Emotional Portrait Photos of American Child Laborers in the 1900s-10s

   

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