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Nine of these children from 8 years old up go to school half a day, and shuck oysters for four hours before school and three hours after school on school days, and on Saturday from 4 A.M. to early afternoon. Maggioni Canning Co. Location: Port Royal, South Carolina

Miners after work - Public domain portrait print

[Miners after work] - Public domain portrait print

Breaker boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co. For some of their names see labels 1927 to 1930. Location: South Pittston, Pennsylvania

Group of boys working in American Woolen Mills, Winooski, Vt. Youngest 13 years. Oldest 15 years. All had been working one year or more. Most are illiterate. 27, apparently under 15 years were counted at one gate. (See also N.C.L.C. Photos #720-745, May 1909.) Location: Winooski, Vermont.

Blower and Mold Boy, Seneca Glass Works, Morgantown, West Virginia. (see label on #171) (see photos 170 & 171). Location: Morgantown, West Virginia

Group of young workers in Clifton Mill, Elifton i.e., Clifton, S.C. Some still smaller wouldn't go in the photograph. Location: Clifton, South Carolina

Blower and Mold Boy, Seneca Glass Works, Morgantown, West Virginia. (see label on #171) (see photos 170 & 171). Location: Morgantown, West Virginia.

Group work in the Ayer mill. Many of those working are:Joe Christy, 21 Common Street; Harold Old, 81 Springfield St.; Sam Gangi, 22 Pleasant Valley St.; Wallace Hogan, 12 Bailey St.; Sebastino Genovese, 50 12 Common St.; Leopoldo Andreoli, 208 Elm St.; Uroli Farealla, 120 Common St.; Salvatore Finechelli, 115 Garden St.; Joseph D'Angelo, 6 Common St.; Pasuala Dearndo, 185 Oak St. Location: Lawrence, Massachusetts

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10 year old Jimmie. Been shucking 3 years. 6 pots a day, and a 11 year old boy who shucks 7 pots. Also several members of an interesting family named Sherrica. Seven of them are in this factory. The father, mother, four girls shuck and pack. Older brother steams. 10 year old boy goes to school. Been in the oyster business 5 years. Father worked for 25 years in the Pennsylvania Coal Mine, and the oldest brother there[?] They said they liked the oysters business better because the family makes more. Varn & Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina.

10 year old Jimmie. Been shucking 3 years. 6 pots a day, and a 11 year old boy who shucks 7 pots. Also several members of an interesting family named Sherrica. Seven of them are in this factory. The father, mother, four girls shuck and pack. Older brother steams. 10 year old boy goes to school. Been in the oyster business 5 years. Father worked for 25 years in the Pennsylvania Coal Mine, and the oldest brother there[?] They said they liked the oysters business better because the family makes more. Varn & Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina.

10 year old Jimmie. Been shucking 3 years. 6 pots a day, and a 11 year old boy who shucks 7 pots. Also several members of an interesting family named Sherrica. Seven of them are in this factory. The father, mother, four girls shuck and pack. Older brother steams. 10 year old boy goes to school. Been in the oyster business 5 years. Father worked for 25 years in the Pennsylvania Coal Mine, and the oldest brother there? They said they liked the oysters business better because the family makes more. Varn & Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina

Jimmie Michael, 10 years old. Shucks six pots a day. Been at it 3 years. Varn and Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina.

Jimmie Michael, 10 years old. Shucks six pots a day. Been at it 3 years. Varn and Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina

Topping tobacco. Roland Lowe, 13 years old in field with two brothers. There are 7 boys and 2 girls in the family, and 4 are in school. Father, Mose Lowe, R. Route 1, Winchester. Children go to Pretty Run School, Division 2, Clark Co., Ky., but Roland and Bush, 14 years old have not started yet--about 3 weeks after it opened. Father rents this farm of 160 acres. Location: Clark Co.--Winchester, Kentucky Lewis W. Hine

3 of the many young oyster shuckers going home from the Pass Christian Cannery at 5 P.M. Lena Krueger, 7 years old (in the middle) had shucked 6 pots that day; Annie Kadeska, 9 years old on the right, has shucked 10 pots; and Rosie Zinsoska on the left (did not know her age) had shucked 6 pots. Location: Pass Christian, Mississippi / L.W. Hine.

