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Omaha Steve

(99,060 posts)
Tue May 22, 2012, 09:42 PM May 2012

The haunting photographs of early 20th century American child workers that helped change labour laws

Gingrich: Fire Union Janitors And Put Kids To Work: http://www.alan.com/2011/11/18/gingrich-fire-union-janitors-and-put-kids-to-work/


Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147935/Haunting-photographs-child-workers-helped-change-labour-laws.html

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 23:30 EST, 21 May 2012 | UPDATED: 06:54 EST, 22 May 2012

Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, sociologist Lewis Hine documented the working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924.

He travelled around 50,000 miles a year, photographing children from Chicago to Florida working in coal mines, factories and cotton mills for the lobbying organisation.

His hard-hitting body of work, profiled by America Suburb X consists of more than 5,000 images, ultimately helped bring about stricter labour laws and gave youngsters their childhoods back.

FULL story and many photos at link.

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The haunting photographs of early 20th century American child workers that helped change labour laws (Original Post) Omaha Steve May 2012 OP
I was just reading a novel about child labor. BlueIris May 2012 #1
what is the novel? n/t grasswire May 2012 #9
January 1905, by Katharine Boling. BlueIris May 2012 #15
thanks grasswire May 2012 #20
Very moving pics tawadi May 2012 #2
Bastards fought TOOTH and NAIL against reforms then too... annabanana May 2012 #3
There's Shorpy! Kolesar May 2012 #4
the eyes of old men. spanone May 2012 #5
Most are very disturbing indeed. intheflow May 2012 #6
My father born in 1916 quit school in the 8th grade to help on the family farm. You are right that jwirr May 2012 #14
Having a paper route meant delivering papers along a set route Art_from_Ark May 2012 #18
Thanks, Art. intheflow May 2012 #24
kick Liberal_in_LA May 2012 #7
My dad finished the fifth grade and worked his way West picking cotton in 1906 until he Cleita May 2012 #8
Yes, my dad was also very proud that he could see my sister and I graduate. When I was working in jwirr May 2012 #16
It hit me when looking at these photos XemaSab May 2012 #19
K&R WorseBeforeBetter May 2012 #10
k&r n/t RainDog May 2012 #11
Same time frame as Jack London's People of the Abyss marginlized May 2012 #12
K&R patrice May 2012 #13
K&R Great post. For kids everywhere I thank you think May 2012 #17
That's the answer! Get rid of immigrant labor and replace it with child labor. Kablooie May 2012 #21
What a silly thing to say when unemployment is above 8% and *real* unemployment closer to 15%. HiPointDem May 2012 #22
I've been reading about Lowell, Massachusetts recently. It was built as a planned manufacturing HiPointDem May 2012 #23
Interesting and thanks for posting. Cleita May 2012 #25
K & R Scurrilous May 2012 #26
to go www.Shorpy.com... Javaman May 2012 #27
Don't forget people, The smartest man in the room Newtered Gingrich CAMPAIGNED on rustydog May 2012 #28
One of many tragic facets of "self-regulation" studiously forgotten by Republicans. DirkGently May 2012 #29

BlueIris

(29,135 posts)
15. January 1905, by Katharine Boling.
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:13 AM
May 2012

Evidently, the author passed away in 2002, but she wrote a good book about this topic before she died. It's a YA thing, though, don't know if you'll be into that.

grasswire

(50,130 posts)
20. thanks
Wed May 23, 2012, 01:15 AM
May 2012

YA isn't usually my thing but I'll see if the library has this.

My grandfather worked in a plow factory in Ontario when a child. He vowed that none of his children would ever work in a factory, and they didn't.

Kolesar

(31,182 posts)
4. There's Shorpy!
Tue May 22, 2012, 10:23 PM
May 2012
http://www.shorpy.com/shorpy

"A greaser in a Coal Mine. Location: Bessie Mine, Alabama." November 1910.

View full size image or view Shorpy even bigger (cropped).

