Although children have been servants and apprentices throughout most of human history, child labor reached new extremes during the Industrial Revolution. Children often worked long hours in dangerous factory conditions for various little money. Children were useful as laborers because their size allowed them to move in small spaces in factories or mines where adults couldn't fit. Children were easier to manage and control, and perhaps more importantly, children could be paid less than adults. Child laborers often worked to help support their families, but were forced to forego an education.
19th century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working additions. But it took a market crash to finally sway public opinion. During the Great Depression, Americans wanted all available jobs to go to adults rather than children. Furman Owens, 12 years old, can't read, doesn't know his ABCs. He said, yes, I can learn, but can't when I work all the time.
Been in the mills four years, three years in the Olympia Mill, Columbia, South Carolina. Adolescent girls from the Bibb Manufacturing Company in Macon, Georgia. Doffer boys in Macon, Georgia. Doffing involved replacing full bobbins filled by the spinners with empty ones.
It was the intermittent work involved relatively short bursts of high activity with extended rest or play paused in between. Doffers sometimes also doubled as sweepers, a job that included sweeping up the cotton lint in between the doffing runs. But in larger factories, these were two separate jobs. This little girl pauses for a moment to look at the outside world.
She said she was 11 years old, but she'd been working over a year in the Rhodes Manufacturing Company in Lincolnton, North Carolina. Some boys and girls were so small, they had to climb up on the hill to get to the mill. This girl is one of the spinners in the Whitnell Cotton Mill. She was 51 inches high. She said she had been in the mill for one year.
Sometimes, she says she works at night, runs four sides for 58 cents. a day. When asked how old she was, she hesitated, then said, I don't remember, then added confidently, I'm not old enough to work, but do just the same.
One out of 50 employees, there were 10 children about her size in the Whitnall Cotton Mill in North Carolina. The mill overseer said apologetically, she just happened in, she was working steadily. mills seem full of youngsters who just happened in or are helping sister. This one happens to be in Newberry, South Carolina. This is Joe Bowden, a back roper in the mule room at Chance Cotton Mill in Burlington, Vermont.
A small newsie downtown on a Saturday afternoon in St. Louis, Missouri. This is a group of newsies selling on the Capitol steps. Tony is age eight. Dan is age 9, Joseph is 10, and John is age 11. This is Tony Casale from Hartford, Connecticut, age 11. He's been selling newspapers for four years.
Sometimes he sells until 10 o'clock at night. His newspaper told me the boy had shown him marks on his arm where his father had been. had bitten him for not selling more papers the boy said drunken men sometimes say bad words to us this is a group of Washington DC newsboys out after midnight selling extras there were many young boys selling very late the youngest boy in this group is nine years old Harry is aged 11 Eugene and the rest were a little older Here is a news boy from Jersey City, New Jersey, asleep on his papers late at night.
This is Michael McNeilis from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aged 8, with photographer Lewis Hine. This boy has just recovered from his second attack of pneumonia. He was found selling papers in a big rainstorm.
Francis Lance is five years old. He jumps on and off moving trolley cars at the risk of his life in St. Louis, Missouri. Here, two Rochester, New York Newsboys are fighting in an alley about four o'clock in the afternoon. Sometimes, this is where the Newsboys'money is spent, that is, an ice cream vendor in Wilmington, Delaware. Here is a group of young miners at the close of the day, waiting for the cage to go up.
The cage is entirely open on two sides and not very well protected on the other two, and is usually crowded like this. The small boy in front is Joe Puma from South Pittston, Pennsylvania. This is the view of the U.N. Breaker of the Pennsylvania Coal Company in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The dust was so...
dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrated the utmost recesses of the boys'lungs. A kind of slave driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience.
Harley Bruce, a young coupling boy at Indian Mine near Jellicoe, Tennessee. He appears to be 12 or 14 years old and says he's been working there about a year. It's hard and dangerous work.
