Compulsory Child Labour: Parish Paupers as Indentured Servants in Finland, c. 1810–1920

Abstract

This article challenges the interpretations by Viviana Zelizer and Clark Nardinelli of bound labour by farmed-out parish pauper children. Using the case of Finland, supported by the example of Sweden, it is argued that the exploitation of parish pauper children may have increased in the nineteenth century due to increasing adoption of a monetary economy in the countryside. As the productivity of a growing child fell short of his or her consumption, while the poor relief authorities strove to keep the compensation for this as low as possible, peasant farmers solved the discrepancy by over-exploiting farmed-out children. In both countries a system of auctioning-out paupers was applied, with no principal difference made between children and adults. The Finnish and Swedish cases suggest that industrial child labour and bound labour by parish pauper children many have reflected a similar attitude to the children of both the poor and the labouring classes.