Child labor in Hine's sight Vignettes of child labor in early 20th century America

Author: Andrea Glaessner

The distant and vacant eyes of the six-year-old "Newsie in Snow Pathos" bear no marked difference from a pair on the face of any bored and restless kindergartener. But in the context of the Henry Sheldon Museum's current photography exhibit entitled "Let Children Be Children: Lewis Wickes Hine's Crusade Against Child Labor," Newsie's eyes are a window to the dark industrial underworld of early 20th century America - a place where child labor and the deplorable conditions they lived and worked in were acceptable, even encouraged, by American standards.

Newsie's eyes, cold and clear in black and white, leave the viewer trembling with a sense of loss at what children in the industrial revolution were forced to give up. Childhood, dignity, opportunity, health and safety were some of the sacrifices children made to support their families during a time when progress and economic achievement were prioritized above justice and social welfare.

It was only through the photographic journey of Lewis Wickes Hine, a sociologist with an artist's eye, that Americans opened their own eyes to the child labor movement and created legislation to stop it. And it is those same photographs that create the context for discussion and thought today about child labor then and now, and where we stand in the fight.

"There are so many issues here that can be discussed, both historical and contemporary, which makes it more powerful," explained Mary Manley, assistant director of the Henry Sheldon Museum, her eyes brimming with excitement, "this has been a great stepping off point - we've had talks, school groups, a concert and there are more programs coming up."

The idea for the photography exhibition came from the book "Counting on Grace" by Elizabeth Winthrop, selected for last year's Vermont Reads program, a state-wide community reading program sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council. Susan Peden, education coordinator from the Henry Sheldon Museum, and Carol Chatfield, children's librarian at the Ilsley Library, coordinated and developed programming for the book in conjunction with the Mary Johnson Children's Center and participating schools.

The book takes the reader back to the days of child labor in the cotton mills of 1910 Vermont and was inspired by the photograph of Addie Card, a 12-year-old mill girl in Pownal, taken by Lewis Hine. Card's photograph can be found on display at the exhibition.

A lanky blonde pre-teen leans casually against a large, looming spinner. Her eyes, like Newsie's, are vacant and dark, wearing the signs of exhaustion, and her limbs, long and slim, are cognizant of a lifetime of standing beside the spinner, working endless hours.

"We show art and history here [at the Museum] and this [exhibition has] both. It's considered fine art photography, but it's really photography with a purpose," said Manley, pointing to the image of Card.

Indeed, when Lewis Hine's niece and Middlebury resident Mary Williamson gave a talk at the Museum on Feb. 12 on family memories of "Uncle Lewie," she emphasized the fact that Hines was a photographer with a purpose, making a point that Hine was really a sociologist at heart.

"He was definitely a professional photographer, but the photos were taken through a sociologist's eye," said Manley. "It's not just a portrait of a kid. There is depth to it, you can look at the hands and faces and you can tell what they were doing and how rough it was for them. They're very rich in that way."

The soot-stained cheeks of the "breaker boys" and the black barefeet of "newsies" and "bootblacks" echo Manley's sentiment. The photographs do not hide the mud-covered hands and sandy toes of five-year-old Manuel the shrimp picker, and the words culled from Hine's own notes and printed on the label bring the figure to life: "Manuel, the young shrimp-picker, 5 yrs. old and a mountain of child labor/oyster shells left behind him. He worked last year, understands not a word of English."

Hine's photographs are vignettes of child labor across the nation, from the Long Island potato diggers, to the newsies roosting on Manhattan street corners, to the sooty breaker boys in West Virginia coal mines, to the mud-covered oyster shuckers in Mississippi, to the little spinner in Pownal, Vt., to the families huddled around the dining room table shelling nuts, sewing suspenders and assembling artificial flowers, forsaking the chance to get outdoors and smell the real ones.

The exhibition will be up until April 5 at the Henry Sheldon Museum right in town on Park Street, across from the Ilsey Public Library and next to Leatherworks. In addition to the exhibition, there are more upcoming events that allow further opportunities to continue the dialogue about child labor.

Among the upcoming events is a talk by Cheryl Mitchell entitled "Child Labor: Historical Issue or Current Problem?" scheduled for March 11. According to the Sheldon Museum's press release, the talk will discuss the inadvertent and unintended consequences of our "attempts to protect our children from labor exploitation" specifically asking whether we have "deprived our children of connections to family, community, and a sense of meaning in their lives" or perhaps "inadvertently increased exploitation of children in other countries."

There is also an upcoming lecture by Joe Manning, the Massachusetts author and historian who set out to identify the children photographed by Hine in the early 1900s, and to locate their descendents. Manning's project was featured on National Public Radio and he will share photographs and stories of some of Hine's subjects in his talk on March 9.