National Child Labor Committee
At the meeting, both men and women concerned with the plight of working children overwhelmingly supported the formation of the National Child Labor Committee, and Felix Adler was elected its first Chairman.
[7] In 1907, the NCLC was chartered by an act of Congress with a board of directors originally including prominent Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Edward Thomas Devine, Deborah Donalds, and Lillian Wald.
With the leadership of such prominent reformers, the organization quickly began to attract additional support and moved towards action and advocacy.
For the average American, Hine provided an otherwise unavailable window into the somber working conditions facing America's youth.
Hine's work resulted in a wave of popular support for federal child labor regulations put forward by the NCLC.
In effect, Hine's photographs became the face of the National Child Labor Committee, and are among the earliest examples of documentary photography in America.
The argument from reformers, as they were called, was that child labor was a sick cycle that was inevitably going to end in a future of poverty for the children in the work force.
At times, he was in real danger, risking physical attack when factory managers realized what he was up to…he put his life in the line in order to record a truthful picture of working children in early twentieth-century America".
On April 9 President William Taft signed the act into law, and over the next thirty years the Children's Bureau would work closely with the NCLC to promote child labor reforms on both the state and national level.
On its behalf, Pennsylvania Congressman A Mitchell Palmer (later Attorney General) introduced a bill to end child labor in most American mines and factories.
[15] President Wilson found it constitutionally unsound and after the House voted 232 to 44 in favor on February 15, 1915,[16] he allowed it to die in the Senate.
"[17] In 1916, Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma and Representative Edward Keating of Colorado introduced the NCLC backed Keating-Owen Act which prohibited shipment in interstate commerce of goods manufactured or processed by child labor.
[18] The bill passed by a margin of 337 to 46 in the House and 50 to 12 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson as the centerpiece of The New Freedom Program.
The court, although acknowledging child labor as a social evil, felt that the Keating-Owen Act overstepped congress' power to regulate trade.
Today, the amendment is technically still-pending and has been ratified by a total of twenty-eight states, requiring the ratification of ten more for its incorporation into the Constitution.
[6] In 1979 NCLC collaborated with the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America to found the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC).
[23] Some past recipients include Gene Bowen of Warwick, New York, in 2008 who co-founded Road Recovery, a clinically acclaimed skills program designed for teens recovering from drug addiction[24] and Stacy Maciuk of Brentwood, Tennessee in 2007 for her relentless advocacy of kids in foster care and organizing a suitcase collection drive to provide foster children with a place to pack their clothes and possessions other than a garbage bag.