Here is a group of breaker boys from Hustown Borough, Pennsylvania Coal Company. One of these is James Leonard. Another is Stanley Rasmus. They're from Pittston, Pennsylvania.
This is a young driver in the Brown Mine. He's been driving for about a year and works from 7 a.m. to 5 30 p.m.
daily in Brown, West Virginia. This is a group of breaker boys. The smallest is Angelo Ross. They're from Pittston, Pennsylvania. This is a view of the Scotland Mills in Laurenburg, North Carolina showing boys who work in the mill.
Here is a view of the Indiana Glassworks at 9 p.m. These are young knitters in the London Hosiery Mill in London, Tennessee. Young cigar makers at Engelhardt & Company, Tampa, Florida. Three boys looked under 14. The labor leaders told me in busy times many small boys and girls were employed.
All the youngsters smoked. This is a group of boys in the packing room at the Brown Manufacturing Company in Evansville, Indiana. Here is Willie, a Polish boy, taking his noon rest in a doffer box at the Quidwick Company Mill in Anthony, Rhode Island. This is a scene from the Wheaton Glass Works in Millville, New Jersey. The boy is Howard Lee.
His mother showed me the family record in their Bible, which gave his birth as July 15, 1894. He's 15 years old now, but has been in the glass works for two years. This boy is from Evansville, Indiana, and is making melon baskets in a basket factory. Rob Kidd from Alexandria, Virginia.
as one of the young workers in this glass factory. Oyster shuckers working in a canning factory. All but the very smallest babies work.
They begin work at 3 30 in the morning and are expected to work until 5 in the afternoon. The little girl in the center was working. Her mother said she's a real help to me.
This is in Dunbar, Louisiana. Here are shrimp pickers including eight-year-old Max. on the right from Biloxi, Mississippi.
This is Johnny, a nine-year-old oyster shucker. The man with the pipe behind him is a Padron who has brought these people to Dunbar, Louisiana from Baltimore for four years. He is the boss of the shucking shed.
This is Manuel, a young shrimp picker age five and behind him a mountain of oyster shells. He worked last year. He understands not a word of English. This in Biloxi, Mississippi.
These youngsters are cutting fish in a sardine cannery in East Point, Maine. Large sharp knives are used with a cutting and sometimes chopping motion. The slippery floors and benches and careless bumping into each other increase the liability of accidents.
The salt water gets into the cuts and they ache, said one boy. Here is Hiram Polk, age 9, from Eastport, Maine, working in a canning company. I ain't very fast, only about 5 boxes a day.
They pay about 5 cents a box, he said. Camille and Justine Carmo, ages 7 and 9, from Rochester, Massachusetts. The older girl picks about 4 pails a day. From Buckland, Connecticut, here are three boys, one 13, the other two 14 years, picking shade-grown tobacco on Hackett Farm. The first picking necessitates a sitting position.
This is six-year-old Warren Frakes from Comanche County, Oklahoma. His mother said he picked 41 pounds yesterday, and I don't make him pick. He picked some last year.
He has 20 pounds in his bag. From Fort Collins, Colorado, here's 12-year-old Lantern topping beets. The father, mother, and two boys, ages 9 and 12, expect to make $700 in about two months'time in the beet work. The boys can keep up with me all right and all day long, the father said.
They begin at 6 a.m. and work until about 6 p.m. with an hour off at noon. This is eight-year-old Jack from western Massachusetts driving a horse drawn hay rake.
A small boy has difficulty keeping his seat on rough ground and this work is more or less dangerous. In a berry field near Baltimore, Norris Lovett has been picking for about three years. After 9 p.m.
seven-year-old Tommy Noonan demonstrating the advantages of the ideal necktie form in a store window on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. His father said he is the youngest. demonstrator in America, has been doing it for several years from San Francisco to New York. We stay a month or six weeks in a place. He works at it off and on. Remarks from the bystanders were not having the best.
effect on Tommy Joseph Saverio Wilmington Delaware is a peanut vendor he's 11 years old and here seen with photographer Lewis Hine he's been pushing a cart two years out after midnight ordinarily works six hours a day he works of his own volition but all the earnings go to his father Here is a Bowery Boot Black in New York City. In New Haven, Connecticut, here are bowling alley boys. Many of them work setting pins until past midnight. From Nashville, Tennessee, this is George Christopher, who works in Postal Telegraph.
