Child Labor Pictures And Readings

1. Child Labor PicturesAnd Readings Miss Springborn All pictures come from the Collection of Lewis Hine who spent much of his life exposing the horrors of child labor

2. 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.

3. 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

4. The Factory

5. 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,

6. Sea Food Workers

7. 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

8. Miners

9. 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

10. Mill Workers

11. 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

12. Field and Farm Work

13. 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

14. Newsies

15. Salesman

16. 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…