I don't want to minimize those abuses, but we have to be cognizant of the destructive effects of hyper-focusing on negative impacts on a small minority. Our outrage at the mistreatment of the few drives us to tear down institutions and social structures that might be serving critical functions for the many.
20% of kids ages 10-15 in 1900 were working. Many in horrible conditions and many probably died young as a result. That's a lot more than the foster system nowadays. Sending societies marginal people to an early death after extracting some productivity out of them was the historical solution to these problems as I see it.
Looking at the past with rose colored glasses is dangerous.
Plus, violence rates and juvenile deliquency rates at the time were not all that great. These debates always assume that kids now are somehow bad generation, but they actually statistically behave very well.
It can and should be improved, but that does not mean we have to pretend that part was all that better.
Not to mention the large portion of young men from each generation who, from the beginning of human society up until ~1950 in the developed world, were killed in wars.