Roy Young, said 10 years old. Works with brother Willis, 12 years old in Massey Hosiery Mills. Roy has worked some nights, once until 10 P.M. and he fell asleep in school next day. Haywood Tidd, smallest boy, is only 5 [?] years old, according to school record. He helps his brother regularly in Massey Mill, all day. Lives 1054 R.R. Street, Columbus, Ga. Location: Columbus, Georgia.

Sadie Kelly, 11 years old, Picks shrimp for the Peerless Oyster Co. Picked 7 pots yesterday, 5 pots today at 5 cents. Picked last year. Location: Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

10 year old Jimmie. Been shucking 3 years. 6 pots a day, and a 11 year old boy who shucks 7 pots. Also several members of an interesting family named Sherrica. Seven of them are in this factory. The father, mother, four girls shuck and pack. Older brother steams. 10 year old boy goes to school. Been in the oyster business 5 years. Father worked for 25 years in the Pennsylvania Coal Mine, and the oldest brother there? They said they liked the oysters business better because the family makes more. Varn & Platt Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina

description

Summary

Title from NCLC caption card.

Attribution to Hine based on provenance.

In album: Canneries.

Hine no. 3306.

Year not recorded on caption card; 1913 based on cards for photographs with neighboring numbers taken in same location. Some text overlapping on card, making it hard to decipher.

Credit line: National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

General information about the National Child Labor Committee collection is available at: loc.gov

Forms part of: National Child Labor Committee collection.

Hine grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. As a young man he had to care for himself, and working at a furniture factory gave him first-hand knowledge of industrial workers' harsh reality. Eight years later he matriculated at the University of Chicago and met Professor Frank A. Manny, whom he followed to New York to teach at the Ethical Culture School and continue his studies at New York University. As a faculty member at the Ethical Culture School Hine was introduced to photography. From 1904 until his death he documented a series of sites and conditions in the USA and Europe. In 1906 he became a photographer and field worker for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Undercover, disguised among other things as a Bible salesman or photographer for post-cards or industry, Hine went into American factories. His research methodology was based on photographic documentation and interviews. Together with the NCLC he worked to place the working conditions of two million American children onto the political agenda. The NCLC later said that Hine's photographs were decisive in the 1938 passage of federal law governing child labor in the United States. In 1918 Hine left the NCLC for the Red Cross and their work in Europe. After a short period as an employee, he returned to the United States and began as an independent photographer. One of Hine's last major projects was the series Men at Work, published as a book in 1932. It is a homage to the worker that built the country, and it documents such things as the construction of the Empire State Building. In 1940 Hine died abruptly after several years of poor income and few commissions. Even though interest in his work was increasing, it was not until after his death that Hine was raised to the stature of one of the great photographers in the history of the medium.

According to the 1900 US Census, a total of 1,752,187 (about 1 in every 6) children between the ages of five and ten were engaged in "gainful occupations" in the United States. The National Child Labor Committee, or NCLC, was a private, non-profit organization that served as a leading proponent for the national child labor reform movement. It headquartered on Broadway in Manhattan, New York. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine, a teacher and professional photographer trained in sociology, who advocated photography as an educational medium, to document child labor in the American industry. Over the next ten years, Hine would publish thousands of photographs designed to pull at the nation's heartstrings. The NCLC is a rare example of an organization that succeeded in its mission and was no longer needed. After more than a century of fighting child labor, it shut down in 2017.

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Tags

boys women cannery workers oyster industry shucking wages school attendance south carolina bluffton glass negatives photographic prints lot 7476 national child labor committee collection lewis wickes hine photo year oyster business pots boy father brother ultra high resolution high resolution reverend clergy lewis w hine united states history workers industrial history library of congress child labor
date_range

Date

01/01/1913
collections

in collections

Lewis W. Hine

Lewis Hine, Library of Congress Collection

Child Labor

National Child Labor Committee collection
place

Location

bluffton
create

Source

Library of Congress
link

Link

https://www.loc.gov/
copyright

Copyright info

No known restrictions on publication. For information see: "National Child Labor Committee (Lewis Hine photographs)," https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/res.097.hine

label_outline Explore Shucking, Pots, Bluffton

7 year old oyster shucker. Speaks no English. Father and mother earn about $15 a week, and this little one works steady and her six year old brother same. Lowden Canning Co. Location: Bluffton, South Carolina.

