1. Brandeis, Elizabeth. Migrant Children and Child Labor Laws. [Madison, Wis.]: Governor’s Commission on Human Rights; 1959; [WI GoDocs #] GoRi.2:M5/5b. 9 p. Notes: Her statement. Source: Hispanics in Wisconsin: A Bibliography, p. 253.
  1. Brandeis, Elizabeth. Migrant Labor Problem in Wisconsin: An Essay. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on Human Rights; 1962. 52 p.
  1. Bremer, Harry M. Wisconsin Agriculture. National Child Labor Committee; 1913. ??? (NCLC Investigation Report ; 209.
  1. Channing, Alice. Employed Boys and Girls in Milwaukee. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office; v, 71 p. (United State Department of Labor. Children’s Bureau. / Bureau publication; no. 213). Notes: U.S. SuDocs #: L 5.20:213; fulltext available in PDF at URL: http://www.archive.org details/employedboysgirl00chan.At the time of the preparation of this report for the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, children in Wisconsin were permitted to be regularly employed during the hours when school was in session, if they had reached the minimum age of 14 years; children between 14 and 16 years of age could be employed only when they had completed the eigthth grade or had attended school for nine years. Wisconsin law allowed a child who had reached 14, the legal age for employment, to drop out of the regular full-time day school if he or she had completed the eighth grade, even if not employed. Wisconsin at this time had a higher age than most states for employed children to have a required work certificate, except for indentured apprentices and those employed in certain exempted occupations, as in agriculture. The requirements for continuation-school attendance in Wisconsin were also relatively high, as it is one of the few states which required all boys and girls who were not attending full-time day school (except those who had graduated from high school) to attend continuation school at least eight hours a week up to the end of the term in which they became 18 years of age. Like other employed minors, apprentices who under the apprenticeship law could be indentured between the ages of 16 and 21 had to attend continuation school during the first two years of their apprenticeship, regardless of their age when indentured, but the apprentices attended for only four hours a week.This study made an attempt to analyze the employment of “all the employed minors, including all the minors who, at the time of the study, in conformity with the requirements of the Wisconsin continuation school law, were enrolled as part-time day-school pupils in the continuation school, locally called the Milwaukee Vocational School,” and “the high-school graduates under 18 who were or had been employed were located through the high schools they had last attended and were interviewed”; the author also made “an effort was made to find through the school census the boys and girls who were employed but were not attending continuation school as they were legally required to do” (p. 2). Additionally, “in order to find out to what extent nonworking eighth-grade graduates between 14 and 16 and unemployed minors between 16 and 18 were using their legal privilege of being excused from regular day school attendance, information was also obtained concerning minors between the ages of 14 and 18 who had not been employed but had left regular school and who, as they were not high-school graduates, were required to attend continuation school.” (p. 2)

    Information for the study “was sought concerning the ages of young workers at leaving the regular full-time school, the grades they had completed, the types of occupations in which they were employed when they first started to work and at the time the study was made, their wages, the number of positions they had held, the amount of their unemployment,and the relation of their education and their ages to the kinds of occupations they they entered and to the wages they received.” (p. 2)

    “The vocational-school records furnished information regarding the school history of the young workers in both full-time and part-time schools, including the age and date at which they had left full-time school and entered part-time school, and also some information regarding their work histories, such as the date they had first started work and the kind of work in which they were employed. For those under 17 years of age this information was supplemented from records of the Milwaukee work-certificate office of the Wisconsin Industrial Commision” (p. 3) Since Wisconsin law at the time required a minor to have an employment certificate for each job until the age of 17, except in certain occupations such as farm work, “these records furnished information about all the jobs for which work certificates were required and in which the child had been legally employed” and “included the date the certificate was issued and the date it was returned, the name of the occupation, and the wages received” (p. 3). Interviews were done with the young workers where the records were incomplete, either at the school, in their homes, or at their places of employment, although there were a number who could not be found because they were no longer in attendance at the vocational school or because the address of their homes or places of employment could not be found” (p. 3).

