Explore the issue of child labor in late nineteenth through the early twentieth century. How many children worked during this time, and what types of work did they do? What were the negative consequences of their work? How did progressives try to deal with this problem? Were they successful? Who was Jacob Riis? How did he influence Lewis Hine? What did young reformers like Riis and Hine do to try and stir the conscience of the nation?

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Americans were living through an time known as the “Gilded Age”. This term was meant to describe the paradox of the era; everything looked successful and shiny on the outside, but underneath the surface, things were corrupt and unfair for most average working people. Among those working were children as young as six years old. There were no laws at the time preventing employers from hiring children and ordering them to work extremely long hours.
Children were hired for two primary reasons: first, there was a great amount of competition in the job market at the time, so employers could afford to pay very little. The low pay and lack of education that children experienced made them lifelong candidates for factory work, provided they weren’t killed by a work-related illness or injury. Second, their size made them better candidates for certain jobs as they could squeeze into tight places and use machine that larger hands might not be able to operate.
It is estimated that one out of every six American children worked during the Gilded Age. This means that it the height of the era as many as two million children were actively employed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these children could make as little as $2 for working a full week. That week could consist of up to 70 hours of work.
They would perform a variety of jobs from working textile mills, coal mines, tile factories, and canneries. The nature of their work was almost always manual labor as they lacked the training and skill to do much else. Children who worked with elaborate machinery ran the risk of losing fingers and limbs. Those working in the coal mine often died very young due to the various medical consequences of breathing in coal dust.
The Gilded Age was followed by a time period known as the Progressive Era. These years were defined by average Americans standing up against large businesses and their exploitative practices. In 1904, an organization known as the National Child Labor Committee devoted the activist energy of this era to ending the practice of child labor. The Progressives successfully lobbied for child labor laws within their own states, but saw it necessary to pass federal legislation forbidding the practice.
During the Progressive Era, the work of muckrakers like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine helped to end the practice of child labor. A muckraker was a journalist or author whose work was designed to expose the corruption of the Gilded Age. Jacob Riis was a photojournalist who documented the horrific living conditions of tenement houses, where these child laborers would live. Multiple people were stuffed into tiny rooms and children would sleep on barrels or leaning on each other outside in the cold weather. Riis published a collection of these photos entitled How the Other Half Lives. Riis then toured the country in an attempt to raise awareness of these conditions, showing this photographic documentation to stunned audiences.
Lewis Hine was an educator and progressive activist who was inspired by the work of Jacob Riis. Hine understand the value of photography to education, as he frequently used it in the courses that he taught. Like Riis, he provided photographic documentation of child labor in America during the early 1900’s. Hine was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to travel the country, taking pictures of the atrocious working conditions that these young children were working under. He did this work at the risk of his own personal safety, as those who employed these children benefited greatly from their labor and low wages, and did not want the general public to realize how terrible the practice of child labor really was.
The work of Riis, Hines, the National Child Labor Committee, and various other progressive groups eventually yielded federal legislation. The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 limited certain industries’ abilities to employ children, limited the number of hours children under fourteen could work, and provided federal oversight of working conditions to prevent child labor violations. However, this law was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later in the case of Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918). It wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that the United States saw modernized child labor laws, in addition to its regulation of overtime pay and a national minimum wage.
https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/programs/child-welfarechild-labor/child-labor/

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm