National Child Labor Committee - Exposing Child Labor

Exposing Child Labor

According to the 1900 US Census, a total of 1,752,187 (about 1 in every 6) children between the ages of five and ten were engaged in "gainful occupations" in the United States. This number represents a fifty percent increase from the 1,118,356 children working for wages in 1880. This trend alarmed Americans who, while supporting the traditional role of children in agriculture, found the idea of American youth laboring for meager wages in industrial factories appalling. From 1909 to 1921 the NCLC capitalized on this moral outrage by making it the focal point of the NCLC campaign against child labor.

Read more about this topic:  National Child Labor Committee

Famous quotes containing the words exposing, child and/or labor:

    Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.
    William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

    The child ... stands upon a place apart, a little spectator of the world, before whom men and women come and go, events fall out, years open their slow story and are noted or let go as his mood chances to serve them. The play touches him not. He but looks on, thinks his own thought, and turns away, not even expecting his cue to enter the plot and speak. He waits,—he knows not for what.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)