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 · Lowell, Massachusetts, United States
Merrimack Mills child workers
The open question
Three years on average, then gone. Where did the workers go after?
On the record
By 1840 the Lowell mills had over 8,000 workers, nearly three-quarters of them women, with an average working life of three years. Hine later photographed boys in the Merrimac Mill.
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.