The National Child Labour Committee was formed in 1904 in an attempt
to persuade Congress to regulate child labour. One of its members,
Jane Addams, reported in 1907 that there
were over two million children under the age of sixteen in paid employment
in the United States. She went on to argue that this helped to explain
why there were "580,000 children between the ages of ten and
fourteen years, who cannot read or write".



In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee employed Lewis
Hine as their staff investigator and photographer. Hine travelled
the country taking pictures of children working in factories. Hine
also lectured on the subject and once told one audience: "Perhaps
you are weary of child labour pictures. Well, so are the rest of us,
but we propose to make you and the whole country so sick and tired
of the whole business that when the time for action comes, child labour
pictures will be records of the past."