:141). Gortvay completed Hilscher's statement by outlining the consequences: instead of men, it was the wives and the younger and older children who tried to earn money and provide for a meagre living. And the fact that the vital men, who had been responsible for providing and maintaining the family's economic welfare, were now dependent on the work of their wives and children or on alms, made them spiritually weary, physically ill, debauched, and put the already shaken family in an even worse situation (Gortvay 1933:7). This was also shown by the 40% increase in the number of abandoned children compared to the pre-war period, and the increase in vagrancy and child delinquency, which Gortvay explained by the fact that parents, in their forced situation, put their children to work, either as street vendors (matches, postcards, flowers) or by encouraging them to earn money in other ways that were not appropriate for their age (Gortvay 1933:7).
A year earlier, in 1932, during the economic crisis, György Gortvay had published a summary booklet on the paid work of children and juveniles. Nothing seemed to have changed from what was observed in Béla Chyzer's surveys of 1908, and the economic crisis had intensified the tendency, i.e. children's work had been pushed forward to replace adult workers: “The great social importance of children's work is nowadays even more marked by the fact that the alarming unemployment of the adult members of the family almost forces children to seize every opportunity of earning money that presents itself, whether it suits their physical development and mental condition or not. This then only adds to the already depressed labor market situation.” This was not only the case during the economic crisis and for unemployed families. It was true in general for all poor families where the daily hard labor provided only just enough income to survive (Gortvay 1932:3).
However, after World War I and then during the Great Depression, in 1925 and 1931, unemployment reached its lowest point. Dezső Schuler's statistics painted a harsh picture of the destitute and the welfare recipients in Budapest. In Budapest, for example, one in six children aged 6–14 lived in a poverty-stricken family, and in 1935 there were approximately 20,000 children in such families who, once they reached the age of 14, were legally able to work (Schuler 1936:62, 1937:93).
Conclusion
The experts agreed that in any country, including Hungary, as long as economic and social conditions do not ensure a decent living for families, child and juvenile labor cannot be eliminated. There may be international or national regulations, but necessity overrides them. This is demonstrated by the fact that although social care and child protection became more and more organized between the two world wars, the statement made by Farkas Heller in 1912 remained valid for the whole period: “The deeper social-political research goes into the study of child labor, the more firmly is the conviction that real success in this field will only be achieved if positive social work is begun, and if the state, the law, the municipality and social organizations join forces to do everything possible to eliminate the causes which force parents to put their children to work.” (Heller 1913b:13).
There was a legal basis for the fight against child labor, because the social problems after World War I kept the issue of child labor on the agenda and regulated it throughout Europe. The International Labor Office regulated the minimum age for child labor in several conventions (industrial 1919; agricultural 1920; maritime 1920). It was agreed that the contracting parties had an obligation “to abolish child labor and to restrict the work of minors of both sexes to such a degree as will enable them to continue their education and to develop sufficiently.” The Washington Labor Conference in 1919 accepted the employment of children in industry from the age of 14, and at the same time banned children from working in industry at night. In Geneva in 1920, the age limit for children to be employed in agriculture was also set at 14 (Madzsar ed. 1928:250). Hungary also signed the conventions (Bódy 2019:21), and the Act XII of 1922 prohibited children required to attend elementary school from working at all. The age limit of 14 was set in Act V of 1928, which provided for “the protection of children, minors and women employed in industry and some other enterprises,” but it was the age limit that left loopholes. According to this law, a person under the age of 14 was considered a child; but anyone over the age of 12 was eligible for industrial work, although they could not be assigned to night work.10
Despite the fact that Hungary was one of the first states to accept and sign international conventions, it was precisely because of poor economic conditions and constraints, the demographic impact of the war, and then the economic crisis, as well as traditional forms of Labor organization, that they could not be observed and enforced (Gortvay 1932:19). This issue remained a major concern of political debates, social policymakers, child protection specialists, doctors and teachers until the outbreak of World War II.
References
Ariès, Philippe 1987 Gyermek, család, halál [Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life]. Budapest: Gondolat. (1960: L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime).
Bayer, Ferenc 1944 A magyar iparfelügyelet 1893–1943. Iparrendészet és munkásvédelem; a magyar iparfelügyelet 50 éves fennállása alkalmából [The Hungarian Industrial Inspectorate 1893–1943 Industrial Policing and Worker Protection; on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Industrial Inspectorate]. Budapest: n. p.
