National Child Labor Committee (NCLC)
One of the defining characteristics of the Progressive Era was the desire of reformers to protect children from laboring in industries with unsafe working conditions for children. Their desire to regulate child labor stemmed from new social science research suggesting that protecting children would benefit society by safeguarding the country's future human resources.
In 1902, the Association of Neighborhood Workers, an organization of settlement workers in New York, founded the Child Labor Committee to campaign for legislation to regulate child labor in New York. Led by Florence Kelley, Lillian Wald, and Jane Addams, the Child Labor Committee eventually grew into the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in 1904.
The NCLC attracted wide support from many of the diverse groups that supported the progressive reform movement, including social workers, academics, businessmen, and political reformers. The committee was comprised of the presidents of Vanderbilt and Harvard University, the publishers of The New York Times and The Atlanta Constitution, the Catholic Cardinal of Baltimore, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, the president of the General Association of Women's Clubs, labor union presidents, and settlement house workers. Though the committee had many New Yorkers, it had southern members who counteracted perceptions that the NCLC was simply a group of northern agitators. This regional balance was exemplified by the fact that its two principal investigators, Owen R. Lovejoy and Alexander McKelway, had experience working in northern and southern labor campaigns, respectively.
Beginning with the NCLC's first campaigns against child labor in the coal and glass industries, it harnessed the power of propaganda to influence public opinion. In 1907, for instance, the NCLC launched a National Child Labor Day, through which it encouraged clerical action against child labor. Lovejoy and McKelway also wrote voluminous reports detailing their investigations of industrial exploitation of children. Finally, the NCLC hired photographer Lewis Hine in 1908 to document child labor abuses in order to help turn public opinion against child labor.
At the same time it was launching its national campaign in 1907, however, the NCLC became riven by internal conflict over the proper role of the federal government in regulating child labor. The Supreme Court had repeatedly struck down federal legislation restricting child labor, but some northern reformers argued that child labor was a national problem that would only be abolished through federal action. The different factions of the NCLC reached a truce, however, by agreeing to lobby for the creation of a federal Children's Bureau to investigate child labor, which was created in 1912 by President Taft. In the 1920s, the NCLC unsuccessfully lobbied for a constitutional amendment to empower the federal government to ban child labor. The National Child Labor Committee continues to promote the principles of its founders to uphold the general practice that underage children should not be full-time workers.
OCP Resources
There are over 250 documents in the OCP collection that relate to the topic of child labor, and over 150 documents that relate specifically to the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Below are listed some highlights of what is available.
VIEW ALL National Child Labor Committee documents in the collection.
National Child Labor Committee, Meeting. The proceedings of the 2d annual meeting of the Child Labor Committee. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1906.
National Child Labor Committee, Meeting. Reports from state and local child labor committees and consumers' leagues. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1907.
National Child Labor Committee. Annual report for the fiscal year ending ... New York: National Child Labor Committee. 5 reports for 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911.
National Child Labor Committee. Conference on child labor. Reports from state and local child labor committees. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1909.
National Child Labor Committee, General Secretary. Annual report of the general secretary of the national child labor committee for the fiscal year ending ... New York: National Child Labor Committee... 3 reports for 1914, 1915, 1916.
National Child Labor Committee. The long road: fortieth anniversary report of the national child labor committee. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1944.
Web Resources
National Child Labor Committee
National Child Labor Committee
The work of the National Child Labor Committee continues today.
National Child Labor Committee Collection
Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Congress. This collection
includes documentary photographs by Lewis Hine from his work with the
National Child Labor Committee.
Child Labor
Reader's Companion to American History: Child Labor
Child Labor and Child Labor Reform in American History
Ohio State University. Department of History. Internet Documentaries.
Lewis Hine
Lewis Wickes Hine's "Work Portraits". New York Public Library.
The History PlaceTM, Child Labor in America 1908-1912
"The Business of Exposure: Lewis Hine and Child Labor Reform," by Stephen J. Fletcher.
Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, volume 4, Number 2 (Spring 1992), pages 12-23.
Photographs by Lewis Hine, at the Library of Congress
Resources for Teachers
Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor
Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan
National Archives and Records Administration, Digital Classroom