The Process of Regulating Child Labour in Hungary during the Dualism Era

Historical-ethnographic Overview

Abstract

I have dealt with the historical and ethnographic issues of child labour in Hungary in my previous works, this time I will focus on the issues of legal regulation in the dualism period. This also indicates that only those forms of child labour are discussed that became massised with the industrialisation, the development of manufactories and manufacturing industry, and even more so with the strengthening of these industries, and that reached tragic proportions in Western Europe. In Hungary, industrial child labour came later and was opposed first by doctors and teachers and then by politicians. In Hungary, as in other heavily industrialising European countries, child labour was motivated by serious social and economic concerns and was the subject of intense political debate. The sources show that this burning social problem became and remained a topic of child protection, social policy and political discourse until the Second World War.