Bikkal, Dénes 1943 Magyar szociálpolitika. A dolgozó társadalom szociális védelme Magyarországon [Hungarian Social Policy. Social Protection of the Working Society in Hungary]. Budapest: Danubia.
Bódy, Zsombor 2019 A magyar szociálpolitika nemzetközi beágyazottsága: tudástranszfer és eredményei Magyarországon 1945 előtt [The International Embeddedness of Hungarian Social Policy: Knowledge Transfer and Its Results in Hungary before 1945]. Aetas (34)4:5–26.
Castel, Robert 1998 A szociális kérdés alakváltozásai [From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Question]. Budapest: Kávé – Max Weber Alapítvány – Wesley Zsuzsa Alapítvány. (1995: Les Métamorphoses de la question sociale).
Chyzer, Béla 1909 A gyermekmunka Magyarországon [Child Labor in Hungary]. Budapest: n .p. (Az Országos gyermekvédő Liga Könyvtára 5).
Deáky, Zita (ed.) 2008 Erdély orvosi szemmel a 18–19. században. Történeti-néprajzi források [Transylvania Through Medical Eyes in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Historical-biographical Sources]. Budapest: Györffy István Néprajzi Egyesület. (A Néprajzi Látóhatár Kiskönyvtára 11).
Deáky, Zita 2011 “Jó kis fiúk és leánykák” A kisgyermekkor történeti néprajza Magyarországon [Good Boys and Girls: The History of Early Childhood in Hungary]. Budapest: Századvég.
Deáky, Zita 2012 A gyermekmunkát meghatározó tényezők Magyarországon a 19–20. század elején [Factors Determining Child Labor in Hungary in the Early Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries]. In Örsi, Julianna (ed.) Középpontban a család 2, 37–49. Szolnok – Túrkeve: Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Tudományos Egyesület.
Deáky, Zita 2015 Gyermekek és serdülők munkája Magyarországon a 19. századtól a második világháborúig [Child Labor in Hungary from the 19th Century to the Second World War]. Budapest: Gondolat.
Deáky, Zita 2019a Gyermekmunka fényképeken a 20. század elején Magyarországon [Child Labor in Photographs in Early Twentieth Century Hungary]. In Molnárné Acél, Eszter – Dománszky, Gabriella (eds.) Gyermek/kor/kép. Gyermek a magyar képzőművészetben, 265–284. Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum. (Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 43).
Deáky, Zita 2019b A Nagy Háború és a nevelés válsága [The Great War and the Crisis of Education]. In Bali, János – Bárth, Dániel – Deáky, Zita – Vámos, Gabriella: Kövek, fák, források. Tanulmányok Mohay Tamás hatvanadik születésnapjára, 574–585. Budapest: ELTE BTK Néprajzi Intézet.
Engels, Friedrich 1958 A munkásosztály helyzete Angliában 1845 [The Condition of the Working Class in England]. In Karl Marx és Friedrich Engels Művei II, 211–473. Budapest: Kossuth.
Goose, Nige – Honeyman, Katrina (ed.) 2013 Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England. Diversity and Agency. 1750–1914. Farnham: Ashgate.
Gortvay, György 1932 A gyermekek és fiatalkorúak kereső munkája [Paid Work of Children and Juveniles]. Budapest: n. p. (Országos Stefánia Szövetség Anyák- és csecsemők védelmére kiadványai 75).
Gortvay, György 1933 A munkanélküliség [Unemployment]. Budapest: n. p. (Országos Stefánia Szövetség Anyák- és csecsemők védelmére kiadványai 85).
Gyáni, Gábor 1983 Család, háztartás és a városi cselédség [Family, Household and Urban Housemaids]. Budapest: Magvető.
Haar, Heinrich von der 2010 Kinderarbeit in Deutschland. Dokumentation und Analyse. Berlin: Kulturmaschinen Verlag.
Heller, Farkas 1913a A gyermekmunka kérdése a salzburgi gyermekvédelmi kongresszuson [The Issue of Child Labor at the Salzburg Child Protection Congress]. Munkásügyi Szemle 4(22):865–877.
Heller, Farkas 1913b A gyermekmunka szabályozása. A Törvényes Munkásvédelem Magyarországi Egyesületének a gyermekmunka kérdésében 1911. és 1912. években folytatott tárgyalásai [Regulation of Child Labor. Negotiations of the Hungarian Association for the Lawful Protection of Workers on the Question of Child Labor in 1911 and 1912.]. Budapest: n. p. (A Törvényes Munkásvédelem Magyarországi Egyesületének Kiadványai 25).
