Overview

Lesson Procedure

60-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Read the prompt aloud and give students three minutes to write. The two sources in the prompt are invented for this warm-up.

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A rail yard's annual report says: 'Injuries fell from 40 last year to 12 this year.' A worker writes in a letter the same year: 'Half the men hurt this year never reported it, for fear of losing their place.' What does the number tell you? What does the letter tell you that the number cannot? After reading the letter, what would you say about the report's 12?"

   Collect answers. Students usually see that the report gives a size and a direction (fewer injuries) and the letter gives a reason to doubt how the number was gathered. Neither source alone answers the question "Did the yard get safer?" Name the skill: RH.9-10.7 asks students to integrate quantitative analysis (reading numbers, tables and charts) with qualitative analysis (reading an author's words), so that each source changes how the other is read.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Part 1: Read the numbers. Show Table 1 and Diagram 1. Model the questions to ask of any table: What is counted? (children 10 to 15 whom census takers recorded with an occupation, including work on the family farm.) Where and when? (the whole United States, in four census years.) What is left out? (children under 10, and the year 1890, for which the report gives no figures for this age group.) Then model one change: from 1880 to 1900 the number rose from 1,118,356 to 1,750,178, and the share of all children 10 to 15 rose from 16.8 to 18.2 percent.

   Table 1. Children 10 to 15 years of age in the United States engaged in gainful occupations, 1880-1920 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Children in Gainful Occupations at the Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1924, page 12). The report gives no 1890 row for this age group. Percents are of all children 10 to 15.

   Census year	All children 10-15	Gainfully occupied	Percent	In agriculture	Percent	In nonagricultural pursuits	Percent
   1880	6,649,483	1,118,356	16.8	721,852	10.9	396,504	6.0
   1900	9,613,252	1,750,178	18.2	1,063,965	11.1	686,213	7.1
   1910	10,828,365	1,990,225	18.4	1,432,428	13.2	557,797	5.2
   1920	12,502,582	1,060,858	8.5	647,309	5.2	413,549	3.3

   Part 2: Read the words and connect. Read T1 and T2 aloud. Spargo wrote in 1906, so he knew the 1900 census but not the later ones. A certificate here is the paper that stated a child's age for an employer; a notary is an official who witnesses sworn statements; perjury is lying under oath. Students mark each number in one color and each claim about the numbers in another. Work the three examples.

   1According to the census of 1900 there were, in the United States in that year, 1,752,187 children under sixteen years of age employed in gainful occupations. Of itself that is a terrible sum, but all authorities are agreed that it does not fully represent the magnitude of the child-labor problem. It is well known that many thousands of children are working under the protection of certificates in which they are falsely represented as being of the legal age for employment. When a child of twelve gets a certificate declaring its age to be fifteen, it needs only to work a year, to be in reality thirteen years old, in order to be classed as an adult over sixteen years of age. Such certificates have been, and in many cases still are, ridiculously easy to obtain, it being only necessary for one of the parents or guardians of a child to swear before a notary that the child has reached the minimum age required by law. The result has been the promotion of child slavery and illiteracy through the wholesale perjury of parents and guardians. I have known scores of instances in which children ten or eleven years old were employed through the possession of certificates stating that they were thirteen or fourteen. I remember asking one little lad his age, in Pittston, Pennsylvania, during the anthracite coal strike of 1902. He certainly did not look more than ten years old, but he answered boldly, “I’m thirteen, sir.” When I asked him how long he had been at work, he replied, “More’n a year gone, sir.” Afterward I met his father at one of the strikers’ meetings, and he told me that the lad was only a few days over eleven years of age, and that he went to work as a “breaker boy” before he was ten. “We’m a big fam’ly,” he said in excuse. “There’s six kids an’ th’ missis an’ me. Wi’ me pay so small, I was glad to give a quarter to have the papers (certificate) filled out so’s he could bring in a trifle like other boys.” Afterward I came across several similar cases.

