At least in the UK the fact that the Victorians and others used a lot of child labour is well and widely known.

Blake wrote the poem The Chimney Sweeper about boys sold into the trade long before the 1850s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning published The Cry of the Children in Blackwood's magazine in 1843. Charles Kingsley used his The Water Babies to question child labour and England's treatment of the poor in general in 1862-3.

No one with any pretensions to knowledge of those times can claim not to know about child labour.

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zoeysmithe 15 hours ago | parent [-]

I imagine the percent of people who know these telegram cables were made by children is a very low percentage.

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nickdothutton 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The number of people who know anything of history at all, even history of their own peoples, their own country, their own family, is "very low". Absent of course the "history" that Hollywood and other popular media pumps out.

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Xss3 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think their point is that most peoole aware of the time period know child labour in factories was prominent, especially thanks to Dickens and other authors, so most would guess or be unsurprised to find these cable factories employed children.

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fastball 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What difference does 10 years make when you are working in a shitty factory for peanuts?

	▲	testdelacc1 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Is this a serious question? Then here’s a serious answer - the difference between employing a 9 year old and a 19 year old for a dangerous job is All the difference in the world.