Heller, Farkas 1923 Magyarország szociálpolitikája [Social Policy in Hungary] Budapest: n. p.
Hilscher, Rezső 1928 Bevezetés a szociálpolitikába [Introduction to Social Policy]. Budapest: Szövétnek Kiadás.
Karsai, Elek 1947 Gyermekmunka a gyáriparban a kapitalizmus kialakulásától az első világháborúig [Child Labor in Manufacturing from the Rise of Capitalism to the First World War]. Budapest: Népszava.
Kelemen, Roland 2019 A munkaügyi kapcsolatok története [The History of Labor Relations]. In Ferencz, Jácint (ed.) A munkaügyi kapcsolatok joga Magyarországon, 13–20. Budapest: Gondolat.
Kéthly, Anna 1923 A gyermekmunka és a gyermekmunkás [Child Labor and the Child Worker]. Szocializmus 13(1):486–491.
Key, Ellen 1976 [1900] A gyermek évszázada [The Century of the Child]. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.
Kirby, Peter 2013 Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain. 1780–1850. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
Kraus, Siegmund 1904 Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich. Wien und Leipzig. (Wiener Staatswissenschaftliche Studien Band 5, Heft 3).
Madzsar, József (ed.) 1928 Társadalmi Lexikon [Social Encyclopaedia]. Budapest: Népszava.
Nemes, Lipót 1916 Gyermekvédelmi problémák [Child Protection Issues]. A Gyermek 10:596–599.
N. N. 1881 Az augusztus 20-diki és 21-diki magyarországi munkásgyűlés. [The Hungarian workers’ meetings of 20 and 2 August.] Népszava 9(35):70.
n. n. 1917 Az állami gyermekvédelem proletárjai [Proletarians of State Child Protection] Szegényügy 3–5:56–59.
Paládi-Kovács, Attila 2007 Ipari táj. Gyárak, bányák, műhelyek népe a 19–20. században [Industrial landscapes. The People of Factories, Mines and Workshops in the 19–20th Centuries]. Budapest: Akadémiai.
Parádi, Jenő 1940 Az 1914/18-as világháború magyar hadirokkantjainak és egyéb károsultjainak seregszemléje [A Review of Hungarian War Invalids and Other Casualties of the 1914/18 World War]. Statisztikai Szemle 7:568–614.
Pukánszky, Béla 2001 A gyermekkor története [The History of Childhood]. Budapest:Műszaki.
Pukánszky, Béla 2015 Bevezetés a gyermekkor történetébe [Introduction to the History of Childhood]. http://www.jgypk.hu/mentorhalo/tananyag/Bevezets_a_gyermekkor_trtnetbe/ (accessed December 5, 2021).
Rézler, Gyula 1945 A magyar nagyipari munkásság kialakulása 1867–1914 [Emergence of the Hungarian Manufacturing Workers 1867–1914]. Budapest: n. p. (2nd extended edition).
Sas, Judit H. 1972 A gyerekkel szembeni családi követelmények alakulása és a történelmi-társadalmi változások [The Evolution of Family Demands on Children and Historical-Social Changes]. Szociológia 1(2):179–210.
Schuler, Dezső 1936 A hatósági nyílt szegénygondozás Budapesten [Official Open Poor Relief in Budapest]. Budapesti Statisztikai Közlemények 75(1).
Schuler, Dezső 1937 Hatósági és társadalmi embervédelem Budapesten [Official and Social Human Protection in Budapest]. Budapesti Statisztikai Közlemények 78(4).
Seebauer, Renate 2010 Kein Jahrhundert des Kindes. Kinderarbeit im Spannungsfeld von Schul- und Sozialgesetzgebung. Wien: LIT Verlag. (Pädagogik und Gesellschaft 8).
Sieder, Reinhard 1995 “Vata, derfi i aufstehen?” A gyermekkor tapasztalata 1900 körül a bécsi munkáscsaládokban [The Experience of Childhood in Viennese Working Families around 1900]. In Gyáni, Gábor (ed.) A modern város történeti dilemmái, 171–198. Debrecen: Csokonai.
Szabó, Péter Zsigmond 2018 A gyermekmunka szabályozásának főbb csomópontjai a 19. századi Egyesült Királyságban és Magyarországon, a foglalkoztatás alsó korhatára és a munkaidő a gyári és ipari törvények vonatkozásában [The Main Nodes of Child Labor Regulation in 19th Century Britain and Hungary, Minimum Age of Employment and Working Hours in Factory and Industrial Laws]. In Erdős, Csaba (ed.) Doktori Műhelytanulmányok 2018 – Doktori Műhelytanulmányok, 80–98. Budapest: Gondolat. https://dfk-online.sze.hu/images/egyedi/doktori/doktori%20m%C5%B1helytanulm%C3%A1nyok%202018/DoktoriMuhelytanulmanyok_2018_.pdf (accessed March 2, 2022).