   1That is only one of many reasons for supposing that the census figures do not adequately represent the extent to which child labor prevails. Another is the tremendous number of children of school age, and below the age at which they may be legally employed, who do not attend school. In New York State, for instance, there were more than 76,000 children between the ages of ten and fourteen years who were out of school during the whole of the twelve months covered by the census of 1900, and nearly 16,000 more in the same age period who attended school less than five months in the year. Careful investigation in Philadelphia showed that in one year, “after deducting those physically unable to attend school, 16,100 children, between the ages of eight and thirteen,” were out of school, and a similar condition is reported to exist throughout the whole of Pennsylvania. The Child Labor Committee of Pennsylvania gives a list of nearly one hundred different kinds of work at which children between the ages of eight and thirteen were found to be employed in Philadelphia alone. In practically every industrial centre this margin of children of school age and below the legal age for employment, who do not attend school, exists. It is impossible for any one who is at all conversant with the facts to resist the conclusion that, after making all possible allowances for other causes, by far the larger part of these absentees are at work. Thousands find employment in factories and stores; others find employment in some of the many street trades, selling newspapers, peddling, running errands for small storekeepers, and the like. Many others are not “employed” in the strict sense of the word at all, because they work in their homes, assisting their parents. Their condition is generally much worse than that of the children regularly employed in factories and workshops. In excluding them the census figures omit a very large class of child workers who are the victims of the worst conditions of all. I am convinced that the number of children under fifteen years of age who work is much larger than the official figures give, notwithstanding that these are supposed to give the number of all workers under sixteen years of age. It would, I think, be quite within the mark to say that the number of child workers under fifteen is at least 2,250,000.

   • Checking a number in the text against the table (T1, Table 1)

     T1: "According to the census of 1900 there were, in the United States in that year, 1,752,187 children under sixteen years of age employed in gainful occupations." Table 1, 1900: 1,750,178 children 10 to 15 gainfully occupied.

     Result: The two figures differ by 1,752,187 - 1,750,178 = 2,009, about 0.1 percent, so Spargo is quoting the same census count, perhaps from a different table of it. Integrating the two sources also shows what "under sixteen" hides: the table counts only children aged 10 to 15. The boy in T1 went to work "before he was ten," so a child like him would not appear in Table 1 at all until his tenth birthday. The number checks out, and the text shows a group the number does not cover.

   • What the text says the numbers miss (T1, T2 paragraph 1)

     T1: a child of twelve with a certificate saying fifteen is soon "classed as an adult over sixteen years of age." T2: "more than 76,000 children between the ages of ten and fourteen" in New York were out of school all year, and Spargo concludes "by far the larger part of these absentees are at work." He ends: "the number of child workers under fifteen is at least 2,250,000."

     Result: Spargo gives two reasons the census count is too low: false certificates move children into the adult columns, and many children out of school are working but are not counted as employed. His estimate is 2,250,000 - 1,752,187 = 497,813 more than the census figure, about 28 percent higher (2,250,000 / 1,752,187 is about 1.28). The integration cuts both ways: the census gives a counted minimum, and Spargo's reasons explain why the true number could be larger, but his 2,250,000 is his own judgment ("It would, I think, be quite within the mark"), not a count. Diagram 1 shows it as a dashed line for that reason.

   • Reading a trend with each source's date in mind (Table 1, Diagram 1)

     Table 1: 1,750,178 children (18.2 percent) in 1900; 1,990,225 (18.4 percent) in 1910; 1,060,858 (8.5 percent) in 1920. The census report of 1924 explains that the census date moved from April 15 in 1910 to January 1 in 1920, when much less farm work is done, and that this change affected the count of child farm laborers.

     Result: The count rose again by 1910 and then fell by almost half, to 1,060,858, by 1920. The report's own words qualify its numbers: part of the drop in farm work may come from counting in midwinter. The nonagricultural count, which depends much less on the season, still fell from 686,213 in 1900 to 413,549 in 1920, a drop of 272,664, or 39.7 percent. Spargo's 1906 text can speak only to the years before he wrote; the 1920 decline needs the later data, read with the report's caution.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Read T3 and T4. The Great White Plague is tuberculosis, which Spargo also calls consumption. A breaker is the building where coal is broken and sorted; breaker boys picked slate and rock out of the moving coal by hand. The National Child Labor Committee was a private reform group founded in 1904. Pairs answer two questions before the class works the examples: What does Spargo say numbers cannot do? Which numbers does he use anyway, and where does each come from?

