Mills were, of course, one of the leading employers of children.

The traditional mill song I know best is "Hard Times in the Mill," which has many, many variants.

They didn't make much of a dent in tradition, but the songs of Ella May Wiggins are by a mill worker about the lives of her family and children. Wiggins herself was murdered by the company stooges and her eldest daughter raped, when she was about eleven years old.

The most significant of Wiggins's songs is surely "The Mill Mother's Lament."

"The Mill Mother's Lament" was sung to the tune of "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20], which has a depressing irony. Mary Phagan was also a teenage laborer in a factory (pencil mill), who was murdered by a janitor. The song is right about the murder (although it ignores the likelihood that she was raped), but it is completely wrong in blaming Leo Frank. He was undeniably innocent.

It might also be worth looking at the songs of Mary Brooksbank.

Consider also:
The Little Chimney Sweep
Jimmy Brown the Newsboy
The Newsboy on the Train
Poor Jim the Newsboy
Poor Little Joe (the dying newsboy)

For children who would work but are too young even for that, there is
Row Us Over the Tide

If I were doing a program on this, I really would start with "The Mill Mother's Lament." Or "Mary Phagan," which is almost as bitter, but I don't think it can be made accurate enough to sing.