The Industrial Revolution paved ways for opportunity throughout England. However, one unfair aspect of the industrial revolution was the fact that child labour was on the rise. In response, many authors called out this. Children as young as five years old had to work twelve hour shifts, the same way adults had to. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an author to call out the harsh treatments children had to withstand through her poem "The Cry of the Children." In lines 51-52, Browning writes "It is good when it happens,' say the children, 'that we die before our time!'. By using this line, she tells us through the voice of kids that the children would rather die than live through their harsh working conditions. Many people are against the cruelty of how children were treated throughout the industrial revolution. Calling out wrongdoings shows our humanity, as most of us would fight against inexperienced children undergoing the same work schedules adults would undergo. 

Sources:

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. "The Cry of the Children." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et
al., 9 th ed., vol. E, W. W. Norton, 2012, pp. 169.

Cartwright, Mark. "Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution." World History, 12 April, 2023, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2216/child-labour-in-the-british-in....

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning.