Child Labor PicturesAnd Readings
Miss SpringbornAll pictures come from the Collection of Lewis Hine who spent much of his life exposing the
horrors of child labor
Left - Furman Owens, 12 years old. Can't read. Doesn't know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4 years, 3 years in the Olympia Mill. Columbia, South Carolina. Mid - Adolescent girls from Bibb Mfg. Co.
in Macon, Georgia. Right - Doffer boys. Macon, Georgia.
Glassmaking
• Job Description: Assistants to the glassblowers in intense heat, overnight, unhealthy and hazardous conditions
• Hours: Typically at night from 5pm to 3am• Wages: 65 cents a day• Age: Thousands of boys between 10-14, over 16 too
clumsy • Dangers and Illness/injury: Low life expectancy, eye
trouble, lung ailments, heat exhaustion, fumes, broken glass, cuts/burns
Canneries
• Job Description: taking the meat out of oysters using knives
• Hours: Start as early as 3am until late afternoon• Wages: 5 cents for a pail of oyster meat, children
usually only 2 pails a day• Age: As early as 6,7, and 8 years old, some earlier!• Dangers and Illness/injury: Acid from the shrimp
ate holes in shoes, fingers were bleeding and swollen, soaked in solutions to help heal,
Mining• Job Description: Worked as breakers, mule drivers,
couplers, runners, spraggers, and gate tenders, coal miners, many worked in almost darkness
• Hours: 9 to 10 hours per day• Wages: 60 cents a day• Age: Boys: 14-15 employed legally, many as young
at 10-13 employed illegally• Dangers and Illness/injury: Could be mangled or
killed in coal chutes, smothered to death, beaten for not working hard enough, cut fingers, sick from bad air
Textile Mills
• Job Description: Worked as spinners, doffers, and sweepers, fixing thread in machines, replacing bobbins and broken thread, loud and hot inside
• Hours: 12 hour day, 6 days a week• Wages: 50 cents a day• Age: Boys and Girls, As young as 6 or 7• Dangers and Illness/injury: Lost fingers in machine,
foot smashed by machines, hot/steamy air made it hard to breathe, chronic lung diseases, shorter life expectancy, could fall into the machinery, accident rate 2x more for children
Farm Kids
• Job Description: Helped picking in the field, tending to the animals, digging, back-breaking
• Hours: Sun-up to sun-down, many days past sunset, as much as 14 hours a day!!!
• Wages: On a family farm you worked for free• Age: As young as 3 years old!!!!• Dangers and Illness/injury: back breaking work,
cut from knives, working in the dark, all weather, cold icy fields
Newsies• Job Description: Spread out across the city to sell the
papers • Hours: Got in line early to get papers, sold all day
until their papers were gone, sometimes worked a second job as a “little salesman”
• Wages: a few cents a day IF they sold all their papers• Age: Typically boys, as young as 6 and 7 years old• Dangers and Illness/injury: Typically homeless, lived
in shelters, lack of food, roaming the streets of the city by themselves
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