   1From the point of view of the sociologist an accurate statistical measure of the child-labor problem would be a most valuable gain, but to most people such figures mean very little. If they could only see the human units represented by the figures, it would be different. If they could only see in one vast, suffering throng as many children as there are men, women, and children in the state of New Jersey, they would be able to appreciate some of the meaning of the census figures. Even so, they would have only a vivid sense of the magnitude of such a number as 1,752,000; they would still have no idea of the awful physical, mental, and moral wreckage hidden in the lifeless and dumb figures. If it were only possible to take the consumptive cough of one child textile worker with lint-clogged lungs, and to multiply its volume by tens of thousands; to gather into one single compass the fevers that burn in thousands of child toilers’ bodies, so that we might visualize the Great White Plague’s relation to child labor, the nation would surely rise as one man and put an end to the destruction of children for profit. If all the people of this great republic could see little Anetta Fachini, four years old, working with her mother making artificial flowers, as I saw her in her squalid tenement home at eleven o’clock at night, I think the impression upon their hearts and minds would be far deeper and more lasting than any that whole pages of figures could make. The frail little thing was winding green paper around wires to make stems for artificial flowers to decorate ladies’ hats. Every few minutes her head would droop and her weary eyelids close, but her little fingers still kept moving—uselessly, helplessly, mechanically moving. Then the mother would shake her gently, saying: “Non dormire, Anetta! Solamente pochi altri—solamente pochi altri.” (“Sleep not, Anetta! Only a few more—only a few more.”) [...]

   1According to the census of 1900, there were 25,000 boys under sixteen years of age employed in and around the mines and quarries of the United States. In the state of Pennsylvania alone,—the state which enslaves more children than any other,—there are thousands of little “breaker boys” employed, many of them not more than nine or ten years old. The law forbids the employment of children under fourteen, and the records of the mines generally show that the law is “obeyed.” Yet in May, 1905, an investigation by the National Child Labor Committee showed that in one small borough of 7000 population, among the boys employed in breakers 35 were nine years old, 40 were ten, 45 were eleven, and 45 were twelve—over 150 boys illegally employed in one section of boy labor in one small town! During the anthracite coal strike of 1902, I attended the Labor Day demonstration at Pittston and witnessed the parade of another at Wilkesbarre. In each case there were hundreds of boys marching, all of them wearing their “working buttons,” testifying to the fact that they were bona fide workers. Scores of them were less than ten years of age, others were eleven or twelve.

   2Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that “He’s got his boy to carry round wherever he goes.” The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners’ consumption. I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid, and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed.

   • Research data inside a text: one town's count against the mine records (T4 paragraph 1)

     T4: "The law forbids the employment of children under fourteen, and the records of the mines generally show that the law is 'obeyed.'" Then: "in one small borough of 7000 population, among the boys employed in breakers 35 were nine years old, 40 were ten, 45 were eleven, and 45 were twelve."

     Result: The four counts add to 35 + 40 + 45 + 45 = 165 boys, all under the legal age of fourteen, so Spargo's "over 150" is, if anything, cautious. The investigation's count contradicts the mine records, and Spargo's quotation marks around "obeyed" tell the reader he does not trust those records. Integration here means asking which number to trust and why.

   • What the words add that the figures cannot (T3, T4 paragraph 2)

     T3: "to most people such figures mean very little"; "the awful physical, mental, and moral wreckage hidden in the lifeless and dumb figures"; Anetta Fachini, "four years old," making flower stems "at eleven o'clock at night." T4 paragraph 2: a twelve-year-old works "for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day," and Spargo's own hands "were bruised and cut in a few minutes."

     Result: The census gives the size of the problem; Spargo's accounts give its conditions: the hours, the pay (60 cents for 10 hours is 6 cents an hour), the injuries and the dust. Anetta is four, younger than any child in Table 1, so her story also shows a kind of child labor the table cannot count. The integration also works the other way: one vivid case cannot show how common such conditions were, and the numbers keep the reader from treating one child's story as everyone's.

