Brick-making was often a family affair, and proximity to the work was helpful. Company housing along Rockland Street and elsewhere throughout the village of Haverstraw teemed with families. By the early 1900s, worker housing was primarily made of brick, but in the mid-nineteenth century, wooden tenement-style buildings were constructed right up against clay holes. In Haverstraw, as elsewhere, immigrant labor fed the brick industry. Irish immigrants, especially young men and women, fled the famine and a lack of opportunity in Ireland, starting in the 1830s and 1840s and continuing throughout the nineteenth century. This first wave of immigrants often started families here in the U.S. and went into factory work. Italian and Hungarian immigrants were more likely to immigrate in family groups as they looked for increased stability. Children made valuable contributions to the family economy.

Rapid industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century had drawn children into the workforce. The demand for workers was high, and low factory wages required entire families to work. The 1880 Census indicated that 6% of children between the ages of 10 and 15 worked in some kind of industry; in New York state, the number was significantly higher—almost 17% of New York’s children were engaged in some sort of work. 

Many industries had jobs specific to the size and abilities of children. In textile factories, children wound the bobbins and swept the floor. In the brickyards of Haverstraw, children edged green bricks. Called “spatting,” this job was an important part of the drying process. Green, or unfired bricks, needed to dry out before being fired in the kiln. To fully dry, the bricks were rotated, and excess clay was knocked off.

Eight, nine, and ten-year-olds typically did this work during the summer months, which was manufacturing season. Shifts started early to leave time for the turned bricks to fully dry, and to keep the bricks smooth, children operated barefoot. They may have attended school, helped at home, or worked odd jobs to make extra money for the family during the rest of the year. As Daniel DeNoyelles recalls in his memoir, Within These Gates, “…the seasonal brickmaking months rolled onward with the communities’ individual lifestyle of early rising in the mornings so the brick would have the maximum drying time and be hacked on the planks before nightfall. Everyone worked as hard as possible—men, women, and children—to garner as much as possible from the gardens, pig pens, and chicken coops and to earn as much in brickyard wages, for in the back of all minds was the prolonged dearth in the wintertime.”

As they aged into teenagers, older children worked alongside their fathers and neighbors, learning the job's parameters as they went. It was common to begin working full-time in the brickyards around age 13; by age 18, these young men had typically performed every job in the brickyard and were positioned to start a brickyard of their own.

When inspectors and reformers interviewed child workers, they often heard positive reports about how the work allowed the child to help support their family. DeNoyelles remembers his own reaction to the inspectors in this way: “Herb and I, like so many other underage youngsters, always retained a wary eye as a lookout for the unannounced rounds of the New York State’s labor inspectors.

These officials appeared periodically to check the eligibility of the active young workers. On a pre-arranged signal, which would travel up and down the row of operating brick machines faster than any telegraph line, we offenders of the factory laws would run for shelter in the huge wooden coal bins, in the darkness of the tool shanties or the dark recesses of the green brick arches.” For many, including those learning the brick trade, the work was a path to a future career. And yet, children were susceptible to accidents, repetitive injuries, and work-related illnesses. Moreover, work prevented them from attending school. New York had enacted a compulsory education law as early as 1874, but in the 1880s, only 35% of children aged 5 to 21 attended public school.

In 1908, photographer Lewis Hine began working with the National Child Labor Committee to document the experience of children working in mills, factories, tenements, mines, and elsewhere around the United States. Hine started his career as a teacher, and, like his colleague and fellow muckraker Jacob Riis, Hine came to believe photography was a powerful tool for social reform. He took over 5,000 photographs that helped alert average Americans to the dangerous conditions imposed on child workers.

The Factory Act of 1886 was the first legislative effort in New York to curb the prevalence of child labor. Among other things, it said children must be older than 13 to work in a factory. But, it was easy for factory owners to skirt the law, and fines were minimal. Reformers like Hine and others continued to push for new legislation and increased inspectors to enforce the rules into the early twentieth century. The National Child Labor Committee experienced success in New York in 1903 when new laws were passed, enforcing the Factory Act and adding new prescriptions related to maximum working hours and minimum education requirements.

 Ultimately, though, it was the Great Depression that upended the existing system of child labor. Jobs were needed for adults; there was no room for child workers. The era's reforms, specifically the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, codified this shift. The workforce in the brickyards, and other industries, changed permanently.

~Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Public Historian