http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5571/
The Progressivist movement was very good at writing up tales of child labor issues to whip up support for the movement.
Exposes, tales of woe, and while it took some time, eventually it worked.
This picture surprised me actually – the late date – 1911… but I forgot that in _some parts_ of the USA, like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, they hadn’t enacted local child labor laws yet and, well, nobody was watching. The coal had to come out and there wasn’t enough labor.
Still papers like these were instrumental in finally ending this form of child labor in the USA, although child labor still continues to this day in the USA in a form that goes against the UN Declaration on the Rights of a Child, which the US hasn’t signed YET and likely WON’T…
Conditions for children working in McDonalds in the USA is against that Law and.. well, we need our burgers.