During the Progressive Era (~1890–1920), a period of intense social activism and political reform, the problem of child labor gained increasing attention. In 1904, Florence Kelley, a Progressive reformer, founded the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), an organization whose goal was the abolition of child labor. NCLC’s first task was to educate the public, and to do that it hired investigators to document the harsh conditions under which children worked. Lewis Hine was a New York City schoolteacher and photographer who went to work full-time for the NCLC.  He took over 5,000 photographs of children, many of them immigrants, laboring in fields, factories, coal mines, and many other industries. The vast majority of Hine’s subjects were white children, reflecting the segregated nature of child labor at the time and the industries where Hine focused his attention.

In this activity, you will examine several of Lewis Hine’s child labor photographs and choose the one you believe would be most effective for use in an anti–child labor media campaign. This exercise will help you to understand why Hine’s photographs, more than words and statistics, helped to sway public opinion and gradually influenced child labor policy in America.