Hughestown, PennsylvaniaBreaker boys, No. 9 BreakerRooms full of small boys picking slate all day. Where were their fathers, and their schools?The Pennsylvania Coal Company's Number 9 Breaker; Lewis Hine photographed its breaker boys, including the smallest, Angelo Ross, in 1911.
Photo: Hine, Lewis Wickes; National Child Labor Committee Collection · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Child Labor & Repopulation · Columbia, United States (approx.)
Lewis Hine in Columbia, South Carolina
The open question
This was ordinary enough to photograph in daylight. Who was raising these children?
On the record
Lewis Hine's caption for the National Child Labor Committee: "Fursen(?) Owens 12 years old. Can't read. Don't know A, B, C's. 'Yes I want to learn but I can't when I work all the time.' Been in mills 4 years, 3 years in Olympia Mill, Columbia, S.C. and" (1909).
Sources
More from Child Labor & Repopulation
Hughestown, PennsylvaniaBreaker boys, No. 9 BreakerRooms full of small boys picking slate all day. Where were their fathers, and their schools?The Pennsylvania Coal Company's Number 9 Breaker; Lewis Hine photographed its breaker boys, including the smallest, Angelo Ross, in 1911.
Manchester, New HampshireAmoskeag MillyardThe biggest mill on earth, staffed partly by children. Who were they and where did they come from?It grew into the largest cotton textile plant in the world. Hine photographed small boys working there in May 1909.
North Pownal, VermontAddie Card, North Pownal millA girl who might be ten, working a spinning frame. Who signed off on that?Hine's 1910 photo of Addie Card, a 12-year-old spinner. His note says girls in the mill said she was ten.
Macon, GeorgiaBibb Mill No. 1A mill making big profits with children on the floor. Was it the same story everywhere?Hine photographed doffer boys and other children at Bibb Mill No. 1 in January 1909, noting the company's profits on his labels.