“Creating A Right to Childhood” offers a mini course in the history of child labor in the United States and the movement to abolish it – one that allows students to examine a variety of primary sources and contemporary observations and to weigh the historical evidence for themselves. There are:

• Times lines, short introductions, and statistics gleaned from the U.S. Census, and well as some quick facts
  
• Photographs from the National Child Labor Committee Collection (Library of Congress) including captions by photographer Lewis Hine (which can be even more revealing than the pictures!)
  
• There are newspaper reports on the debate over child labor legislation (including political cartoons), the text of the proposed federal law, and the Supreme Court decisions that ultimately decided the issue
  
• Documents and comments by Samuel Gompers and other labor activists, social reformers, supporters of child labor, and the young workers themselves
  
• Suggestions for classroom assignments, additional reading, and websites related to the child labor in the 21st century.