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Little Farm Hands: Rural Child Labor, Family, And Memory In The U.S. Southwest, 1890-1940, Jairo E. Marshall

History ETDs

Child labor was a traditional subsistence and agricultural practice throughout the rural Southwest. Between 1890 and 1940 a series of changes occurred within agriculture, ranching, and rural land/labor patterns in New Mexico and Texas. However, child labor remained a useful economic strategy for families well into this period, because it remained grounded in environmental challenges, cultural practices, agrarian ideologies, and children’s social and physical development. Agribusinesses took advantage of this labor pool, while schools and communities continued to allow children to labor, believing it to be either necessary or beneficial.

Families and children continued to have agency to determine the …