“Nattily dressed in a suit, tie, and hat, Hine the gentleman actor and mimic assumed a variety of personas — including Bible salesman, postcard salesman, and industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery — to gain entrance to the workplace.”

Photo historian Daile Kaplan

NCLC Detective Work,

Struggling Families

Furman Owens, twelve years old. Can’t read. Doesn’t know his ABC’s. Said, “Yes I want to learn but can’t when I work all the time

.”Neil Power, ten years old, he said, “Turns stockings in Rome Hosiery Mill.” A shy, pathetic figure. “Hain’t been to school much.”

Jewel and Harold Walker, 6 and 5 years old, pick 20 to 25 pounds of cotton a day. Father said: “I promised em a little wagon if they’d pick steady, and now they have half a bagful in just a little while.”

Location: Comanche County, Oklahoma

John Tidwell, a Cotton Mill Product. Doffer in Avondale Mills. Many of these youngsters smoke.

Location: Birmingham, Alabama.

A little spinner in Globe Cotton Mill. Augusta, Ga. The overseer admitted she was regularly employed.

Location: Augusta, Georgia.

Bibb Mill No. 1 Many youngsters here. Some boys were so small they had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins. Location: Macon, Georgia.

A view of the Pennsylvania Breaker. The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrates the utmost recess of the boy’s lungs.

Location: South Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Shuckers in the Varn & Platt Canning Company. This 4 year old in the foreground was helping some. Six of the shuckers were 10 years and up to twelve. Location: Younges Island, South Carolina.

Midnight at the Brooklyn Bridge 1906

Seven-year-old Ferris. Tiny newsie, who did not know enough to make change for investigator.

Pastimes & Vices

Freddie Kafer, a very immature little newsie selling Saturday Evening Post and newspapers at the entrance to the State Capitol. He did not know his age, nor much of anything else. He was said to be five or six years old.

The Keating-Owen Act of 1916The prohibited interstate commerce of any merchandise that Had been made by children under the age of fourteen, or mechandise that had been made in factories where childrenBetween the ages of 14 and 16 worked for more than eightHours a day, worked overnight, or worked more than sixty hours a week.

Hammer v. Dagenhart, (1918), was a United States Supreme Court decision involving the power of Congress to enact child

labor laws. The Court held regulation of child labor in purely internal (to a single state) manufacturing, the products of which may never enter interstate commerce, to be beyond the power of Congress,

Power House Mechanic 1920

Candy Worker, New York, 1925

Published 1932

Exalting the union of man and machine

Icarus Atop the Empire State Building 1931

Former employer comment:

“He is a true artist and as such requires handling as

such”

At issue was control of his by-line & negativesAnd his style was “out of fashion.”

1936 Final Major Assignment:Chief PhotographerWorks Progress AdministrationNational Research Project onReemployment Opportunities and Recent Changes in Industrial Technique

Documenting automated production lines “workers as slaves to the machine”

1939Hine retrospective at the New York Riverside MuseumArranged by Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz and others

1940Corydon Hine donated his fathers prints and negatives to the Photo League after finding little interest elsewhere. In 1951 these materials were donated by the Photo League to the George Eastman House.

Cordon Hine also donated negatives andPhoto equipment to the Oshkosh PublicMuseum

“Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance.”

Lewis Hine 1874 - 1940