Interior of tobacco shed, Hawthorn Farm. Girls in foreground are 8, 9, and 10 years old. The 10 yr. old makes 50 cents a day. 12 workers on this farm are 8 to 14 years old, and about 15 are over 15 years. Location: Hazardville, Connecticut L.W. Hine

According to the 1900 US Census, a total of 1,752,187 (about 1 in every 6) children between the ages of five and ten were engaged in "gainful occupations" in the United States. The National Child Labor Committee, or NCLC, was a private, non-profit organization that served as a leading proponent for the national child labor reform movement. It headquartered on Broadway in Manhattan, New York. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a teacher and professional photographer trained in sociology, who advocated photography as an educational medium, to document child labor in the American industry. Over the next ten years, Hine would publish thousands of photographs designed to pull at the nation's heartstrings. The NCLC is a rare example of an organization that succeeded in its mission and was no longer needed. After more than a century of fighting child labor, it shut down in 2017.