Child laborers, newsboys smoking cigarettes, 1910

Newsies at Skeeter’s Branch. They were all smoking. St. Louis, Missouri. 1910.

After the Civil War, the availability of natural resources, new inventions, and a receptive market combined to fuel an industrial boom.

The demand for labor grew, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many children were drawn into the labor force.

Factory wages were so low that children often had to work to help support their families. The number of children under the age of 15 who worked in industrial jobs for wages climbed from 1.5 million in 1890 to 2 million in 1910.

Businesses liked to hire children because they worked in unskilled jobs for lower wages than adults, and their small hands made them more adept at handling small parts and tools. Children were seen as part of the family economy.

Immigrants and rural migrants often sent their children to work or worked alongside them. However, child laborers barely experienced their youth.

Going to school to prepare for a better future was an opportunity these underage workers rarely enjoyed.

As children worked in industrial settings, they began to develop serious health problems. Many child laborers were underweight. Some suffered from stunted growth and curvature of the spine.

They developed diseases related to their work environments, such as tuberculosis and bronchitis for those who worked in coal mines or cotton mills.

They faced high accident rates due to physical and mental fatigue caused by hard work and long hours.

Out after midnight selling extras. There were many young boys selling very late. The youngest boy in the group is 9 years old. Harry, age 11, Eugene, and the rest were a little older. Washington, D.C

Lewis Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer.

Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing the child labor laws in the United States.

In 1908, he became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), leaving his teaching position.

Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor, with a focus on labor in the Carolina Piedmont, in American industry to aid the NCLC’s lobbying efforts to end the practice.

By 1916, Congress passed the Keating-Owens Act that established the following child labor standards: minimum age of 14 for workers in manufacturing and 16 for workers in mining; a maximum workday of 8 hours; prohibition of night work for workers under age 16; and documentary proof of age.

By 1920 the number of child laborers was cut to nearly half of what it had been in 1910.

“There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work”. – Lewis Hine, 1908

A small newsie downtown on a Saturday afternoon. St. Louis, Missouri.

Miners: View of the Ewen Breaker of the Pennsylvania Coal Co. The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrated the utmost recesses of the boys’ lungs. A kind of slave-driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience. South Pittston, Pennsylvania.

Group Portraits: At 5 p.m., boys going home from Monougal Glass Works. One boy remarked, “De place is lousey wid kids.” Fairmont, West Virginia.

The Factory: 9 p.m. in an Indiana Glass Works.

Field and Farm Work: Three boys, one of 13 yrs., two of 14 yrs., picking shade-grown tobacco on Hackett Farm. The “first picking” necessitates a sitting posture. Buckland, Connecticut.

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

A Bowery bootblack in New York City.