He's 14, and he's been at it over three years. He does not work at night. Here is a boy carrying hats in the garment district in New York City.
Here are young boys working for Hickok Lumber Company in Burlington, Vermont. Here are three young boys with shovels standing in the doorway of a Fort Worth and Denver rail car. From New York City, here is a Jewish family and neighbors working until late at night sowing garters. This happens several nights a week when there is plenty of work.
The youngest work until 9 p.m. The others until 11. p.m or later on the left is mary age seven and ten-year-old sam and next to the mother is a 12 year old boy on the right or sarah age seven and next is her 11 year old sister and and 13-year-old brother. Father is out of work and also helps make garters.
From Tipton, Georgia, here is a family working in the Tipton Cotton Mill. The four smallest children are not working yet. The mother said she earns $4.50, and all the children earn $4.50 a week. Her husband died and left her with 11 children.
Two of them went off and got married. The family left the farm two years ago. go to work in the cotton mill.
Here are children picking nuts in a dirty New York City basement. The dirtiest imaginable children were pawing over the nuts and eating lunch on the table. Mother had a cold and blew her nose frequently without washing her hands, and the dirty handkerchiefs rested comfortably on the table close to the nuts and nut meats.
In Fall River, Massachusetts, mill boys and men hanging around Swift's pool room on a Saturday night, a common sight any day, their bad stories and their bad remarks will not bear repeating. Messengers in Hartford, Connecticut, absorbed in their usual game of poker in the den of the terrible nine, that is the waiting room for Western Union messengers. They play for money.
Some lose a whole month's wages in a day and then are afraid to go home. The boy on the right has been a messenger for four years. He began at 12 years old. He works all night now.
During an evening's conversation, he told me stories about his experiences with prostitutes, to whom he carries messages frequently. This is Juvenile Court in St. Louis, Missouri. Here, an 8-year-old boy is charged with stealing a bicycle.
Here, a group of newsies from Albany, New York, are playing craps in the jail alley about 10 o'clock. In St. Louis, Missouri, about 11 a.m., here are two newsies at Skeeter's Branch. They were all smoking. This is Richard Pierce, age 14, from Wilmington, Delaware.
He's a Western Union Telegraph Company messenger. He's been in the service for nine months. He works from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.
He smokes and visits houses of prostitution. From Whitnell, North Carolina, here are a group of children. on the night shift going to work at 6 p.m. on a cold dark December day.
They do not come out again until 6 a.m. When they went home the next morning they were all drenched by heavy cold rain and had few or no wraps or coats. Two of the smaller girls with three other sisters work on the night shift and support a big lazy father who complains he's not well enough to work. He loafs around the country store.
The oldest three of these sisters have been in the mill for seven years and the two youngest for two years. The latter earns 84 cents a night. Here are some of the workers in the Farron Packing Company in Baltimore, Maryland. In Fairmount, West Virginia, at 5 p.m.
here are boys going home from the Monigal Glass Works. One boy remarked, The place is lousy with kids. Here are a few of the young workers in the Beaumont Mill in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Here are fish cutters at a canning company in Maine.
Ages range from 7 to 12. They live near the factory. The seven-year-old boy in the front, Byron Hamilton, has a badly cut finger but helps his brother regularly. Behind him is his brother George, age 11, who cut his finger half off while working.
Ralph on the left displays his knife and also a badly cut finger. They and many youngsters said they were always cutting themselves. George earns a dollar some days, usually 75 cents. Some of the others say they earn a dollar when they work all day.
At times, they start at 7 a.m. and work all day. until midnight.