4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes

   Students read Table 2, Diagram 2 and T5, Florence Kelley's comparison of Pennsylvania and New York, published in 1905. Manufacture means work in mills and factories. Commerce means trade, such as stores and deliveries; cash children carried money and change between clerks and cashiers in large stores. Students fill a two-column chart, "What the table shows" and "How Kelley explains it," then take the quiz, which uses T5, Table 2 and Diagram 2 with Table 1, Diagram 1 and T1-T4.

   Table 2. Kelley's table "Children under 16 years of age engaged in manufacture," states with more than 5,000 such children, from the census of 1900 (Census, 1900, Manufactures, Part II, as cited by Kelley). This table stands between paragraphs 1 and 2 of T5.

   State	Children under 16 in manufacture
   Pennsylvania	33,135
   New York	13,189
   Massachusetts	12,556
   Illinois	10,419
   North Carolina	10,377
   South Carolina	8,560
   New Jersey	8,042
   Georgia	6,373
   Maryland	5,884
   Wisconsin	5,679
   Rhode Island	5,036

   1The practical value, to the state and to the children, of effective child labor legislation is well illustrated by a comparison of the employment of children in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. When rated according to their population and the value of their manufactured products, the two leading states are New York and Pennsylvania, the former excelling in both respects according to the census of 1900. In the number of children under the age of sixteen years engaged in manufacture, these states excel all the others, as appears from the following table of states having more than five thousand such children.

   [...]

   2In this table, however, it is Pennsylvania which comes first and New York which takes second place, there being 33,135 children under the age of sixteen years engaged in manufacture in Pennsylvania, compared with 13,189 children under that age in the state of New York, a difference of 19,946. This does not include children engaged in commerce and mining;--does not take into account mine boys or breaker boys, office boys, newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers, delivery boys, cash children, or children who work out of school hours while regularly attending school. It is strictly a statement of the children employed in manufacture in both states.

   3The astonishing excess of children employed in Pennsylvania is emphasized by the circumstance that New York has not only a larger population but a larger total value of manufactured goods than Pennsylvania. How then is the fact to be explained that Pennsylvania employs in manufacture two and one-half times as many children as New York?

   4One explanation may be found in certain differences in the child labor laws in force in the two states for several years preceding 1900. Thus in Pennsylvania children entered upon factory work a year earlier than they had been permitted to do in New York since 1889, the age for beginning work having been, until May, 1905, thirteen years in Pennsylvania and fourteen years in New York.

   5In Pennsylvania, a child was not, before 1900, required to be able to read and write before beginning to work in a factory. In New York, since 1893, a child under sixteen years of age must be able to read fluently and write legibly simple sentences in the English language before it can legally enter a factory.

   6In New York a minor under the age of sixteen years cannot legally be employed in a factory after nine o’clock at night; in Pennsylvania, boys and girls alike could, until May, 1905, at the age of thirteen years be employed ten hours six nights in the week. Even yet, boys of fourteen years may be employed all night in the glass industry and in certain other branches.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: On an index card, write one number from Table 1 or Table 2 and one quotation from T1-T5. In one sentence, say whether the quotation supports, qualifies, questions or illustrates the number, and why.

   Teacher note on the sources and their language: Both authors were reformers who wanted stronger child labor laws, and Spargo was a socialist; their words are advocacy as well as evidence, which is part of what students weigh. The passages are quoted exactly as printed in 1906 and 1905, with period spellings (centre, reënforced) and loaded words such as "enslaves" and "child slavery." Spargo renders a miner's speech in dialect in T1; treat it as the writer's rendering, not a model of how the family spoke. The excerpts contain no slurs. Table 1 comes from a scanned government report, so its figures were checked against the report's own totals and percents: each gainfully occupied total equals the agricultural plus the nonagricultural count.

   Homework passages. T6 is the next part of Kelley's argument, and T7 is Spargo's figures for other industries. Use them with Tables 1 and 2 for the homework problems.

   1There was greater difficulty in New York in obtaining the certificates required to be filed with the employer before a child may legally begin to work. In Pennsylvania, the parent was required merely to make oath as to the age of the child before any notary, and, until May, 1905, the affidavit thus made protected the employer against prosecution for violation of the child labor law, while the parent was nominally liable to the charge of perjury if the age of the child was falsely stated.