    A total of 10,320 boys and girls were included in this study with 9,207 of them having been employed and of those, 231 were apprentices, while 46 were high-school graduates. Interviews were held with 3,819 of the employed boys and girls and the work records were obtained for 4,807 of the 5,388 who had not been interviewed. No girls were among the group of 231 apprentices.

  1. Chute, Charles L. Midwest Glass. National Child Labor Committee; 1911. ??? (NCLC Investigation Report; 314.
  2. Fleisher, Alexander. The Newsboys of Milwaukee. 15th (1911) Biennial Report of the [Wisconsin] Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. pp. Part III, [61]-96. Notes: This report, Part III of the 15th biennial report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, was commissioned to compile information upon which to base upcoming decisions of the state legislature regarding more effective regulation of youth engaged in various street trades–newsboys were selected as the focus since it was felt that children engaged in any of the other street trades would face influences and hazards similar to those faced by newsboys. “The investigation was limited to Milwaukee newsboys between the ages of 10 and 14 who sold papers on the street” (p. 63) and “consisted of four parts: (1) examination of the life of children engaged in street trade in Milwaukee; (2) examination of the statistics of the reform school for the purpose of discovering what connection might exist between street selling and juvenile delinquency; (3) interviews with the circulation manager of the newspapers regarding the state regulation of the work of newsboys; and (4) a study of the measures that have been taken in other states and cities in the interest of children engaged in street trades, and a review of previous investigations” (p. 62). Information was also gathered through direct observation of the boys while selling newspapers in the street and also by collecting information from the boys’ family members, teachers and the boys themselves.CONTENTS: “Introduction.” – “Life of Children in Street Trades” – The Boy’s Life on the Street – The Boy’s Earnings – Gambling – Owning of Corners –The Boy’s Presence in Saloons – The Boy’s Presence in the Tenderloin – Begging – The Language of the Street – Supper – Theaters –Tramping and Its Relation to the Boy in the Street Trades – The Benefits to the Boy of Street Trading – The Newsboy’s Family and Home – The Boy at School. – “The Newsboy and the Industrial School.” – “The Newspaper Point of View.” –”Previous Investigations” – Attempted Regulation. – “Conclusion.” – “Bibliography.”The full text of this report is available to view in PDF in the Google Books website.
  1. Freedman, Russell. Kids At Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor. Scholastic ed. Hine, Lewis, phtotographs by . New York: Scholastic, Inc.; 1995. 104 p. (“RL 5 008-012”–back outside cover). Notes: Heavily illustrated with photographs by Lewis of child labor, this is an accessible biography of the great photographer Lewis Hine, who was born and grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. After a year of training to be a teacher at the State Normal School in Oshkosh, he finished his teacher training at the University of Chicago, then moved to New York City where he worked at the Ethical Culture School as a teacher of geography and nature study, while earning a master’s degree in education at the New York University.While at the Ethical Culture School, he took up photography, first to record activities at the school, then as advisor to the after-school camera club he formed. In 1904, he began documenting the flood of new immigrants arrived in the United States through Ellis Island. He began to do photo assignments for the various reform-minded groups and then, in 1908, he accepted a fulltime job as an investigative photographer with the National Child Labor Committee which believed that children should be in school, rather than working for a living.Hine devoted the rest of his life to the cause of eradicating child labor (or “child slavery,” as some at the time termed it). His evocative photographs of the child laborers in the various industries of the day brought home to people the harsh reality faced by children having to work every day to support themselves and their family. In addition to capturing the photographs, Hine kept meticulous and detailed notes documenting the subjects in each of his photographs, to ensure that no one could dispute the authenticity of his work.
  1. Hine, Lewis. Midwest Agriculture. National Child Labor Committee; 1916. ??? (NCLC Investigation Report ; 222.
  1. Wisconsin. Governor’s Commission on Human Rights. Education on the Move: Report of a 1960 and 1961 Demonstration Summer School for Migrant Children in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. Madison, Wis.; 1960; [WI GoDocs #] GoMig.2:M3/1-2. 2 v. Notes: Source: Hispanics in Wisconsin: A Bibliography, p. 252.