My paper will investigate changes in the organization of labor in Lagos between c. 1861 and 1890, during the interval when slavery slowly ended but before wage labor took hold in the African community. It will draw on new evidence about the importation of children into the colony during those years to suggest that a slave trade in young slaves persisted well into the colonial period and also to analyse apprenticeship, fostering, and other kinds of labor relationships involving youth to see what role they played in meeting the labor demands of Lagosians. The paper will contribute to the literature on slavery and its demise among the Yoruba, as well as on the shifting organization of labor within the town and colony of Lagos prior to the British penetration of the Yoruba interior. It will raise for fresh consideration the role of child labor in the Yoruba economy during the second half of the nineteenth century.