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Lewis Hine Research Paper

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Lewis Hine Research Paper
After the end of the Civil War, American jobs were growing extremely fast. So many of these jobs popped up that business owners needed more laborers to fill them. Ultimately, families sent their children to work for these business owners because they needed the money. Furthermore, children often worked with their parents in the same factory, which made the companies excessive amounts of money. The National Child Labor Committee, or the NCLC, was founded in 1904 to combat these big corporations.

Lewis Hine was born on September 26, 1874, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Hine was a schoolteacher and a photographer. After seeing and taking photos of various immigrants that came to America through Ellis Island, he was even more interested in photography.
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He released his first photobook, Child Labor in the Carolinas and Day Laborers Before Their Time, in 1908. He delivered the opening speech representing the NCLC in the eleventh annual child labor conference. Hine spoke with government officials and lobbyists about child labor in order to change the law and make a difference.

Lewis Hine’s photos did not go unseen; rather, they became symbols of the horrors of child labor and its consequences. His pictures appeared in pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and presentations all across the nation. With his help, child labor in 1920 was half as severe as it was a decade before. By 1916, Congress approved the Keating-Owens Act, which made new regulations that set minimum ages for certain jobs.

In 1918, the Keating-Owens Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. However, this didn’t stop reformers inspired by Lewis Hine from trying to find a way to fight child labor at the state level. by banning it and setting maximum hours. In the long run, the exponential decrease of child labor actually benefitted the economy, opening up more jobs that adults can do. Even though child labor still exists today, it is not as severe as it was in the early 1900’s. Today, most children go to a public school that is paid through taxes, giving children the chance to have an

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