Abstract:
A crowd is listening to a man in front of the stock market. Two people are complaining about this meeting. The most popular artists in the theatrical performances were the mountebanks who always drew large crowds of spectators. The government, in order to control these free wheeling artists, had introduced legislation already in 1835 allowing them to perform only at certain hours of the day. They were also not allowed to employ children under the age of six, a law later changed to twelve years in the case of family members, and sixteen years for employed children. Like in England, French society in the aftermath of the industrial revolution started to frown upon child labour, trends that are so well described by Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo.
