1. EXPLOITATION of AMERICA’S CHILDREN: CHILD LABOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

3. In 1900, approximately two million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States.

4. Lancaster Cotton Mill, North Carolina

5. The 1900 census, which counted workers aged 10 to 15, found that 18 percent of the country's children between those ages were working. This report helped to spark a national movement to end child labor in the United States.

6. It took organizational form in 1904 with the founding of the National Child Labor Committee. The movement combined moral outrage and new interpretations of the value of childhood.

8. Equating child labor with slavery, some argued that the country had not faced such a serious moral problem since the Civil War.

10. Felix Adler, one of its co-founders, argued that the treatment of children was an "index of civilization." Child labor was not only damaging to the children, but was an obstacle to the progress of the nation and civilization.

11. Oyster shuckers, Louisiana

12. Quickly learning that moral appeals would not be enough to end child labor, the movement took pragmatic steps to document the prevalence and conditions of child labor in various industries throughout the country.

13. Coal breakers, West Virginia

14. In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine as its staff photographer and sent him throughout the country to photograph and report on child labor.

16. Documenting child labor in both photographs and words, his state-by-state and industry-by-industry surveys became one of the movement's most powerful tools.

17. Shrimp-picker, Texas

18. Hine's photographs had a tremendous contemporary impact and are the most enduring images produced by the campaign to end child labor.

19. Young coal-miners, Pennsylvania

20. Among the related reforms championed by the movement to end child labor were innovations in national regulation of labor conditions, the minimum wage, worker's compensation insurance...

21. ...uniform standards for compulsory education, school food programs, shorter work days, regulation of health and safety conditions in the workplace, and many others.

22. Newsboys, Boston

23. Although federal legislation seemed to be a logical alternative to state child labor laws, the federal government did not have a mandate to regulate child labor.

25. The establishment of a consensus in favor of federal regulation and the passage of the first federal child labor law in 1916 were major turning points in the movement to end child labor in the United States.

27. Although effective federal child labor laws would not be in place until the late 1930s, it was during this early period that Americans were won over from denial of child labor to strong opposition to it...

28. ...and from acquiescence in the status quo’s addressing child labor abuse on a state-by-state basis to lobbying for, writing, and gaining passage of federal child labor laws.

30. The first federal child labor bill was introduced by Senator Albert Beveridge in 1906. Beveridge recognized that child labor fell outside the federal government's traditional powers...

31. ...but he proposed that the government's ability to regulate interstate commerce could be used to regulate child labor.

33. The first child labor bill that actually became law, the Keating-Owen bill of 1916, was based on Beveridge's proposal.

35. Although it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional because it overstepped the purpose of the government's powers to regulate interstate commerce.

37. A second child labor bill was passed in December, 1918. It also took an indirect route to regulate child labor, this time by using the government's power to levy taxes.

38. Cotton-pickers, Arkansas

39. It imposed a ten percent tax on the net profits of any manufacturing company, cannery, or mine that employed child labor.

41. It, too, was found to be unconstitutional. Supreme Court rulings erased important legislative victories, but the passage of the child labor bills clearly demonstrated that there was a national consensus in favor of federal laws prohibiting child labor.

43. A constitutional amendment was soon proposed to give congress the power to regulate child labor. However, the campaign for ratification of the Child Labor Amendment was stalled in the 1920s by an effective campaign to discredit it.

44. Mill sweepers, North Carolina

45. Opponents' charges ranged from traditional states' rights arguments against increased power of the federal government to accusations that the amendment was a communist-inspired plot to subvert the constitution.

46. Federal protection of children would not be obtained until passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

47. Oyster shuckers, Mississippi

48. Like the first child labor bills, it prohibited interstate commerce in the products of child labor, and this use of the government's power to regulate interstate commerce was challenged before the Supreme Court once again.

50. This time, though, the movement to end child labor was victorious. In February of 1941, the Supreme Court reversed its opinion and upheld the constitutionality of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is still in force today.

51. EXPLOITATION of AMERICA’S CHILDREN: CHILD LABOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

52. Sources: Zwick, Jim. "The Campaign to End Child Labor”, Hines Photographic Collection, Library of Congress Created for: Edmond Public Schools