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

The Factory

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,

Sea Food Workers

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

Miners

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

Mill Workers

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

Field and Farm Work

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

Newsies

Salesman

How do we change this?? How do we help children??

Stay tuned for our next unit on the era for changes that will start taking

place…