Child miners
The photos that helped abolish child labor in the U.S.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1908-1911
In the late 19th century, industry in the United States was booming, and labor was in high demand. By 1910, an estimated 2 million children under the age of 15 were working industrial jobs, for lower wages than adults. Employers often took advantage of their small size and made them squeeze into tight spaces or handle small tools.Faced with back-breaking labor and long, exhausting shifts, fatigued child workers suffered high accident rates. Those who were injured or maimed in the course of their duties often received no compensation.In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee was formed by progressives determined to end the exploitation of child labor. Within a decade, the federal government had absorbed the committee and reestablished it as the Children’s Bureau within the Department of Labor. The NCLC hired photographers to investigate and document the working conditions of child laborers in factories, mines, mills and other industrial settings. Among them was Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and sociologist.Over the course of a decade, Hine crisscrossed the country, investigating children engaged in every kind of labor, including mining. He was rarely welcomed by employers, and usually had to interview the children under a pretext and take his photos with some degree of subterfuge.Hine’s photos and the work of the NCLC led to the passage of the Keatings-Owen Child Labor Act in 1916, which established minimum ages and maximum shift lengths for young workers. The Act was later ruled unconstitutional, but it laid the foundation for permanent child labor laws to be established during the New Deal.
