not directly related to India but this provides an interesting perspective
The Industrial Age that occurred after the Civil War created a demand for labor and many children were drawn into the labor force. Factory wages were so low that children often had to work to help support their families. According to the National Archives, the number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910.
Employers viewed children as a bargain: They worked in unskilled jobs for lower wages than adults, and their small hands made them more adept at handling small parts and tools.
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Education was seen as a luxury, but one teacher would have a profound impact on our view of child labor. Lewis Hine, was a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, and he believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee.
Hine believed that if people could see for themselves the abuses and injustice of child labor, they would demand laws to end it. He often tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He would tell factory owners that he wanted the child laborers in the photos to show the size of the modern machinery.
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The National Child Labor Committee was formed in 1904, with a goal to end child labor. 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. The Children’s Bureau became a federal information clearinghouse in 1912 and i 1913, the Children’s Bureau was transferred to the Department of Labor.
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Lewis Hine died in poverty but his photos live on as a reminder of the horrors of child labor and, frankly, the dangers to all workers found in Industrial Age workplaces.
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