Figure 1.--Here boys from the Melgiew Podzamcze estate, taken either in the late-1920s or early-30s. The estate belonged to Zygmunt Rulikowski. I am not sure what happened during the NAZI occupation, but the estate was taken over by the Polish communist Hovernment in 1945. It shows the result of a bird shoot. the boys were used to flush out the game and help collect the downed birds. They were also involved in fishing and boar hunting expeditions, but the photos we have found of those activities don't clearly show the youths incolved.

We do not have much information on child labor in Poland. Perhaps our Polish readers can nprovide some details. Poland was a largely agricultural country until after World war II. Thus most child labor would have been agricultural. We know nothing about Government regulations regukationg child labor. Thus is complicated by the fact that most of Poland in the 19th century was part of the Russian Empire. (Smaller areas were German or Austrian.) The Russians freed the serfs (1861), but we believe serfdom was more of a Russian than a Polish problem. Napoleon abolished serfdom in the Duchy of Warsaw (1807). We are not sure what the Russians did when they regained control (1814). We do not have information on Tsarist Russian child labor laws, but believe that they were very limited. Nor so we know what child labor laws the new Polish Government passed after World war I (1918). We do know thst there was land reform, but this seemes to have been primarily aimed at Germans owning large estates than the Polish nobility oning estates. There were still many children om agrivultural estates and they tended to receive very limited education and often worked in various ways. Then a Communist Government was installed by the Soviets (1945). We suspect that the Communists implemented very strict child labor laws and with the nationalization of the large estates, the Comminists also moved to sharply reduce agricultural child labor.

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Created: 7:03 AM 12/22/2009
Last updated: 7:03 AM 12/22/2009