[Slag run and filling slag pots], Sloss City furnaces, Birmingham, Ala.

Rambo-Bell-Redding Tenant House, County Road 130, east of Intersection U.S. 27 & State Route 1, Bluffton, Clay County, GA

Victoria Borsa, 1223 Catherine St., Philadelphia. 4 year old berry picker. Brother 7 years old. While I was photographing them, the mother was impatiently urging them to "pick, pick." Whites Bog, Brown Mills, N.J. Location: Browns Mills, New Jersey.

Family of Louis Rizzo, a laborer who works some. The wife and four children (none could speak English at all) work on feathers and make about $3.00 a week. Been in U.S. five months. Do not go to school yet. Through an interpreter they said Peter is 15, Jimmie 14, Carbo 9 and John 7 years old; but those seemed to me too high. They were working in a very dim light. Location: New York, New York (State)

High Mountain Dams in Upalco Unit, Twin Pots Dam, Ashley National Forest, 10.1 miles North of Mountain Home, Mountain Home, Duchesne County, UT

Olga Schubert, 855 Gruenwald St. The little 5 yr. old after a day's work that began about 5:00 A.M. helping her mother in the Biloxi Canning Factory, begun at an early hour, was tired out and refused to be photographed. The mother said, "Oh, She's ugly." Both she and other persons said picking shrimp was very hard on the fingers. See also photo 2021. Location: Biloxi, Mississippi

Manuel, the young shrimp-picker, five years old, and a mountain of child-labor oyster shells behind him. He worked last year. Understands not a word of English. Dunbar, Lopez, Dukate Company. Location: Biloxi, Mississippi

Group picking shrimp at Biloxi Canning Co. Olga, five-year-old on the end was helping her mother. I tried to get her photo at home when they stopped working, but the child stubbornly refused to be taken. Her mother said, "She's ugly." but it seemed to me that the child could be expected to be tired out after work that began so early. Work was light and only a small crew was at work, but within an hour I found at factory and at the homes the following: (See label 2022) #2022 caption: ...Two children of five years. One of seven years.Two of eight years. One of nine. Two of ten. Two of eleven (one had been working at this factory two years). Three of twelve, (one working here 4 years and one two years). I do not believe this is a complete list of the youngsters Location: Biloxi, Mississippi

Three cutters in Factory #7, Seacoast Canning Co., Eastport, Me. They work regularly whenever there are fish. (Note the knives they use.) Back of them and under foot is refuse. On the right hand is Grayson Forsythe, 7 years old. Middle is George Goodell, 9 years old, finger badly cut and wrapped up. Said, "the salt gets unto the cut." Said he makes $1.50 some days. Left end, Clarence Goodell, 6 years, helps brother. Location: Eastport, Maine

Maud Daly, five years old. Grace Daly, three years old. Each picks about one pot of shrimp a day for the Peerless Oyster Co. The youngest said to be the fastest worker. Location: Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Elbert Hollingsworth, ten year old cotton picker. Picks 125 pounds a day. Also Ruby Hollingsworth, seven year old cotton picker. Works all day, early and late, in the hot sun. Picks about thirty-five pounds a day. Father, mother, and several brothers and sisters pick. They get only five or six months of schooling. "It's not 'nuff," the father said. The children said "We'd ruther go to school." Address Box 18, R.F.D. Location: Denison, Texas

Topics

boys women cannery workers oyster industry shucking wages school attendance south carolina bluffton glass negatives photographic prints lot 7476 national child labor committee collection lewis wickes hine photo year oyster business pots boy father brother ultra high resolution high resolution reverend clergy lewis w hine united states history workers industrial history library of congress child labor