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One of The Newsies at The Newsboys' Picnic, Cincinnati.  Location: Cincinnati, Ohio.

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One of The Newsies at The Newsboys' Picnic, Cincinnati. Location: Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Picryl description: Public domain image of child labor, exploitation, children workers, economic conditions, free to use, no copyright restrictions.

Cincinnati wasn't always known by the present name. It was first called Ft. Washington in honor of George Washington. Then, in 1788, it was named Losantiville. There is no data on just who dreamed that name up, but in 1789, the local Indians came calling bent on destroying the tiny settlement. They failed. Another attack came in 1790 and 91. By 1802, the Indians gave up, and the settlement was named Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati by General Arthur St. Clair, then the governor of the Northwest Territory. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the one who named it "The Queen City of the West". Looking at any police car will remind you of the nickname. Winston Churchhill called Cincinnati one of the most beautiful cities in the Union. Harriet Beecher Stowe started writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" while living in Cincinnati. Washington Roebling built a magnificent suspension bridge spanning the Ohio river long before the Brooklyn Bridge was built and it is still standing, looking as good as it did when it was first built in 1867. In the late 1800's, William Proctor and James Gamble established the company known as Proctor and Gamble, who made Star Candles. The candles were shipped to the Ohio River and each box was marked with a star inside of a circle. This logo evolved into the Moon and Stars logo that was recently removed from their products because a few people thought that it was satanic. Actually, the logo featured a moon with 13 stars, one for each of the original colonies. Cincinnati is located in Hamilton county, which was named for Alexander Hamilton.

From the beginning of industrialization in the United States, factory owners often hired young workers. They were working with their parents at textile mills, helping fix machinery at factories and reaching areas too small for an adult to work. For many families child labor was a way to keep hand to mouth. In 1904, the first organization dedicated to the regulation of a child labor appeared. The National Child Labor Committee published tons of information about working conditions and contributed to a legislature of state-level laws on child labor. These laws described limitations for the age of children and imposed the system of compulsory education so that government could keep children at schools far away from the paid labor market until 12, 14 or 16 years. The collection includes photographs from the Library of Congress that were made in the period from 1906 to 1942. As the United States industrialized, factory owners hired young workers for a variety of tasks. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with their parents. Children had a special disposition to working in factories as their small statures were useful to fixing machinery and navigating the small areas that fully grown adults could not. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities. The National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904. By publishing information on the lives and working conditions of young workers, it helped to mobilize popular support for state-level child labor laws. These laws were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to keep children in school and out of the paid labor market until a specified age (usually 12, 14, or 16 years.) In 1916, the NCLC and the National Consumers League successfully pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating–Owen Act, which was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. It was the first federal child labor law. However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), declaring that the law violated the Commerce Clause by regulating intrastate commerce. In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped. It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children. In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor. However, The 1938 labor law giving protections to working children excludes agriculture. As a result, approximately 500,000 children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the United States.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, newspaper publishers relied on newspaperboys (“newsies”) to distribute their newspapers on city streets. The newsboys purchased their papers and usually had to sell all of them to make a decent profit. In 1899, with a sudden rise in the cost of newspapers, a contingent of New York City newsies staged a strike against big-time publishers like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

date_range

Date

01/01/1908
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Contributors

Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer
place

Location

Cincinnati (Ohio)39.16194, -84.45694
Google Map of 39.161944444444444, -84.45694444444445
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Source

Library of Congress
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Copyright info

No known restrictions on publication.

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