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Child labor abolition starts
1832 – The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen officially condemns child labor. -
The National Child Labor Committee was founded
In 1904 a group of progressive reformers founded the National Child Labor Committee, an organization whose goal was the abolition of child labor. -
The Bitter Cry of Children was published
In 1906, muckraker John Spargo wrote, The Bitter Cry of Children, exposing the conditions of child labor in the country. His book was one of the most read exposes of child labor in the country. Published during the Progressive Era. -
The National Child Labor Committee started investigations
The organization received a charter from congress in 1907. It hired teams of investigators to gather evidence of children working in harsh conditions and then organized exhibitions with photographs and statistics to dramatize the plight of these children -
President Wilson was elected
When President Wilson was elected in 1912, he ran on the campaign, "A New Freedom" free from the power of big businesses and creating new competition. Wilson saw Child Labor as another abuse of big businesses and encouraged congressional legislation to stop it -
The Children's Bureau was founded
After the National Child Labor Committee started investigating, the Childrens Bureau was founded and soon after in 1913, it was changed to the Department of Labor. -
The Keating-Owens act was passed
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 also known as Wick's Bill, was a short-lived statute enacted by the U.S. Congress which sought to address child labor by prohibiting the sale in interstate commerce of goods produced by factories that employed children under fourteen, mines that employed children younger than sixteen, and any facility where children under two worked at night or more than 48 hours daily. In 1918, it was deemed unconstitutional -
Child labor almost abolished
In 1924, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment prohibiting child labor, but the states did not ratify it. -
Fair Labor Standards Act
in 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ended child labor in America forever