   2In New York, since 1896, the affidavit of the parent is only one of three assurances of the child’s age and qualifications which must be included in the certificate deposited with the manufacturer. The parental oath must be supplemented by the written statement of the teacher that the child has regularly attended a school in which instruction is given in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and English grammar; and this must be farther strengthened by the statement of the officer of the board of health, who alone can issue the certificate, that he is satisfied that the child is fourteen years of age.

   3This provision, in force from 1896 to 1903, has now been supplanted by a more drastic one. In the years 1896-1900, however, the threefold requirement probably contributed to keep down the number of working children in New York compared with the lax issuance of affidavits by notaries in Pennsylvania, with no other check than the fear of a remotely possible prosecution of the parent on the charge of perjury.

   4Briefly stated, the differences appear to be these. In Pennsylvania, a child of thirteen years could, until May, 1905, work in a mill at night without breaking the law. In New York, a child may not begin to work under the age of fourteen years; an illiterate child may not work under the age of sixteen years; and a minor under eighteen years may not work after nine o’clock at night in manufacture. Moreover, the factory law is better reënforced by the compulsory education law in New York than in Pennsylvania.

   5In New York for several years preceding the census year, 1900, children between the ages of twelve and fourteen years were required to attend school 80 days in the year. The Board of Health of New York City refused to issue certificates to such as had failed to complete the 80 days’ attendance in the year preceding the fourteenth birthday, sending such children back to school to finish the uncompleted term.

   6In Pennsylvania, children were, in the same years before 1900, merely required to attend school 70 per cent. of the school term in the district in which they resided.

   7The results of these differences in the child labor law and the compulsory education law are reflected in two other tables of the Census of 1900 (printed elsewhere in this chapter) according to which New York had 4,740 illiterate children between the ages of ten and fourteen years, compared with 6,326 such children in Pennsylvania; and New York ranks fourteen in the scale of fifty-two states and territories when measured by the percentage of children between these ages who are able to read and write, while Pennsylvania is number twenty in the same scale.

   1In the wood-working industries, more than 10,000 children were reported to be employed in the census year, almost half of them in saw-mills, where accidents are of almost daily occurrence, and where clouds of fine sawdust fill the lungs of the workers. Of the remaining 50 per cent, it is probable that more than half were working at or near dangerous machines, such as steam planers and lathes. Over 7000 children, mostly girls, were employed in laundries; 2000 in bakeries; 138,000 as servants and waiters in restaurants and hotels; 42,000 boys as messengers; and 20,000 boys and girls in stores. In all these instances there is every reason to suppose that the actual number employed was much larger than the official figures show.

   2In the canning and preservation of fish, fruit, and vegetables mere babies are employed during the busy season. In more than one canning factory in New York State, I have seen children of six and seven years of age working at two o’clock in the morning. In Oneida, Mr. William English Walling, formerly a factory inspector of Illinois, found one child four years old, who earned nineteen cents in an afternoon stringing beans, and other children from seven to ten years of age. There are over 500 canning factories in New York State, but the census of 1900 gives the number of children employed under sixteen years of age as 219. This is merely another illustration of the deceptiveness of the statistics which are gathered at so much expense. The agent of the New York Child Labor Committee was told by the foreman of one factory that there were 300 children under fourteen years of age in that one factory! In Syracuse it was a matter of complaint, in the season of 1904, on the part of the children, that “The factories will not take you unless you are eight years old.”

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Table 2, which state ranks third in the number of children under 16 engaged in manufacture?

   ANew York BIllinois CMassachusetts DNorth Carolina

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Kelley writes that "Pennsylvania employs in manufacture two and one-half times as many children as New York" (T5 paragraph 3). Is that accurate according to Table 2?

   AYes: 33,135 divided by 13,189 is about 2.5 BNo: 19,946 divided by 13,189 is only about 1.5 CNo: 13,189 divided by 33,135 is about 0.4 DNo: 19,946 divided by 33,135 is about 0.6

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to T5 paragraph 2, which child workers does Kelley's table leave out?

