These are 27 emotional portrait photos of American child laborers taken by photographer Lewis Wickes Hine in the 1900s and 1910s.
5-year old picking cotton, Comanche County, Oklahoma, 1916 |
5-year-old after day’s work, was tired and refused to be photographed, Biloxi, Mississippi, 1911 |
11-year-old girl picking cotton, Oklahoma, 1916 |
14-year-old boy has been working in cotton mills for 6 years, Cuero, Texas, 1913 |
15-year-old messenger boy working for Mackay Telegraph Company, Waco, Texas, 1913 |
A little spinner in a Georgia cotton mill, 1909 |
A little spinner in the Mollohan Mills, Newberry, South Carolina, December 3, 1908 |
A sleeping newsboy found after midnight in the vestibule of a railroad station, newspapers for a pillow, 1912 |
A young driver in the Brown Mine, Brown, West Virginia, 1910 |
Boy stands next the machines that he has been working at for some months at the Avondale Mills, Birmingham, Alabama, November 1910 |
Boys after working, Birmingham, Alabama, 1910 |
Boys climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins, Macon, Georgia, 19 january 1909 |
Boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co., South Pittston, January 1911 |
Breaker boys, Hughestown Borough, Pennsylvania, 1911 |
Children at Whitman Street dump, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1912 |
Coal breakers in break-time, Pennsylvania, 1911 |
Coal breakers, South Pittston, Pennsylvania, January 1911 |
Delivery boy for Kutterer Printing Co., St. Louis, 1910 |
Delivery boy in New York, ca. 1910s |
Eight-year-old boy driving horse rake, Western Massachusetts, 1915 |
Infants working in Avondale Mills, Birmingham, Alabama, 1910 |
Midnight at glass works, Indiana, 1908 |
Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch, St. Louis, Missouri, May 9, 1910 |
Newsies smoking at Skeeter’s Branch, St. Louis, Missouri, May 9, 1910 |
Sweeper and doffer boys in Lancaster Cotton Mill, Lancaster, South Carolina, 1908 |
Two of the pin boys working in Bowling Academy, Burlington, Vermont, 1910 |
Young boy stands on the machine that he has been working for 3 months, Chicopee, Massachusett, 1911 |