The girl berry carriers on Newton's Farm. Ann Parion, 13 years of age, working her 5 season, carries 60 Lbs. of berries from the field to the sheds. Andenito Carro, 14 years old, working her 2nd season, is carrying a 25 lb. load of berries. Besides the great physical strain in carrying such weight, these girls also pick berries. When Andenito was asked her age, she responded 12, at which her mother interrupted to say she was past 14.
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Minnie Pastor, 10 years old, tending stand in New York. New York City.
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Lewis Hine’s photographs helped in many ways, both in the short and long term. Newspapers quickly caught wind of the horrifying practice of child labor and published pictures, cartoons and articles deploring the act. Local labor officers flooded onto mines and farms, mills and street corners. They reported local violations to their bosses and leaders, who reported it to Congress. As a result, Congress drafted the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916), using its ability to regulate interstate commerce to control child labor. Although this act was eventually ruled unconstitutional, Congress was determined to change things in America.
"His pictures were the most important reason why the people began to support child labor laws. Before that, people didn’t think that child labor was wrong...Many people had never seen child laborers before, and when they saw the pictures, they were horrified at the conditions, and they felt like it was right to have child labor laws. So Mr. Hine was responsible for having child labor laws in the United States."- Joe Manning, Lewis Hine Historian.
Child Labor Political Cartoons
"When a child-labor law was under consideration in the House of Representatives in the first decade of the century, members used Lewis Hine's photographs to document their case."-New York Times, Photography Review, August 27, 1999 |
"In 1912, Lewis Hine photographed New York City tenement children sewing dolls and displayed the images alongside photographs of middle-class children playing with the same dolls in Central Park. The photographs prompted the State Legislature the next year to prohibit the making of dolls and children’s clothing, among other items, in tenement houses."- New York Times, Article "Christmas Ornaments, Child Labor," published December 24, 2012 |
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Hine's photographs led other artists to create multimedia against child labor.