From local reform to national organization
The committee emerged from reform in different regions. Edgar Gardner Murphy helped establish an Alabama child-labour committee in 1901. In New York, Florence Kelley, Lillian Wald and colleagues organized investigations and a state committee in 1902.
Discussion at the 1903 national charities conference helped connect these efforts. A national organization followed in 1904, bringing together reformers and social-welfare leaders. Congress chartered it in 1907. Its role remained investigation and advocacy, distinct from a government labour-inspection agency.
Investigation, photography and public education
Investigators documented industries and compared state laws with proposed standards. Hine's employment from 1908 connected photographs with captions recording ages, occupations, wages and schooling. Reports cited images by number, linking general arguments to particular workplaces.
Publications, newspaper reproduction, slide shows and travelling exhibitions circulated the findings. Subjects extended beyond mills and mines to farms, homework and street trades. In 1954 the committee donated its records to the Library of Congress, where prints, negatives and caption cards were separately preserved.
Federal legislation and constitutional amendment
The committee supported the Keating–Owen Act of 1916, which restricted interstate shipment of child-labour products. The Supreme Court invalidated it in 1918. Reformers then pursued an amendment explicitly authorizing congressional regulation.
The 1924 proposal would empower Congress to limit or prohibit labour by people under eighteen, while preserving state powers except where federal legislation required priority. It failed to receive ratification by three-fourths of the states. The 1938 federal standards law provided a different framework after years of constitutional and political obstacles.