   AChildren in the textile mills and the glass works BChildren under ten who work in factories CChildren in states with over 5,000 workers DBreaker boys, newsboys and cash children

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Kelley point out that New York "has not only a larger population but a larger total value of manufactured goods than Pennsylvania" (T5 paragraph 3)?

   ATo show that New York factories hid child workers BBecause those measures predict more child workers in New York CTo argue that population alone explains child labor DTo prove that New York had fewer factories than Pennsylvania

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What is the first explanation Kelley gives for the difference between the two states (T5 paragraph 4)?

   APennsylvania let children start factory work a year younger BPennsylvania had more glass factories than New York CNew York's census takers counted child workers more carefully DPennsylvania required children to read and write before work

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which statement does Table 2 support?

   ANorth Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia together had more than Pennsylvania BNew York had more such children than Massachusetts and Illinois combined CPennsylvania alone had more than North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia combined DRhode Island had the fewest children in manufacture of any state

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Kelley suggests that New York's rule that a child must read and write before entering a factory (T5 paragraph 5) helped keep New York's number low. Which additional data would best test that suggestion?

   AThe 1900 counts for Rhode Island and Wisconsin BThe number of glass factories in each state in 1900 CPennsylvania's 1900 child workers listed by industry DNew York's counts before and after its 1893 rule

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Table 1, by how much did the number of gainfully occupied children aged 10 to 15 grow from 1880 to 1910?

   A631,822 B871,869 C929,367 D57,498

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Table 1, about what share of the gainfully occupied children aged 10 to 15 in 1920 worked in agriculture?

   AAbout 61 percent BAbout 39 percent CAbout 5.2 percent DAbout 8.5 percent

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Diagram 1 shows each bar in two parts. What happened to the two parts between 1910 and 1920?

    AOnly the agricultural part shrank; the other part grew BBoth parts shrank by about the same number of children CThe nonagricultural part shrank by more than the other DBoth parts shrank, the agricultural part by far more

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Spargo write that "to most people such figures mean very little" (T3)?

    ATo reject the census figures as false and not worth reading BTo show that sociologists do not need statistics CTo argue that cases like Anetta's give the figures meaning DTo explain why he leaves numbers out of his book

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    As a rough comparison, the 25,000 boys under 16 in and around mines and quarries (T4) were about what share of the 1,750,178 gainfully occupied children aged 10 to 15 in 1900 (Table 1)?

    AAbout 0.14 percent BAbout 1.4 percent CAbout 3.6 percent DAbout 14 percent

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    T4 paragraph 1 ends with the Labor Day parades of 1902: "hundreds of boys marching, all of them wearing their 'working buttons.'" What kind of evidence is this, compared with the census figure that opens the paragraph?

    AAn eyewitness observation that gives no exact count BA second census count taken during the coal strike CA company record of the boys employed in each mine DA survey made by the National Child Labor Committee

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to T2, about how many New York children aged 10 to 14 in 1900 were either out of school all year or attended school less than five months?

    AAbout 60,000 BAbout 76,000 CAbout 108,000 DAbout 92,000

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how Kelley integrates her table (Table 2) with her qualitative explanation in T5. Name the pattern she finds in the numbers and two reasons she gives for it.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Diagram 2 shows Massachusetts almost level with New York. Kelley names Massachusetts in her first sentence (T5 paragraph 1), but the rest of T5 compares only Pennsylvania and New York. What question does the chart raise that T5 does not answer?

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17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Spargo, writing in 1906, argued that the 1900 census figure was too low (T2). Use the 1910 row of Table 1: does the next census support his view of the problem, and what can it not settle?

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18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    T4's count comes from "one small borough of 7000 population." Explain why a reader should not multiply this town's count to estimate the number of underage breaker boys in all of Pennsylvania, and name one kind of evidence that would give a better statewide estimate.

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19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    What can Diagram 2 show that T5 does not, and what does T5 tell you that Diagram 2 cannot? Give one example of each.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Kelley's Table 2 and Table 1 both come from the census of 1900. Using Table 1, compute what share of the gainfully occupied children aged 10 to 15 in 1900 were in nonagricultural pursuits. Explain why Kelley's argument about factory laws in T5 can apply to only part of Table 1.

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These standards connect to RH.9-10.7: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.