Child labor did not have a single setting. A city street could be a workplace, just as a glass factory, spinning room or coal breaker could be. Between 1908 and 1924, Lewis Hine photographed children’s working and living conditions for the National Child Labor Committee. This gallery selects four images from the early years of that work, bringing a street corner in Indiana into conversation with industrial interiors and a group portrait in Pennsylvania.
The captions are part of the evidence. They record names when Hine obtained them, and sometimes hours, earnings or statements from employers. Those details cannot simply be read from a face or a machine. They are attributed here to the original National Child Labor Committee captions, with dates and locations taken from the Library of Congress records. Where a city or a child’s name was not recorded, it remains unknown.
Hine’s images were made within a campaign for reform, but that purpose should not turn the people into anonymous symbols. A named newsboy and an unnamed spinner require different kinds of care. Looking closely means considering both the visible scene and the information beside it, without inventing emotions, injuries or later lives. The four photographs survive in a collection that lets those questions be pursued beyond this selection.
Topic: Child labor and social reform
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John Howell at the street corner
The Library of Congress identifies the young newsboy as John Howell. Hine’s caption reports that he earned 75 cents on some days and began at six in the morning on Sundays. Those details turn a street portrait into a record of work; they are caption information, not something the camera alone could prove. In the foreground, the photographer and camera cast a visible shadow. That trace makes the act of taking the picture part of the scene. John stands within the street’s movement rather than inside a factory, showing why an account of child labor needs to include selling papers and other street trades alongside industrial employment.
Photo details
Date
August 1908
Location
Indianapolis, Indiana
Photographer / artist
Lewis Wickes Hine
Archive / collection
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — LC-DIG-nclc-03225
Rights / license
Library of Congress: no known restrictions on publication. Archive credit retained. Rights record: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/097_hine.html
Lewis Wickes Hine; National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-nclc-03225.
02 / 04
A glassworks shift at one in the morning
A young worker stands with his back partly towards the camera, beside a workbench and a brick furnace opening. Two older workers share the dim interior. The original caption calls the child the carrying-in boy and records the time as one in the morning, August 1908. That hour gives the scene its most significant detail: the camera has recorded a child at work during the night. The caption gives Indiana as the location but leaves the city and his name unrecorded. Hine’s investigation depended on this combination of picture and note. The photograph shows the workplace and its participants; the attached record supplies a time that daylight or darkness in the image alone could not establish.
Photo details
Date
August 1908; 1:00 a.m. stated in the original caption
Location
Indiana; city not recorded in the original caption
Photographer / artist
Lewis Wickes Hine (archive attribution based on provenance)
Archive / collection
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — LC-DIG-nclc-01156
Rights / license
Library of Congress: no known restrictions on publication. Archive credit retained. Rights record: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/097_hine.html
Lewis Wickes Hine; National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-nclc-01156. Hine no. 85.
03 / 04
A spinner beside the machinery
A young girl stands beside a long row of spinning machinery in the Globe Cotton Mill at Augusta, Georgia. The apparatus extends through the room, giving the small figure a place within the scale of the workplace. Hine’s caption states that an overseer said she was regularly employed. Keeping that attribution is essential: the employment claim is a recorded statement from the workplace, not an inference from the girl’s clothing or position. The January 1909 record does not provide her name or a securely stated age. Her face deserves attention without becoming a basis for diagnosing her health or inventing what she felt. The photograph documents a child in an industrial setting, while the caption clarifies why Hine recorded it.
Photo details
Date
January 1909
Location
Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia
Photographer / artist
Lewis Wickes Hine (archive attribution based on provenance)
Archive / collection
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — LC-DIG-nclc-01641
Rights / license
Library of Congress: no known restrictions on publication. Archive credit retained. Rights record: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/097_hine.html
Lewis Wickes Hine; National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-nclc-01641. Hine no. 548.
04 / 04
The boys at Number 9 Breaker
The boys face the camera as a group, their different heights and positions preventing the photograph from becoming a single interchangeable portrait. The National Child Labor Committee caption locates them at Number 9 Breaker of the Pennsylvania Coal Company in Hughestown Borough, Pittston. It identifies the smallest boy as Angelo Ross and refers to other records about him. That name is retained as a caption identification, without inventing which figure a reader should recognize from appearance alone. The January 1911 photograph belongs to Hine’s coal-mine album. A group view adds something the individual portraits do not: it shows several children within the same workplace investigation, while the attached record keeps the company and locality specific.
Photo details
Date
January 1911
Location
Number 9 Breaker, Hughestown Borough, Pittston, Pennsylvania
Photographer / artist
Lewis Wickes Hine (archive attribution based on provenance)
Archive / collection
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — LC-DIG-nclc-01138
Rights / license
Library of Congress: no known restrictions on publication. Archive credit retained. Rights record: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/097_hine.html
Lewis Wickes Hine; National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-nclc-01138. Hine no. 1949; names attributed to the NCLC caption.