This is, as far as we can tell, the first of only four photographs Lewis Wickes Hine took of Shorpy on his visit to the Bessie Mine late in 1910. (The others are here and here and here.) Almost 100 years after being taken, they retain a strange and startling immediacy even though their subject is almost certainly dead. Who were you, Shorpy Higginbotham, and whatever became of you?
...
See the site for the links

intheflow

(28,403 posts)
6. Most are very disturbing indeed.
Tue May 22, 2012, 10:41 PM
May 2012

But I do wonder at the inclusion of the "newsie" boy. Wasn't that the early 20th century, inner-city equivalent of having a paper route? Also, the kid who was included as "farmworker." Was he really a farmworker, or was he a farmer's child? It was very common practice for kids to leave school to work on the family farm during planting/harvest seasons. In fact, many rural schools dismissed classes entirely during those seasons because every hand was needed on the farm. I'm not sure I would include either of those examples as cruel child labor practices - certainly not akin to working in factories, mines or mills.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
14. My father born in 1916 quit school in the 8th grade to help on the family farm. You are right that
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:12 AM
May 2012

was not uncommon. The pictures are very sad. I suspect some of the children had to work in order to support the family like the pic of the widow. One very good reason to be thankful for our safety net.

In the 50s there was still child labor - I held my first job at the age of 10 (working for a construction company and cleaning houses for a neighbor) and worked summers as a maid at the age of 12 until I was 16. Much of my money went to help support the family. For me the worst part was being on my own with little supervision at that early age.

Art_from_Ark

(27,247 posts)
18. Having a paper route meant delivering papers along a set route
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:56 AM
May 2012

usually after school, and on Sunday mornings. My hometown paper did not have a Saturday edition, so Saturdays were off. Papers were delivered in a bundle to my house, and I would spend about 30 minutes rolling them up and putting them in my delivery sack, then another 30-45 minutes or so delivering them by bicycle to the subscribers on my route, which was near my house. I collected the money from subscribers once a month at my leisure, paid the newspaper office its share, then took the rest for myself. It was easy work, and I did not have to rely on my parents for an allowance (which they could not afford). At the same time, I could meet lots of people in my town that way, and was even able to get some pointers about my hobbies from some of them.

On the other hand, "newsies" often had to work long hours *hawking* newspapers, and often were not allowed to return until they had sold their quota. They had to work in all sorts of weather, completely exposed to the elements, and working at night and in the early morning made them vulnerable to child predators, thieves, and other unsavory characters. And if they died or became gravely ill from exposure, no one, except maybe their family, gave one whit about them.

Here is one of Hine's pictures of "newsies" in St. Louis at 11:00a.m. on May 9, 1910. That day was a Monday, and the kids should have been in school at that time, but they had to sell newspapers instead.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1970.727.1

intheflow

(28,403 posts)
24. Thanks, Art.
Wed May 23, 2012, 10:40 AM
May 2012

I guess I always assumed they were not worked so rigorously. Good response, I really appreciate it.

Cleita

(75,480 posts)
8. My dad finished the fifth grade and worked his way West picking cotton in 1906 until he
Tue May 22, 2012, 10:49 PM
May 2012

landed in Arizona. He worked in a copper mine there until WWI when he joined the army. He was eighteen by then and had been working since he was eleven years old as a miner. He eventually, through sheer determination and the help of some mentors became an electrical engineer. He was so proud of me when I graduated from high school and then went on to college for two years, something that had been denied to him and his siblings back at the turn of the last century.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
16. Yes, my dad was also very proud that he could see my sister and I graduate. When I was working in
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:19 AM
May 2012

a museum I archived some educational materials that were used about the time your father would have been going to the army. They taught things like engineering. A lot of the CCcamp people talked to me about using those books.

XemaSab

(60,212 posts)
19. It hit me when looking at these photos
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:58 AM
May 2012

how "recent" and yet how long ago 100 years really is.

It's not my grandparents' generation, but it IS their parents' generation, and there was some hardcore stuff that went down in those years.

My great-great grandpa in Sweden was adopted by another family (so he went from being a Pearson to being an Olson). When he was 13, he and his two older adopted sisters and their husbands and children came over to the US. The sisters and their families were dead of the flu within the year, leaving my ancestor orphaned in a country where he didn't even speak the language. I'm sure he had to go to work to support himself, and he made his way to Minnesota and became a boilermaker.

