The searing photos that helped end child labor in America
He arrived at the coal mines, textile mills and industrial factories dressed in a three-piece suit. He wooed those in charge, asking to be let in. He was just a humble Bible salesman, he claimed, who wanted to spread the good word to the laborers inside.
What Lewis Hine actually wanted was to take photos of those laborers — and show the world what it looked like when children were put to work.
In the early 1900s, Hine traveled across the United States to photograph preteen boys descending into dangerous mines, shoeless 7-year-olds selling newspapers on the street and 4-year-olds toiling on tobacco farms. Though the country had unions to protect laborers at that time — and Labor Day, a federal holiday to honor them — child labor was widespread and widely accepted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that around the turn of the century, at least 18 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 15 were employed.
Hine’s searing images of those children remade the public perception of child labor and inspired the laws to ban it. Today, the Library of Congress maintains a collection of more than 5,000 of Hine’s photographs, including the thousands he took for the National Child Labor Committee, known as the NCLC.
“It was Lewis Hine who made sure that millions of children are not working today,” said Jeffrey Newman, a former president of the New York-based committee.
The organization’s mission wasn’t about showing the public that children were being used for financial gain — that was already a well-known fact. At the time, many believed the practice had substantial benefits. Youths could learn the value of hard work. Businesses could increase their productivity and decrease the hourly pay. Parents could depend on their children to support the family, meaning the adults could work less or not at all.
As one mother remarked to the NCLC in 1907: “I am really tired of seeing so many big children ten years old playing in the streets.”
Hine’s photos showed the price: unsafe working conditions, dangerous machinery and business owners who refused to educate the children or limit their working hours.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-searing-photos-that-helped-end-child-labor-in-america/ar-BBML894?li=BBnb7Kz
If you go to the linked article you can see a slide show of the photos.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I copy and pasted it.
Pennsylvania coal mine. (Grandpa eventually died in 1968 of black lung disease.)
Lewis Hine caption: A young leader and a driver, Shaft #6, Pennsylvania Coal Company. Pasquale Salvo and Sandy Castina. Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania, January 1911
Lewis Hine caption: Mule power and motor power. A Young Driver, Shaft #6, Pennsylvania Coal Company. Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania, January 1911.
The site was named after one of the subjects of his photos.
http://www.shorpy.com/shorpy
http://www.shorpy.com/lewis-hine-photos
