The Photographer Who Exposed Child Labor Abuse in the US
See the photos which changed people’s hearts and minds
Want to know more about why we celebrate Labor Day? You can read the highlights of the reasons for the federal holiday at NPR, and consider the power of the images of photographer Lewis Hine.
In 1908, Hines took a job with the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Before that, he was the staff photographer of the Russell Sage Foundation where he documented workers in the steel-making districts of Pittsburgh.
Over ten years Hines traveled throughout the Carolina Piedmont, and elsewhere, taking photos. Often he had to disguise himself to get access to the factories to avoid persecution. In the forward to America & Lewis Hine: Photographs 1904–1940, Walter Rosenblum said that Hine pretended to be a fire inspector, Bible salesman, or sometimes an industrial photographer of factory machinery to get access.
The images he captured are searing:
A little spinner in the Mollahan Mills, Newberry, S.C. She was tending her “sides” like a veteran, but after I took the photo, the overseer came up and said…