My great-great grandma (who would grow up to marry my great-great grandpa) grew up on a dairy north of Two Harbors. Her older brother ran away from home, so she had to be one of the "men" in the family in many ways. This included hitching up the team of oxen and taking the milk into town to sell. She did this year-round, even in the winter. This became her job starting at age 12.

I know that my grandparents' generation went through a lot growing up in the depression and then going off to war, but it was their parents' generation that seems so remote and so, so hardcore.

It's also fascinating that most of the kids in these pictures probably have living grandkids who have no idea that grandpa was working in a mill when he was 10.

marginlized

(357 posts)
12. Same time frame as Jack London's People of the Abyss
Tue May 22, 2012, 11:23 PM
May 2012

more like "How the Other Half Live", though that was a decade or so earlier.

Kablooie

(18,571 posts)
21. That's the answer! Get rid of immigrant labor and replace it with child labor.
Wed May 23, 2012, 03:08 AM
May 2012

Then costs don't have to go up!

Just a modest proposal.

 

HiPointDem

(20,729 posts)
22. What a silly thing to say when unemployment is above 8% and *real* unemployment closer to 15%.
Wed May 23, 2012, 05:34 AM
May 2012

There's no labor shortage in the US.

 

HiPointDem

(20,729 posts)
23. I've been reading about Lowell, Massachusetts recently. It was built as a planned manufacturing
Wed May 23, 2012, 06:00 AM
May 2012

city in the early days of US industrialization and became the textile manufacturing center of the US for quite a long time. Most of its workforce was female and some of it was children. The usual working day was 12 to 14 hours, 6 days a week.

In the 1830s & 40s there was a lot of labor agitation in Lowell -- the "Lowell Mill Girls" story is fairly well known. But what bothers me about such histories is that they're usually told sort of triumphantly -- yes, it was grim, but then came the Lowell Mill Girls, and things got better, and ain't America grand!

The Mill Girls were agitating for a 10-hour day. They never got it, and the mill owners continued getting rich.

Ancestors of two recent presidential candidates owned mills in Lowell during its heyday. This is one of the reasons they were in a position to be recent Presidential candidates -- because their ancestors sweated labor.

Descendants of the Lowell Mill Girls, on the other hand, are unlikely to be presidential candidates. They are likely to be workers in somewhat better conditions, that's all.

Ancestors of those same two presidential candidates: 1) stole land from the indians and killed indians; 2) were military contractors; 3) owned and traded in slaves; 4) brokered slave-grown cotton in the international market; 5) sold opium; 6) traded with so-called 'enemies' during wartime in multiple wars; 7) dodged taxes in multiple instances...

And put the money they made doing all these things into industrialization and railroad development, where they sweated labor -- including child labor.

It's not that maybe 1 or 2 ancestors did these things; there's a steady path of ancestors doing such things, as well as ubiquitous financial chicanery, into the present day. This is how the ruling class got to be the ruling class and continued being the ruling class.

It really is true that behind every fortune there's a crime. But these connections are disappeared in popular history.

Which means people don't understand how their history relates to their present situation, and the present situation of the world.


Cleita

(75,480 posts)
25. Interesting and thanks for posting.
Wed May 23, 2012, 11:48 AM
May 2012

I was never taught stuff like this in school about the industrial revolution. I don't know if it's taught today but it should be. It could be instrumental in how, we the unwashed masses cast our votes.

Javaman

(62,439 posts)
27. to go www.Shorpy.com...
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:37 PM
May 2012

The site is dedicated to the memory of Shoroy Higginbotham. (whom is depicted in one of the photos included in the article.)

The site runs old photos of just not only children coal mine workers, but all sorts of photos from roughly the civil war through the 70's.

If you look through the archive of the site you will find all sorts of photos of child workers working in various trades.

rustydog

(9,186 posts)
28. Don't forget people, The smartest man in the room Newtered Gingrich CAMPAIGNED on
Wed May 23, 2012, 12:40 PM
May 2012

turning children into janitors...GOP enslavement and dumbinb-down of the American people

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