In mid-April of 1912, the National Child Labor Committee sent Lewis Hine to Washington, DC, to photograph boys and girls engaged in the street trades, most of them newsboys as young as five years old. While he was there, the Titanic sank (April 14), resulting in a sudden increase in the number of newsies hawking "extras," sometimes several times a day and late at night. Many of the boys were Jewish and Italian immigrants who stood on street corners near the Capitol, the White House, and other government buildings. Dante Mercurio was one of those boys, and the above picture of him has become one of Hine's best-loved photographs. As the articles below show, there was considerable discussion about child labor in the District of Columbia at that time, which would have been the reason that Hine was sent there.

The Children's Bureau was formally created in 1912 when President William Howard Taft signed into law a bill creating the new federal government organization. The stated purpose of the new Bureau was to investigate and report "upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people."

The signing of this law culminated a grass-roots process started in 1903 by two early social reformers, Lillian Wald, of New York's Henry Street Settlement House, and Florence Kelly, of the National Consumer's League. Along the way, their efforts picked up support from President Theodore Roosevelt, among other prominent supporters, before finally becoming law nine years after they launched the initiative.

After several false starts in Congress, the successful bill was sponsored by Senator William E. Borah. The bill authorized the creation of a 16-person organization, with a first-year budget of $25,640. Initially part of the Department of Commerce, the Children's Bureau was transferred to the Department of Labor in 1913. The law also called for the Bureau to be headed by a Chief, who would be a Presidential appointee, subject to Senate confirmation. The first Chief of the Children's Bureau was Julia Lathrop. -courtesy of Social Security Administration website

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The regulation of child labor in the District of Columbia along lines so strict that it practically would stop children under 14 years of age from engaging in any kind of work for pay, and materially restrict the employments to which older children would be eligible, was recommended to Congress yesterday in a bill introduced in the House by Representative James M. Cox, of Ohio. Heavy fines and jail sentences are prescribed for violations. Children under 14 years cannot be employed to do work of any kind during school hours.

The bill prohibits any boy under 12 years of age or any girl under 14 years of age from selling newspapers in the streets, or any other trade or occupation performed in the street. The bill prohibits the sale of newspapers by children before 6 o'clock in the morning.

Heavy penalties, to be inflicted by the juvenile court, are provided also for these violations. The bill was referred to the District of Columbia committee. -excerpted from Washington Post article published on April 13, 1912, two days after Dante was photographed.