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The Voice


Child Labor Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - 1924

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            The name of the movement that I will discuss is the Children Labor Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1924.  It is part of the Children Rights Movement.  This movement is caused by factory abuses to children and unfair and unsafe working conditions.  The Children Labor Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1924 created child labor laws to help children work in a safer environment and under safer conditions.

There was a political injustice in this movement.  In 1924, almost 2,000,000 children, between the ages of 10 to 16, worked.  There was a primary source next to the picture.  It showed boy workers who had to climb large looms to mend broken threads in
Macon, GA factory.  The method of resistance was that the Congress created the National Child Labor Committee.  A member named Lewis Hine traveled across
America
taking pictures and interviewed child laborers and their families.  He exposed the injustice of child labor.

            This movement had an important achievement.  The Congress agreed and proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  This was this was the Civil Rights Amendment.  It took away power from the Supreme Court and state governments about child labor and gave that power to the Congress.  Only five states accepted this amendment in 1930.  The most important outcome of this movement is it exposed the wrongness of child labor and made
America
aware of what was going on in factories with the children.