Szabolcs, Éva 2000 Neveléstörténet és gyermekkortörténet [History of Education and Childhood]. In Pukánszky, Béla (ed.) A gyermek évszázada, 65–73. Budapest: Osiris.
Tárkány Szűcs, Ernő – Radnay, József – Kiss, László 1970 Magyar bányajog [Hungarian Mining Law]. Budapest: n. p.
Thompson, Edward Palmer 2007 Az angol munkásosztály születése [The Making of the English Working Class]. Budapest: Osiris.
Vajda, Lajos 1981 Erdélyi bányák, kohók, emberek, századok [Transylvanian Mines, Smelters, People, Centuries]. Bukarest: Politikai.
Vajda, Zsuzsanna 2000 Gyermekfelfogás és gyermekkor a történelemben [Perceptions of Children and Childhood in History]. In Pukánszky, Béla (ed.) A gyermek évszázada, 80–100. Budapest: Osiris.
Vásárhelyi, Júlia 1917 A gyermekmunka védelme [Protecting Child Labor]. A Gyermek 11:194–201.
Zentay, Dezső 1931 Háztartási statisztika [Household Statistics]. Szocializmus 21(3):69–78.
Zimmermann, Stefan – Brugger, Christine (ed.) 2012 Die Schwabenkinder. Arbeit in der Fremde vom 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert. Ulm: Bauernhaus–Museum Wolfegg.
Zita Deáky, ethnographer, retired habilitated associate professor, main research interests: the culture of midwifery and birth in the 19th and 20th centuries; the historical ethnography of early childhood and child labor; and the socio-ethnographic areas of the peoples living together in the Carpathian Basin. In 1996 she published her doctoral dissertation A bába a magyarországi népi társadalomban (18–19. sz.) [The midwife in Hungarian folk society (18th and 19th centuries)], in 2000 her PhD dissertation] A hivatalos és a hagyományos gyógyítás a magyar történeti forrásokban 18–19. sz.) [The official and traditional healing in Hungarian historical sources (18th and 19th centuries)], and in 2011 her habilitation dissertation “Jó kis fiúk és leánykák.” A kisgyermekkor történeti néprajza Magyarországon. [Good boys and girls: The history of early childhood in Hungary]. In 2005, she co-authored with Lilla Krász the book Minden dolgok kezdete: A születés kultúrtörténete Magyarországon (XVI–XX. század) [The Beginning of All Things: the Cultural History of Birth in Hungary (16th to 20th centuries)]. In 2015, her book Gyermekek és serdülők munkája Magyarországon a l9. századtól a második világháborúig [Child labor in Hungary from the 19th century to the Second World War] was published, and in 2022, she co-authored a book with Marta Botikova, Girls and Women in socialist Slovakia and Hungary (1955–1989).
The present paper is linked to my previous work, in which I have addressed a number of specific issues: Deáky 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019a, 2019b.
The child protagonists of literary fiction and the case of the apprentice are also relevant here, but I will not go into that now.
This was also approved by § 60 of Act XVII of 1884.
This was also approved by Article 60 of Act XVII of 1884.
Act XXVIII of 1893 on the protection of industrial and factory employees against accidents and on industrial inspectors.
Act XXX of 1912 on the Defence Forces (the XXX Act of 1912) made it compulsory for men aged between 18 and 50 to enlist.
According to a 1931 survey, 65,000 physically crippled men returned from the war. 62% of them had children under the age of 16. The majority had 1, 2 or 3 children, but a very small number had 9–10 children. Parádi 1940:568–614.
Work in the fields and school. Néptanítók Lapja [People's Teachers' Journal] 1915(7):1–2.
During the war, the police turned a blind eye to child labor because they knew that “if the child did not contribute a few pennies to supplement the income, the family would be exposed to even greater deprivations”. Nemes 1916:597; Deáky 2015, 2019b.
Act V of 1928 on the protection of children, minors and women employed in industry and certain other enterprises. https://net.jogtar.hu/ezer-ev-torveny?docid=92800005.TV&searchUrl=/ezer-ev-torvenyei%3Fpagenum%3D40 accessed February 1, 2022.